Done

So that's it. Due to lack of comments posted directly to this blog, I will never ever communicate with any of you again. I will start a highly elite blog to which only Dr. B_. and Chazarmaveth will have access, and I will be demeaned and scorned across the blogosphere as the most reviled blogger to ever walk the earth.

Even my own mother refuses to post comments here.

My own mother.

GO ON, I DARE YOU-- FIND ONE OTHER BLOG IN THE UNIVERSE THAT HAS A JEW WHO LIVES IN A YESHIVAH POSTING PICTURES OF ARAFAT'S TOMB (not to mention an image of America's premier physician smearing cream cheese on a bagel)... GO ON-- FIND IT!!!

I deserve some sort of award, not to mention a link of Jewlicious.

This hideous turn of events can only be avoided if I receive comments, posted directly to this blog, from 18 (EIGHTEEN- Shmonah-Asar) different people. Otherwise, I shall fade into these hills, and none shall know of me, save the Doctor, the Chazar, and my flock of goats.

Love,
Stuart

Fer cryin' out loud, people, just click the word COMMENT below and write something.

Ram'Allah- Goats, Lions and the grave of a man

At Ibrahim's shop last week, I met a woman named Susan who is a professor at a Canadian law school. I ran into her again at Shalosh Seudos last night, and she invited me to come along for another tour of the Palestinian West Bank, this time guided by Rev. Clarence Musgrave, who is pastor of the Scottish Church in Jerusalem.
So you all should click on over to here and check out my photos of Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is headquartered. The first few shots are some rubble from a demolished house in East Jerusalem-- the folks built without a permit, and ended up living in the tent you see in the photo. Next, we return to the Khalandia checkpoint-- you can see the balloon girl trying to fly over the wall. There are some other amazing bits of art on the wall using the black-and-white silhouette to make statements about freedom. Sadly, I have no shots of the others. One in particular shows silhouettes looking out a window (through the wall). The image through the window is a brilliantly colored scene of a tropical paradise.

The rest of the shots are of Ramallah, which is actually quite a lovely city. The lions are from a plaza in the center of town. Many of the shot's are of the Mukata and Arafat's tomb within. The Mukata is the compound that serves as the main headquarters of the PA. You may remember a few years ago, the Israeli army had taken over the compound, and had Arafat trapped in a few rooms in the compound with tanks pointed at him for 2 1/2 months. Amazingly, we just parked the car and walked into the Mukata and straight into Arafat's tomb.

An interesting note-- I met up with Rev. Musgrave outside of the Jerusalem Regency hotel. It was in this hotel that Israel's Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi was assassinated in 2001. Arafat's failure to arrest the murderers is cited in the link above (this one) as the reason he was imprisoned in the Mukata.

Notes: Tomorrow I am heading out to Bat Ayin, in the Gush Etzion area of the West Bank. I will be out there for a few weeks, so posting will be less frequent than it has been. Thank God!! After 10 days here already (how did that happen??), I am finally going out to the hills to sink myself deep into some solitary learning. Baruch Hashem as they say.

Trashed-- Bustin' Up the Shabbes Koydesh

Last night I wrote this lovely post, involving lots of html formatting and the definition of melochos. The Israeli internet ate it.
Argh.
In brief........

Here are the ways that I violated the Sabbath this past weekend:

-- I tore toilet paper
-- I carried a check in my pocket
-- I opened the refrigerator, which caused the light to go on

Here's how I taunted the spirit of the Sabbath this past weekend:

--I read 350 pages of The DaVinci Code in essentially one sitting, from 9am to 6pm. You may as well wait for the movie.

Here is one violation of the Holy Shabbos in which I did not engage this week, unlike last week:

-Using a bar of soap, which entails a melachah that is assur, something to do with smoothing.

For more on Shabbat and melachot/melochos come back later, and I will eventually recreate last night's post, z"l

Brother from another mother

Ladies and Gentlemen (and others), when I think of the beautiful side of humanity, its potential for caring, sharing and daring, this is the image I see in my mind's eye. Help spread the love. This is Doctor Craig D. B_., M.D.

