"All You Americans Look Alike"

Tuesday, the 29th of March

Had a hilarious experience today in the library.  One of my Israeli classmates told me today that he thought one of our professors looks like George W. Bush.  I vehemently disagreed but he stuck to his guns and even pulled up photos of Bush to prove the point.  At this point the story is only funny to me, so without further ado, here is a picture:

Prof. Jack Rakove

Just in case you were confused, that's not the 43rd president of the United States.  That's Stanford professor and Pulitzer prize-winning historian Jack Rakove.

Now, it's been a couple years since Bush left office, so in case you are having trouble remembering, here's a side-by-side:

You can clearly see the family resemblance, but then again, all us Americans look alike.  Haha.

The Lost Weeks

The 13th of March through the 24rd of March

Life got busy during these two weeks and I neglected the blog.  Because I am cramming an entire US law school semester (15 weeks) into roughly 7 weeks things got wild.  I had a lot of days where I had a class that started at 8am and my last class would end after 9 (or 21:00).  Unlike Alabama, which has a set hour for lunch, classes here go all day so out of that 13 or 14 hours of classes I might have only two 30 minute breaks and two 15 minute breaks.  It was wild.

In the middle of all that we finally got to go see the wall that Israel built around the West Bank.  It was pretty wild to go 15 or 20 minutes out of town and see a military fence.  (Think the Korean DMZ.)  The IDF passed us on patrols several times while we were out there and at one point a van full of people drove by and yelled at us.  Interesting experience.  The legal situation in the West Bank is really complicated because under international law Israel is not allowed to change the law that was applicable when it occupied the territory (or liberated it depending on your view).  So that means that the Ottoman Land Code from the 1800s applies, as does Jordanian law at the time of the war, with a final layer of Israeli Military Law.  Crazy complicated.

Seeing the Arab villages, which were very destitute, so close to the gleaming, bustling, modern metropolis of Tel Aviv was really a stark contrast.  Very sad to see.  However, also no different than what you would find in any modern city like New Orleans or Charlotte where a distance of literally two blocks can separate million dollar houses from $15k hovels. 

We also go to see some olive groves, which I thought was really cool, even though I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who got excited about seeing them.

Purim was also during what I'm dubbing "The Lost Weeks" to be melodramatic.  Purim is a pretty fantastic holiday.  We had a costume party at my friend Dafna's place, which was an absolutely incredible house.  I dressed up as an Israeli and the costume was a hit.  I wore a fitted tshirt that was very Jersey Shore/Afflicted style, gel in my hair, my most European jeans and carried my phone around yelling into it in Hebrew (Israelis are pretty loud on the phone, and it's hilarious).  I found out the next day that I actually convinced one of my Israeli friends that I had learned Hebrew.  After the party some of the Israelis took me and Chang to a club in one of the southern suburbs of Tel Aviv.  I'm pretty sure they just invite us because we can use our American IDs to get into clubs (remind me to describe the free-for-all that is getting into Israeli clubs) and because girls will talk to Americans so they just throw me to the wolves a la How I Met Your Mother (this clip is remarkably, nay eerily, what it's like).

The next day, after going to bed at 3 or 4, I popped up at 8 to get ready to go to Jerusalem.  Some friends of my parents knew an Israeli couple who lived south of Tel Aviv.  As is typical of the gracious hospitality of Israelis, they found out from my parents friends that I was here and called to invite me to go with them to Jerusalem so they could show me around.  It was an incredible trip.  They picked me up, drove me to Rishon LeTzion where they live and from there we struck out across Israel to Jerusalem.  To give you an idea, we drove from the literal extreme west edge of the country to the extreme east border in roughly 45 minutes.  Along the way we passed forts from the Israel/Jordanian war complete with old armored vehicles.  We got there in time to have a breakfast picnic on a hillside overlooking the Temple Mount and the fabled Dome of the Rock, arguably one of the most recognizable sights in the entire world.  Mrs. Nadav had cooked jachnun which is a traditional Yemmini dish that is outstanding (especially when made by Mrs. Nadav).  It's a pastry that you eat with tomato and pesto sauces.  So good!  From there we wondered around the Old City and toured the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  It's supposedly the site of Christ's crucifixion and tomb.  Seeing it was partly incredibly moving and partly heartbreaking.  It's very moving to see what is at the very least, ground where Jesus actually walked and is probably relatively undisturbed since that time.  On the other hand, people were taking trinkets out and rubbing them on the ground (hoping that the good luck will transfer from the stone/dirt to the trinket), prostrating themselves on the ground, kissing the stones, etc. and it breaks my heart to see people worship the creation not the Creator.  After the Church of the Holy Sepulcher we went to the Western Wall.  It was an incredible honor to be allowed into the holiest site of a different religion, even if we do worship the same God I felt very honored and trusted to be there.  It was so amazing to be able to pray at the Wall where people have been praying to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Exodus 3:5-6 / Acts 3:13) for thousands of years.  I felt very much like Moses on holy ground.  We spent the rest of the day wondering the old city markets, which were fun, before heading back to Rishon to get an incredible hamburger.  All in all an incredible day.

