Pesach Break

In Israel spring break for schools is squeezed together at the same time as Passover. These breaks can range from a week to a month for some. I got ten days.

The first days I spent heading down to Rechovot with Paige, Scott, and Brett to a friend’s home to have Passover Seder. This was an unusual Seder for me for two reasons: one it was all in Hebrew and two was the fact that my friend is Yemenite so we all partook in a Yemenite Seder. The big difference between this Yemenite Seder and the traditional American Seder is the food. We didn’t have your traditional gefilte fish, chicken soup, matzo balls, choroset, and wine. Instead it was mousaka, grape juice, etc.

This was a large 34 people and multigenerational group. But they did a great job of making us feel at home and incorporating English when they could. Some of the prayers were said in Arabic. They do this because back in the day in Yemen women weren’t aloud to attend school and didn’t know Hebrew, they only spoke Arabic, and it became traditional for parts of the Seder to be in Arabic so the women could understand.
The next day after the Seder I went back to the farm so I could do my watering chore. Over the break we all signed up for specific days to water so our newly seeded beds would grow. Once watering was over which took like 3 plus hours as we don’t have drip tape for most of the beds yet. (We are trying for more but we have to wait until budget issues are taken care of. Because we do not have the drip tape (drip irrigation lines) we have to hand water everything with a hose. Normally this chore is broken up amongst three or four but it was just Renaya and I this time.) But once we were done with our chore it was off to Tel Aviv by train to meet up with Beth and then head down by a direct bus to Eilat for a couple of days in the sun.

The bus ride to Eilat is about 5 hours. It’s really long but thankfully the bus makes 10 minute stops at rest stations twice along the way. Once we were in Eilat we found our hostel put our stuff down and went out to explore the city.
Eilat is designed and laid out along the Red Sea. On the other side of the cove you can see Jordan as the Red Sea is one long inlet from the Ocean. The Shouk and most hotels huddle around the edge of the beach. Walking around it was very crowded almost NY Chinatown crowded, as Eilat is a favorite destination of Israeli’s during Pesach Break. It reminds me of Las Vegas but on the ocean.


The Red Sea

We ended up going to Giraffe, an Asian fusion restaurant in Israel, for dinner the first night and then sitting by the water’s edge talking. The next two days were spent lounging by the beach. We found a great spot, not to crowded, and located within throwing distance from the juice bar, crepe stand, and grocery store. These beach days were fabulous. It was hot but the water was crisp and immediately cooled us off when we dipped in. We spent many hours hanging out, talking, reading, and walking around browsing in the shouk along the beach. It was a great time of relaxation, surround by beautiful clear blue green water.




Working on getting rid of my Farmer's tan

Being in Eilat was a little difficult because it was Pesach break and lots of places are closed for the holiday. And even though it is Israel there weren’t that many food options since I was not eating bread. They have Pesach bread, which supposedly is ok to eat during this time but it felt like cheating to me so I stuck to my Matzo, Tzchoug, and cheese for most of my meals.

Another thing I forgot to mention about Pesach in Israel is the cleaning of the Hametz before. People go a little nuts here, wrapping things in plastic, using blowtorches to sear pots, and intense cleaning of houses and kitchens. I’ve never experienced anything like it. But watching all these different people going through these rituals of getting rid of any bread particles in their home has given me a new appreciation for bread.

By that Sunday we were ready to leave Eilat. I made a brief stop back to the farm to change out my clothes for warmer ones as my next destination was north and the weather is completely different from the Southern tip. In the north it is still very much early spring with cold rain showers. Flowers are just beginning to bloom, the irises coming up. The climate and landscape could be compared to northern California or the mountains in Colorado.

The first couple of days up north I stayed on a friend’s kibbutz as they had an extra yurt. A yurt is similar to my dome as it’s a geometric structure. But these yurts are a bit nicer than my dome because they have insulation and their own personal kitchen built on the outside. During those days when the rains would let up I did a bit of hiking up and around the mountains in the area. There are tons of pockets where there are springs, wells, and caves that have been used by people for thousands of years and I did some exploring in and around these.

That Wednesday I went down to Sfat, to break my Passover that night I had some yummy pizza. The next day walked all around, toured the Shouk there, which has lots of galleries and Judaica. Sfat is a really old city around 800 years. There is amazing architecture here. Influences of the different cultures that have lived in Israel over the years…Turks, Arab, Hebrew. It’s also a very religious city as it’s the center for Kabbalah.