I was gonna go with the "brotha" thing, but "motha" looks too much like "mothra."

boom boom blah blah

I'm sitting in the "Coffee Shop" on Emek Refaim road in Jerusalem. Emek Refaim is like the Park Slope of Jerusalem (that said, I guess Ben Yehuda street is like the village-- there is no Time's Square-- Israeli's are far too cool for such spectacle), but with more teenagers and more taxi drivers and more parking on the sidewalk. I've had a Chai, a Latte and a glass of water and quite a bit of bandwith. And I've watched a whole lot of people come in and out.

I'm tired--> been here for a few hours after eating a felafel down the street. A little while ago, I heard some explosions outside. Yikes? Nope, just someone setting off fireworks somewhere not too close to here. A good idea in Jerusalem??


Last night in a mediocre but fancy Asian restaurant with a beautiful rear garden area, I listened to a fun conversation. A black guy from Texas was eating dinner with two Israeli girls, one of whom he was obviously dating. The other Israeli gal was poking fun at his American slang and his hip hop dance style, and he was trying to convince her that his way is the definition of cool in the US. And he was pretty right-- he reminded me of Kingsley for those of you who've been to the Tea Lounge or on jdate. I reckon that his moves were far better than any Israeli guy's cheesy club action. On Emek Refaim, almost half the people are North Americans. It's quite nutty.
Here are some pictures of the Sulha gathering, a yearly peace event with people from many cultures and traditions. [for the newcomers- click the pics and they get bigger, click the colored text and a link opens] There were a lot of honkies like me, a lot of wild Israeli hippies who dress like nomads and are generally gorgeous, and some Palestinian folks who had to get special permission from the Israeli government to enter Israel for a few days. I need to write more on this, but I am bushed after spending hours messing with photo software, so more to come.......


IF you comment.

And if anyone knows how to make iphoto not be utterly frustrating, please email me!!!

Across the Seas

Look! It's my first time being the featured topic of someone else's blog! And I'm even sweaty in it. Maybe I shoulda sold prune juice in Romania. Just remember, in Romania, "carp" is spelled "crap." For real.

Across the Universe

Yesterday I was in Palestinian turf, in Beit Lechem (Bethlehem- "House of Bread") and a refugee camp called Aida, as well as a few other places. My friend Ibrahim, who owns a jewelry shop in the old city, also has a gym in an Arab town outside of Jerusalem. I got to check it out and see some of the local kids enjoying a little swimming. It reminded me of Camp Jenny in Atlanta. When we took those inner city black kids swimming in the North Georgia mountains, they flipped. Swimming for Peace........?























Here is one of the taxi waiting areas at the infamous Khalandia checkpoint, which was pretty mellow that day. This is the place you see in the news, where people are sometimes waiting for hours. They are bulding a new hi-tech crossing to replace the manual checking system they have now. Check this place out-- it looks just like the border crossing in El Salvador / Guatemala.




This kid was manning the grill at the best chicken joint in the Middle East, in Bethlehem. For five bucks a person, we chowed on grilled chicken, hummus, salads, babaganoush and pita. Hot stuff.







Here is the Aida camp (for more info see this link and the comments on this post- remember, almost all info on this conflict, from every side, is BIASED). We got right up next to the security barrier / wall and met with some guys who do youth work with kids in the refugee camp. It's so different to walk around these places on a calm summer day. On the news all you see is kids throwing rocks or getting shot at. But on this day, they were just hanging out, playing with water pistols, or sitting around looking at the murals on the wall. This mural was on the wall of a building, not the security barrier.










The wall is covered with grafitti and murals. See the anti USA motif in this sick Statue of (not) Liberty. And check out the death pigs.... Three days after Israel erected the observation tower, it was covered with splattered paint.

Tomorrow I will post some shots of the "Way of the Sulha," a peace gathering I attended today in the middle of Israel. And sometime soon I am heading out to my little West Bank settlement- Bat Ayin- to learn with my rabbis and dip in the mikvaot (ritual baths) in the gorgeous Judean hills.

