I Felafel my Pita

As it turns out, a three hour drive in Israel is not only considered long by the locals, but is pretty much as far as we can travel without hitting Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan. So Roie, Hila, and we pile into the car for an excursion up north into green mountains, and a cliff-enclosed canyons. Hiking around, R and H made us fully aware of how little we know about botany by spouting off the names of every plant that we passed.

We then ventured into a Kibbutz, which for those hippies fully tacked into the green or grassroots movements of the US of A is similar to the Chatauqua movement - and appears to be heading to the wayside as the latter has long since done. However, the hippie-ness seems to morph into hard-core Zionism somewhere between arts and crafts strewn sidewalks, communal farming activities, and pushing Arabs off of this strip of Holy soil to create a space for the Jewish Homeland. Which, by the by, is very very confusing in and of itself.

The Jews were exiled some 2000 years ago. Now they're back. Simple enough. Except that much of the population here fits nothing in the list of stereotypes pondered when one pictures the ethnicity, "Jewish." Here, the Hebrew Israelite Community adds a little color with their dark african skin, the Eastern Jews add the brown flavor, and the Anglos add the pale blandness that is more of a Judeo portrait. However, to boot, not all of the country is composed of practicing religious Jews - indeed, Tel Aviv provides the ultimate counterpoint to Jerusalem's Holy sites; with clubs, bars, scantily clad women, scantily clad men, skyscrapers, and overwhelming modernity. I, in short, don't get it - and if anyone really does get it I'd love to hear more.

Negating this lack of understanding, though, I can philosophize somewhat about the existence of the place and its parallels to the American land. Here, people escaped places where they felt persecuted in the name of religion, only to form a secular state and openly allow those of other religions. The land was occupied, so they killed off a few people (a lot of people), and they pushed the rest away. They changed the culture by dominating not intermingling, and then they create an uber-nationalistic psyche to remove association to the places from whence they came. The extreme desire to differentiate the immigrant from the land of emigration is not a purely American phenomenon, apparently.

We went on to dip our hands in the Sea of Galilee and watch an overzealous local repel off of a stone arch in the hills not for enjoyment of the event, but for exploitation of the interest shown by the Detroit Jewish Community in attendance. We hopped by a central-Israeli community so that Hila could vote in this election, which most of the population with whom we interacted seemed wholly apathetic about.

In fact, some people went so far as to complain that all polititians do is show prowess and power over the Palestinian issue, while ignoring local economics, social programs, etc. I was stunned, slightly, to see this apathy towards a cause that the mere existence of Israel as a state precipitated, and which dominates the international media in the rest of the Western world (and, truly, aside from Shawarma and a lonely chaotic market in Tel Aviv, modern Israel can only be said to be Western.)

We bid adeu from our inspirational hosts with yet another unexpected tinge of regret for having to leave. Close bonds can be forged in days or hours - a lesson that we will no doubt repeatedly learn in the future as well.

Then, just as we were to leave Jerusalem again for Eastern locales, the clowns emerged. 6 of them. Without so much as an introduction, "are you coming?" as they walk out the door of the hostel towards the nearby booze-dens. We hop on board, obviously. After a few hours, several shots, and a nargileh or two we find that they are a traveling show, fresh out of Iraq with the sole goal of putting smiles on the faces of children in places where external forces are heinously exerted on them with absolute injustice.

So, in the morning we roll over a few times to get our hangovers to leave (we were unsuccessful), and chase them. We cross the very bizzarrely incomplete wall on the eastern end of Jerusalem, and emerge in the Westbank. We could actully feel the cultures shift in the course of maybe two inches. Two inches, that is, along a fenced corridor smack through the middle of what used to be a roundabout, and on into a no-longer parking lot. It is as though fourth graders were in charge of setting up this check post. Again, I don't get it.

Onward, our Shared Service Taxi weaves around perhaps the entire West Bank avoiding as much as possible the Israeli humvees and armored teenagers in this children of the corn land. At points, we drive through makeshift roads in olive groves, through holes cut in barricades of razor wires, and around hills and "mountains" to avoid the pestering occupiers. We safely arrive in Jenin many more hours later than we had anticipated.

There, we cozy up in the city from which the highest number of suicide bombers has come, and watch the circus. Kids here are the same kids we've seen throughout these regions - some more interested in pestering Jenny and I than in watching the show, and most smiling much more than any of the adults I see around. Nevertheless, it may have been the first time they've seen a clown pull 20 ping pong balls out of his mouth; and I'm glad they had the opportunity.

By the time it was all over, the sun was heading toward the horizon. We quickly realized that our plan of returning to Jerusalem the same day was obviously a distant hazy daydream formed primarily from remnants of booze in our system; so we hopped into the hotel with the clowns (also very hungover). Dinner brought pizza and great discussions, and afterwards a movie about the theater at which the show had unfolded; and whose original form had been deliberately demolished by the Israeli Army some years back, in the battle of Jenin. It seems, though, that any good intentions Arna (the freedom theater's founder) had were drown in apathy somewhere along the line, as more than one child in this after-school-esque program went on to kill himself, and others, in the streets of Tel Aviv.

Even so, the volunteers remain committed to the cause of re-building, and re-constructing the effort - including some mystery mafia-man up top by the name of Juliano. My reaction to their overwhelming dedication in the face of such dismal results is, once again, "I don't get it." Eventually we did make it back to Jerusalem, and eventually we got back to Jordan. Eventually we arrived in Petra, where we are now, ready to blow our minds with amazing desert-scape and more old, but cool, caves and tombs.

And that's where I'll leave you.

Oh, and Mom and Dad - April Fools.