A large group of us went hiking for an afternoon along the Israel trail. The same trail the Walk-About-Love is traveling on. It is such a beautiful part of Israel up in the mountains surrounded with pine forests.

That Friday on our way south we stopped at this beautiful beach about 20 km north of Tel Aviv. It was so beautiful with tall cliffs bordering the ocean. We spent a few hours there enjoying the sun after spending so much time in the rain and cold up north. Then continued south toward Tel Aviv for Shabbat. I haven’t talked much about religion in my blogging because it’s such a large topic I haven’t had the energy to delve into it yet. But I want to just say a few things quickly.

In Israel the majority of the population is Jewish but not everyone is religious. In fact it’s broken up pretty evenly betwen secular and religious. But during holidays and weekly Shabbat, public transportation, shops, basically everything public shuts down. These closers forces everyone to prepare for these days whether you observe them or not. For instance you must buy food and wine before if you’re going to want them because all the stores close and the only things that are open are a few kiosks owned by Israeli Arabs. And the kiosks are very minimally stocked, no refrigerated goods. It’s funny how dependent Israeli’s have become on other cultures that aren’t observant of the religious days. The only way to travel on these days is if you have your own car, can hitchhike with someone, or take a communal taxi that is run by an Arab. If I’m trying to travel I usually take the taxis when I can.

Since I’ve come to Israel I’ve been celebrating Shabbat every week, whether it’s a big dinner with songs or a small moment with the blessing over the wine. It’s become a day for me to rest and to let the world around me rest. People get so caught up in their day-to-day lives it’s really nice to have a scheduled time every week to just step away for a moment or a day and focus on my needs and myself. To not worry about chores or work; to do things that I enjoy like cooking, reading, writing, and hanging out.

So once in Tel Aviv we went to a friend’s place to have Shabbat dinner. Then the next day went for a walk around the city and to the beach. It was really crowded but a beautiful sunny day. And then Sunday it was back to the farm for the start of work and school again.

I can finally read Hebrew!

When I fist arrived in Israel one of the immediate goals I set for myself was to learn how to read Hebrew. And so within three weeks with the help of my Hebrew class, my fellow Ecos, and the assistance of many others I learned my alphabet, script and block letters. It was def a struggle trying to memorize new letters, a style of writing, and sounds but I am now a proficient reader of Hebrew. It was so frustrating the first month here not being able to read signs and product labels. But I’ve become so comfortable with my Hebrew reading abilities now that I prefer to spell all my Hebrew specific words with Hebrew letters and not in the English phonetic version. Now my goal is to learn as much vocabulary as possible so I can not only ask questions in Hebrew but understand the answers.

Gardens are a Growin’

The Big Dome with tons of flowers

So we just finished up doing our massive summer planting in and around Domeville. From the fields to our personal beds around our domes we planted tepary beans, pigeon pea, blacked peas, green beans, Cherokee purple tomatoes, money maker tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sweet basil, purple basil, watermelon, cantaloupe, corn, sunflowers, millet, amaranth pumpkins, winter squash, cucumber, zucchini, and many more....


The freshly planted fields


The spiral herb garden I helped plant....A very important design in Permaculture to help with watering

The Eco-Family

Field Tripin’ It to the Arava: Kibbutz Neot S'Madar and Kibbutz Lotan

So my group took a weeklong field trip to the desert. Just shy a few kilometers from where I was at the festival. But this time it was to visit a kibbutz. After being on a kibbutz for a couple of days I realize the stark difference between my farm and a working kibbutz. Kibbutzes in Israel have changed a lot over the last few years. They have been trending toward more commercialized communes. But there still are a few commercial farm kibbutzes; even this though is so different from where I am.

Neot S’Madar is a huge place with an extensive amount of acreage. They specialize in goat’s milk and dates but grow everything here. In comparison my farm is tiny just a couple of acres and we don’t grow any of our food for production.

While I was at Neot S’Madar I helped out in many different areas thinning nectarine trees, planting tomatoes, sorting olives for canning, and working in the winery for a bit. There is so much going on at this place that you feel as if it would take years to participate in everything.


Thinning Nectarines

One of the amazing things about this Kibbutz is how they promote the arts. They have a entire castle-like building devoted to creativity and the arts.