Across the Universe, from extreme to extreme. And somewhere in the middle is the unkosher, open-on-Shabbat coffee shop on Emek Refaim (Jerusalem's Park Slope or West Village, maybe) in which I now sit, WiFi-ing what I've got of me, straight through the WonkaWaves to you, my friends.

Please comment. I am spending far too much time tweaking the HTML to make this pretty for y'all, and your comments make the whole endeavor seem more
.......... of substance.

Molotov Cocktails today, Bloody Marys tomorrow

Not that I think there will be molotov cocktails involved in the disengagement... But there will be cocktails by the pool for the most stubborn of the Gaza settlers. I don't mean this to become a political blog, but this story was too good to miss. Be sure to check the Jerusalem Post for the nitty and the gritty

The People Are with Gush Katif

My good friend Jeff Weill asked me about the situation over here with the upcoming Gaza disengagement. Although I personally don't have a firm opinion on this matter-- firm political opinions always seem to ignore someone's rights and emotions-- here's what I've seen, as just written in an email to Jeff....

For real and actual (not-American) news on this stuff, start with the Jerusalem Post.

Well, half the country is cloaked in orange,the color of the anti-disengagement movement. Kids, frummies, secular folks--- lots of orange. The main article is an orange strip of cloth, tied to car antennas, around people's heads and waists, or dangling randomly from lightposts and phonebooths.
There was even an orange tallis spotted in Meah Shearim. A big slogan is "Yehudi lo m'gareish Yehudi," which means "A Jew doesn't deport a Jew." Perhaps "run off" is a better verb. And, in the midst of Tour de France madness, the Lance Armstrong-inspired orange bracelet is a hit here alone, or with other pro-Gaza apparel.
It's quite a scene, and I reckon that in other parts of the country it is much more exciting. There is supposedly a huge march forming in the Negev today, and heading towards Gush Katif (the main Jewish area in Gaza). I wonder if I should go check it out, just for the spectacle... History in the making?

Jeffrey- you should be honored. I am going to use this email that i wrote just for you as a post on my blog.
you're famous.

NOTE: NEW FEATURE!!
I am experimenting here with a little HTML- much more like copying and adjusting than actually learning the language, but I have created, on the sidebar at right, a handy little Mini-Lexicon of some of the Jewish/Israelish/Yeshivish words I tend to use in this context. If a word is missing, or you debate a definition (or wish to enhance one), please feel free to use the comments section.

A lefty intellectual spreads the love

As a confused soul, a tortured unintellectual liberal with a distaste for political correctness and a strong need for some Divine Discipline to come down on my ill-behaved tuchas, I was happy to find this honest tip-of-the-hat to the cuddly settlers who I love so much. As far as words like "wrong" or "extremist," eh- I can leave that out. But otherwise, this cat makes a crucial point.

Grammarians-- should I have said "whom" in the sentence above, not "who"???

luggage angst update: made it with very little stress from Brooklyn to JFK to Ben Gurion to Jerusalem. I was over by about 25 pounds, and paid the overage charge of $130-- should have brought another 50 pounds of stuff, it would have been the same fee. The Holy Duffel, after a decade or more of service and 2 journeys to the Ir HaKodesh (holy city- jerusalem) has a tear in it. Nevertheless, weeks of neuroses have been proven unecessary- what else is new?

Now this is it

Just had me a schnitzel of dubious heksher and am preparing for Shabbos here in Bak'a, right around the corner from Emek Refaim, the Park Slope of Jerusalem. I got in yesterday afternoon, after a long long flight from JFK. Said flight was lengthened by the presence of 100 Modern Orthodox 16-year olds who yelled and shoved and clogged the aisles and cuddled and littered the entire way there. And they even davvened, for one feverish, tefillin-wrapped moment. I was trapped in the very last row, surrounded by the pulse of limitless (and under-disciplined, the old man says) teenage energy. God bless and protect the college kids who serve as counselors on their 6-week demolition (tour) of Israel.