Also during this hectic period Aharon and Elika Barak invited Daniel and I over for dinner.  You really need  to read his Wikipedia page because the dude is a rockstar.  He was attorney general of Israel, one of the negotiators of Israel's landmark peace treaty with Egypt (the first Arab country to recognize Israel as a state) and then president (chief justice) of the Israeli Supreme Court.  His wife was vice president of their supreme labor court.  They really are incredible.  Did I mention that he developed a doctrine called proportionality that every supreme court in the world (except the US of course) now uses?  Yeah rockstar.  Best part of it: he and his wife are incredibly nice people.  We had a lovely time with them.  She's a fantastic cook and prepared a lot of local dishes for us, and they were all really good (and organic!).

I probably couldn't get away with ending the story there because before we got to dinner we wound up in the wrong town.  Aharon called me to give me directions and I wrote down his address and when I put it into Google Maps later it showed the address in a nearby suburb so that's where I told our taxi driver to take us.  Only that was wrong.  Basically, imagine that a cab driver picked us up in downtown Birmingham and drove us to Gardendale only to discover that the dinner was actually in Homewood.  So embarrassing!  Thankfully they were so gracious, we were only a couple minutes late (which is on-time for the Middle East) and Daniel gets to hang that over my head for the rest of our lives.

Rapping

Thursday, the 10th of March

Today the law faculty, along with the social sciences faculty, hosted a party at a dance bar called The Roof Bar.  It was a great party.  Saw a ton of people I knew, met some new people.  The highlight of the evening for me personally was when they played All I Do is Win.  I got pretty excited and started belting out the Luda verse (the first one) and people were pretty amused.  I like to keep it interesting.

Then two of my good Israeli buddies offered to drive me home but we got lost and I had to give them directions.  How long have I lived here?  Haha it reminds me of a certain Birmingham friend who would always call me for directions even though she grew up there.

Time Zones and Phones

The time difference between here and the States has lead to some funny situations and stories.  Probably the most exciting was one from a couple of weeks ago.  My grandfather had a stroke on the Thursday of that week.  He's 93 and also has some other fairly major health issues recently but beyond that he's tough as nails and still going quite strong (he still drives, meets his friends for coffee and watches the stock and commodities markets like a hawk haha).

So anyways, he has a stroke.  I get an email from my parents, I wind up speaking to them on the phone several hours later and things don't look great.  So I started leaving my US phone on at night in case they needed to reach me immediately.  Sunday of that week I have the conversation with my parents about "hey, if things take a turn for the worse, you need to give me a call to let me know."

I go to sleep that night and I'm pretty worried about my grandfather.  Well sure enough, 3am and I hear the distinctive sound of an incoming text message.  I bound out of bed.  I probably went from asleep under the covers to across the room holding the phone in less than a second.  I pull up the text message absolutely dreading what I'm about to read and this is what I see:

Im engaged!!!!!!!!!!

It was one of my friends announcing her engagement.  I have never been more excited in my life to get an engagement announcing text.

Not to leave you hanging: My grandfather is doing incredibly well.  He's weeks ahead of the most optimistic projections by the doctors.  Already home and fussing that the doctors are worried about him driving.  He's a tough dude.

"Maybe you should have done the readings!"

Monday, the 7^th of March / Tuesday, the 8^th of March

Yet another story from my commute today.  As I was heading toward campus I noticed that the left crank-shaft felt “funny.”  I kept pedaling and it kept feeling more and more loose.  So finally I pulled over and noticed that the bolt holding it on the bike was coming off.  This began a process where I would pedal a few blocks, pull over, tighten the bolt by hand, hop on, pedal a few blocks and repeat the whole vicious cycle.  Ugh.  Very frustrating.  I took it to the shop once and they tightened the bolt only to have it come loose again a couple days later so I took it back another time and they replaced the whole assembly.  Problem solved.