The Arts Center

Shouk Makhane Yehuda

So one of my favorite things about Jerusalem is the Shouk Makhane Yehuda. It’s the local market and on a Friday before Shabbat this place gets crazy. It is jam packed with people buying food for the weekend and trying to get last minute chores done before the week ends. I’ve discovered so many treasures in this place. Like Azura this amazing hole-in-the-wall Iraqi restaurant with delicious meatballs and this small juice stand where you can get a plethora of varieties including fresh squeezed passiflora juice. I’ve already learned who has the best dried fruit and the best halvah. Halvah is incredibly delicious. It’s made from toasted sesame seeds and I don’t know what else. But my favorite flavors are coffee and chocolate. Basically you can get everything here fruit, veggies, cheeses, olives, challah…But the most beautiful thing about the Shouk is going early in the morning and buying a fresh hot pita dripping with olive oil and zatar and eating it right then and there….It’s so delicious.

Purim

So I’m very late posting this but I wanted to share my Israeli Purim experience. For those that don’t know what Purim is, it is similar to Halloween and Mardi Gras where the main goal, even though it is a religious holiday, is to dress up in costumes and get as drunk and crazy as possible. Basically the idea is to get so sloshed you can’t tell the difference between Haman and Mordechai. For a more extensive explanation Wiki it…lol.

Israelis love to party. There are always holidays and new moons to celebrate. And Purim is just another way for them to express this interest. Purim is really only a couple of days long but here in Israel it is celebrated all week with festivities. To being our Purim week a couple of my fellow ecos (Beth, Paige, and myself) started off by traveling down to the Negev desert to go to the opening of the Walk About Love Festival. The Walk about Love is a group of people promoting peace and love by traveling/hiking up the famous Israel Trail. This process takes a few months as they start in Eilat and work their way North. In a couple of weeks they will be visiting my farm since we are next to the trail. We’ll host them for the afternoon before they move on to their next spot and give tours of our Eco Village.

But back to my travels, as we made our way down to the opening festival in the desert we stopped for the night at Mitzpe Ramon at an Alpaca farm. There we tagged along with the Shin-shins from the south to their Purim party. In the early morning we traveled the rest of the way to Shitim Ashram, which was hosting the opening festival.


The Alpaca Farm


Beth and I Hiking though the Desert

Shitrim Ashram is this tiny oasis in the middle of the dessert. It is literally surrounded on all sides by at least 80 kilometers of desert. It is the type of desert that is flat and rocky, where literally nothing grows. No trees, no plants, no bushes…You don’t see tumble weeds here. All you hear is the dry wind blowing across the earth. But the desert is magical. Because there are so few distractions it really gives you the chance to open up and look at yourself; to contemplate life and deep internal thoughts and struggles.

I was here sitting and having lunch with my friends in this oasis in the desert when I was awakened to a realization of a past life experience here…that I have lived somewhere very similar to this place. Somewhere in the Middle East in the desert surrounded by willow trees.

The desert is an emotional place to say the least. There is no hiding from yourself here. They say it opens a window to your soul and that is exactly what it did to me.



This was my first festival and being pretty unfamiliar with gatherings like this I wasn’t completely sure what to expect. But it ended up being a wonderful convergence of spiritual growth, laid-back good times, live music, and informative workshops, and a Kabbalah Shabbat service.



After returning to the farm for a couple of days it was on to the next set of Purim parties, which where in Tel Aviv on Floretine St, at the farm, and then Jerusalem. If anybody knows what Halloween is like in Santa Barbara, these parties in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are comparable. Thousands of people converge on to one main street. There is music everywhere. Drinking and partying with everyone in costume. I was an 80’s aerobic instructor and def pulled it off well.


Paige and I dancing in the Street

When most of the world is done celebrating Purim there are a couple of cities here that are still going strong. They are the walled cities. So of course we spent our last day of Purim partying in Jerusalem, which is one of these cities with a wall. Once in Jerusalem it was off to the neighborhood Naclaote. This was the most random street party yet. As the street wasn’t technically blocked off and there would be the random car trying to drive through the masses of people spontaneously converging on to this street. Drinking on the street is legal in Israel so as you can imagine street parties are a lot of fun.
Israeli’s are so creative with their Purim costumes. I’ve never seen anything like it. It puts our premade costumes from the States to shame. They glue and tape together the most amazing things. My favorite of the week was friend Ben the lobster.


Jerusalem


Yigal and I in Jerusalem