El Al Airlines serves Sabra hummus as a side with dinner. They also served Bialies, but called them "American Pitas." Even if you have no desire to go to Israel, you should at the very least book a flight with an immediate return just to experience prayer-in-flight, when 30 Chasids shove their way to the back of the plane for an intense and crammed-in service, effectively shutting down all lavatory access, and causing a slight rearward tilt in the plane.

Now I am spending the Shabbat with Ben Small and his lovely consort Amy, who are here for the summer studying at Pardes. Tonight we are going to engage in various Jewish activities represented but such multi-lingual vocabulary words as davvenen, misnayos, benschen, zmiros and rav simcha.

Please, my friends, use the "comments" feature on this page. It is the spice of life here in cyberspace.

Shabbat Shalom

so that's it

Why are there so many orthodox guys at the Home Depot and Lowe's in Brooklyn late at night? Are they building the Bayit Shlishi (Third Temple) in Crown Heights?? Spent my last night with Jason running around the DIY hardware joints trying to find a propane tank with the proper attachment for his grill. This was after we ate some delicious BROILED salmon. That Jason and Sara sure know how to cook it up.


A note: the Broadband phone probably won't be operational for a month or so. But please call in late August!

Yesterday was the funeral of Dr. Paul M. Steinberg, former Dean of the HUC New York campus. The man was filled with love for his fellow man. He hardly knew me, but sent a consolation note when my father died and when Mama Bea died. When Bea died, HE WAS IN HOSPICE--- he himself was dying, but he still took the time to send me a consolation note, because he saw on the HUC email serv that a member of the college community had had a loss. I stood at the funeral yesterday morning and cried like a baby for this man who I hardly knew. What a model of human compassion. May I be blessed to learn such a path.

Still going nuts, 19 hours before the flight, over my luggage. It's too heavy, it's too much, I'm over the limit, how am I going to get to the Yeshiva with all this crap??

I should sleep and not worry about it. Tomorrow I am hanging out with Erik, and Craig is coming to the airport with me. I spent yesterday afternoon with Elijah, and had a lovely send-off from Olga. So all accounts are settled, all friends have been hugged, and the check is in the mail, so to speak. That's the end of the logistic blogging.

From here on out, it's all Torah......

after the funky

i just got back from a retreat in sharon, mass with the rabbaim from the bat ayin yeshiva, and a whole bunch of holy, happyjews. we ate off of compostable plates, drank from compostable cups and speared, scooped and sliced with compostable cutlery. Here's an example (I don't know if it's the best, but the first I found). The guy in charge of this greenery is named Michael Oshman. Full-press environment-loving happyjew. Have you recycled today?

One of the great highlights of the weekend was the Seudah Shlishit (Shalosh Seudah- the third meal of Shabbat, eaten as the sun sets Saturday evening), which featured massive singing lead by Rav Daniel Kohn, who was totally tripped out on the vibe we were creating. He had this look of total ecstasy as he pounded his fist on the table. Good stuff.


Peoplewatch update: Saw Christopher Gengarelli, Duval Rodrigues, Mike Walsh and the always awesome Burt Stuchins while I was in Boston.

My flight is Wednesday night.

Aligning the Headspace

Today I got my broadband phone number. Now my nearest and dearest can call me in Deerfiled Beach, FL, and it will ring in Israel. And I will be on the other end. My tech stocks are down, but boy are my toys fun.

I had coffee, water and lots of shmoozing with chazarmaveth today. We dished about being a Yid in the States, the state of Yiddishkeit and the Yiddish State. My position this moment--- All hopes for much joy and learning in the months to come, but fear of not fully embracing the Light, not assimilating enough joy and Torah to be the Teacher I am supposed to be. After the serious stuff, Chazar and I stood at 23rd and Broadway singing Michael McDonald quite loudly. I think the citizens enjoyed it.

Also, for those of you who remember the classic "5 Kegs and a Mess of Hot Chicks," my kidney theft film, I just got a call from Ebin Sandler. He played the crucial role of the guy who gave the party flier to the guy who got his kidneys yanked by the incredibly punk-rock guy Tim McVicker. Awesome. If you never saw the film, you gotta go down to Esta's house and find the videotape. Good luck.