Sukkot in Israel: THE DIVERSITY OF ISRAEL

It is hard to capture in succinct words the adventures of the last week in Israel.

I have a collage of senses swirling through my mind as I think of our experiences....

My kids running through Efrat screaming in Hebrew "od pam od pam" ("again, again") as they hid with their cousin from me while I pretended to not know where they are.  The smells of yet another wonderful meal under a sukkah.  The sounds of the Muslim call to prayer echoing across the valley where we were having a sukkah meal at cousins.  The tastes of a pomegranate picked off a tree.  The sound of silence of Jerusalem on shabbat.  The colors of the desert.  The temperature differences that comes from travelling across the desert at different altitudes.  The bumpiness of the camel ride.  Floating in the dead sea.

Really, what's to say?
This is one awesome country to tour, and we threw ourselves into having as many experiences in one week as we could!

We started our "erev chag" (holiday eve) of sukkot headed to Machane Yehuda.  That alone is sensory overload.  This "shuk" (market) is incredible--not only do they have the best rugelach in the world, but endless spices, flavors, and really cool new chic joints within the shuk.  You can actually like go drinking at the shuk.  Ahhh....those moments when you wish a babysitter would just drop down from the heavens of Jerusalem.  Yes, I had one of those moments at the shuk as I saw all these cool places to sit and eat.

Below: we found a Techina Maker.  He had techina in all flavors and literally pressed the sesames right there in the shuk.  My kids don't like techina, but maybe that will change. I had no idea it was ONLY sesames.  Nothing else.

It is a Jewish tradition to gather four different vegetation things (a citron, palm, willow, and myrtle) and shake them.  We do this every year, but I hadn't bought this lulav and etrog yet.  And didn't see it at the shuk.  Then about one block away, was a huge tent and it was chaos with these things being sold.  Never seen anything like it.  Matan picked the largest one, which accompanied us on our trip for the next 7 days.

While eating our lunch,we were entertained while watching a guy across the street spraypaint a sukkah.

 We stayed at an Airbnb in the Moshava Germanit, the German Colony.  This is my favorite part of Jerusalem!! So close to so many things, clean and modern (and expensive of course).  By modern, I should add that the buildings lining the mainstreet are over 100 years old, but the cafes are all new and exciting things like "sushi"  :)
We drove before the holiday to Armon Hanaziv, very close to the American consulate.  There, my cousins Shlomit and Adam treated us to our first sukkah dinner.  They also let one of our fellow Fulbrighters ,Amanda come along.  The view was awesome.

At this point, the photos stop because you can't take photos on the chag (holiday).  Which means of course that we are missing pictures of some of the most memorable parts of our trip.

The first day of sukkot is a "chag" and then we also had shabbat.  In those two days of religious observance in Jersualem, we experienced a lot of diversity.

And that's what I want to focus this entry on.  Diversity.  There is no such thing as a typical Israeli.  Or typical Jewish person.  We ate with people who were orthodox, but believe in feminism too, and even hosted a reform female rabbi.  We ate at an american rabbi and his family who made aliyah years ago who also hosted people from south africa, australia, england, and Israel.  We ate at a charadi (ultra-orthodox) family from england, we went to a reform synagogue, ultra-orthodox synagogue, and a liberal modern orthodox synagogue where women were leading part of the service.   We went to a playground where we met christians from Philadelphia who were in Israel for two years while he studied at a school in Jersualem.  We listened to different political views and different religious views.  We went to Gan HaPaamon, a playground where you will always see Jewish, Muslim, and Christian kids.  All this was in only a couple days in one area of Jerusalem.  

On Friday we went to the Old City which is just spectacular.  It looks like something from Disney world, but it's the real thing.  By happenstance, we came across King David's tomb and the room of the Last Supper.  Actually, in the pictures below, we weren't even IN the old city yet....just close!

Then we went into the Jewish quarter.

And Sukkot everywhere!

See the sukkah below?  It's like got advertisements... a capitalistic sukkah!

Us eating in the sukkah (or waiting to eat).

Of course, the kotel is the highlight for religious Jews.  We sat and wrote prayers to go in the wall.  And then separated (men and women have separate sections) and went. Sivan really was quite moved and hard to take away from the wall.

This was us 4 years ago.

We tried to recreate but I forgot I was carrying Sivan too.  Yeah, today that wouldn't work.

Ritual handwashing.

view of the women's section

Sivan thinking...

Adam and Matan go marching to the men's section.

Yes, we brought our lulav and etrog and shook it!

one of my favorite things is when you see the kotel for your first time that israel trip....You can see there is way more police presence than their used to be (we aren't sure if it's because it was Friday or tourist season, but all those white cars were police)

On Thursday night we had gone to the Old Train Station which is a new cool renovated area, where the kids did trampoline bungy jumping thing.  To get there we walked along a new path that used to be train tracks.  The path has mosaics for each tribe of Israel, with a QR code that allows you to scan and learn about the tribe.  Just another example of the anachronistic juxtaposition you see all the time in Jersusalem.  

It was striking how much English we heard.  And how many people come to Jerusalem for this holiday!  IT WAS JAM PACKED.  

On Sunday we did the "Time Elevator" movie which covers 4000 years of Jerusalem history in 40 minutes.  Needless to say, we found it a bit "fast paced"

Then off to the desert...

Okay, so I have way more to say about our trip, but I'll save part 2 of the trip for next post.  I have so much more to say!

Jerusalem, you are one special city.