Anyways, once I finally got to class everything went really well.  It’s really wild what an incredible opportunity I have academically here.  The Tel Aviv University Buchmann Faculty of Law is one of the highest ranked law schools in the world.  Tel Aviv University is ranked second in the world for dollars generated from patents and top 20 in the world by other measures.  It’s a great school and the law program is its premiere faculty.  So I’m getting the best of that faculty plus the best of the US.  I’m taking classes from profs from UCLA, Yale, Stanford, Michigan etc.  One of my profs has a Pulitzer and was on The Daily Show recently.

Although a lot of my classes have been awesome, my favorite hands down is Comparative Law with Prof. James Whitman.  It’s incredible.  We’re learning so much about the differences between the US and Continental systems of law, but more than that we’re learning about the cultural and philosophical differences that motivate those differences in the legal system.  I highly recommend this book if you’re interested in learning more about the subject.  

Not all of my classes have gone so swimmingly however.  Today in Military Occupation I asked the professor a really great question.  A truly outstanding question.  Such a good one that she’d actually assigned us an entire article to answer it.  Which I had somehow missed in the reading list.  So she asked me “well what do you think?”  “I don’t know.”  “Then maybe you should have done the reading.”  Haha.  Boom goes the dynamite.  

Tonight after class I met a bunch of the Israeli guys at a local pub, Friends Underground, to hang out for a while.  It was my first time but the other guys go there every week.  It’s a great place that’s really chill and there’s a great bartender who takes care of us.  She’s also quite cute and when I walked in she had a conversation in Hebrew with one of the guys.  Later he told me she said I was really handsome.  I think he was just being nice and that’s not really what she said, but I’m going to claim it’s what she really said.

Wow

Ok, so a lot has happened since I last blogged so you're just going to get the highlights and detailed posts will come soon. 

First, I broke my laptop in a bike wreck on Thursday.  I wish I had a better story, like I got hit by a motorcycle or something, but instead I just misjudged a curb on my ride home in the dark and took a really small spill (nothing like my bad wreck during a training ride on the first day of law school for those of you UASOL peeps who remember meeting this kid with bandages everywhere).  When I got home the screen on the laptop wasn't working.  That was a big problem because all our reading is online.  However, my friends, old and new, are really awesome.  One of my Stateside friends offered cash to buy a new one when he found out about the dilemma and one of my new classmates here offered to let me borrow her extra laptop.  So I'm using the borrowed laptop and it's working great for now.  Isn't that awesome?

Second, a UASOL student passed away this week.  I got the school-wide email on Friday.  The father of this student is one of the most respected and powerful men in the state.  Though I've never met him, from all accounts he's a really great guy.  It's really sobering to think that with all of his money and power, he still could not save his daughter.  Really makes you think about what's important in life.

Finally, we were supposed to tour the wall that Israel built to secure the "border" between the West Bank and Israel proper, but the bus driver never showed up this morning so instead we had a nice hang-out time on the law school lawn.  The trip was rescheduled for Wednesday.

Running from the Cops

Sunday, the 6^th of March

Another fun story from my commute to school today.  As I was pulling up to one of the main intersections today I saw a kid in his late teens running down the street backpack flopping around behind him chased by a police officer.  (Both individuals were rather portly, especially the police officer.)  When I stopped at the intersection there was a girl with a bike off to the side with another police officer crying.  Turns out they were out issuing tickets for jay walking and they had gotten the girl and tried to get the guy but he ran away.  Haha.

We were supposed to go on a tour of the wall that Israel built between Israel proper and the West Bank (FN1) but the bus driver never showed up so we didn’t go.  Instead we just sat around and hung out.

Tonight I went to meet my landlord to pay rent.  It looks like a really sketch drug deal because we meet on a street corner and I had him an envelope full of cash.  Haha.  (I pay in cash because I don’t want to go through the hassle of opening a bank account here.)  I hand him an envelope with cash he hands me an envelope with a receipt and we head our separate ways.

FN1.  The terminology used to describe the land is highly charged politically.  One wing would say “Palestine” and “Israel” another would say “Eretz Israel” period.  I intend no statement by my choice of words.

The Beach

Saturday, the 5^th of March

Woke up this morning expecting to go to church.  However, I remembered that the church wasn’t meeting in its normal location this week, but I couldn’t look up the new location since my laptop still isn’t working.  Boo.  So I went back to bed.  Yay.

After lunch I went to the beach to meet Eric, a friend of a friend, at the beach.  Eric and I are both Big 4 Alum (and proud of it) and have tons of mutual friends.  He’s over here working right now so everyone had said we needed to get together to hang out.  When he called he didn’t know where he was on the beach.  Now, Tel Aviv has about five miles of beaches so that’s a problem.  He told me that the beach where they were at had a rock seawall out in the ocean.  If you’re from Tel Aviv you know how funny that is because every single beach has one of those walls.  It’s like telling me that you’re at the beach with sand.  Despite that, we eventually met up.  It was quite easy to find him since he was wearing a Mercedes Marathon Week shirt.  Haha.

We had a great time hanging out on the beach and talking about Big 4 accounting, life in Israel and the Lord.  I realized mid-way through the conversation that I’ve picked-up some Israeli customs because a guy came up and asked me if he could “disturb me for a second” and I responded “depends on what you mean by disturb.”  Haha bluntness is the Israeli hallmark.  I love it.  Turns out the guy wanted to check out the Crazy Creek  I was sitting in.  He was a designer for the IDF and had tried to develop something similar for them.  

As I was leaving the beach after hanging out with Eric, Daniel called and said he and a bunch of the exchange students were also at the beach so I just moved a couple hundred yards down the beach and hung out with them for the rest of the day.

Chinese Shabbat

Friday, the 4^th of March

We had an early class this morning which is just no fun.  8:15 am classes mean I have to be up around 6:30.  That’s fine in the US, but here people don’t eat dinner until 8 or 9 so it makes for late nights and tough mornings.

Also, I’ve gone from class four days a week to class six days a week, and that my friends is entirely no fun.  I don’t think they have many classes on Fridays for Israelis, but us exchange students get screwed.  I’ve had a class every Friday.  So Sunday through Friday I trot off to campus!

After class I started my weekend and it was awesome.  It’s easy to see why the Israelis are so fit.  I biked an hour (my commute to campus and back), then walked for an hour and a half doing errands.  That’s just normal life.  (Add in training and you get some serious calorie burning.  I ran 10 miles today on top of all that normal life stuff so I was starving by the time dinner rolled around.

Which worked out extremely well because Daniel, one of the Israeli students, invited me and Natalie to Shabbat dinner with his family so I was going to get GREAT cooking.  They cooked Chinese food and it was unreal.  Started off with some sushi (Japanese I know) then went into all the traditional dishes (sweet & sour, general tso’s, etc.).  There must have been six different kinds of chicken and beef.  Oh my goodness.  Sooooo good.

The highlight of the evening was after dinner when the family coaxed Natalie, who is taking Hebrew classes, into reading from their young daughter’s first-grade reader.  It was hilarious.  Whenever she would finish a sentence everyone would cheer and clap.  I laughed so hard, but inside I was just really jealous that should could read and speak Hebrew.  Haha.

Hang Haman!

Thursday, the 3^rd of March

Today was a fairly epic day.  It started off extremely uneventfully, but on the way home I had my now infamous bike wreck.  It was no big deal at all.  It hardly even qualified as a wreck but when I got home I discovered that the wreck had damaged the laptop screen (it was in my backpack).  That tiny accident would have far reaching implications. 

On happier news, I am getting emails about the upcoming Purim holiday that are written in Hebrew and end with "Hang Haman!”  Esther 7:10  That seems like a really cool tag-line.  I might adopt it.

FN1.  Purim.  Purim is the holiday where the Jews celebrate being rescued from annihilation by the bravery of Queen Esther.  It’s a really cool story and I encourage you to read it.  It’s celebrated now by the wearing of costumes.  Throughout the history of the Jews, God has worked directly and miraculously in their history (see The Parting of the Red Sea - really, it's an epic video) but this time God chose to work behind the scenes so people wear costumes to hide and remember that God was working behind the scenes.

A Protest - Israeli Style

Wednesday, the 2^nd of March

Today we were scheduled to go on a tour of Jaffa (or Yaffo) which is the old port city south of Tel Aviv.  I wasn’t exactly sure of where we were supposed to meet or how long it would take me to get there so being the “Type-A, Western, Goober” that I am I arrived about 30 minutes early to the tour.

As I was walking up the tayelet (TAY-el-et), which is the promenade along the beach, to Jaffa I started noticing helicopters circling the area where I was headed.  As I got closer I noticed several dozen police cars and groups of police officers hanging out.  My first thought was that since it was early morning that they must have just finished a training mission.  However, when I walked off the tayelet into the square where we were meeting I got a big surprise.  I turned the corner to see hundreds of officers in full riot gear in neat rows.  (News reports varied with estimates between 300-500.)  Still, in typical Israeli fashion there was absolutely no evidence of tension so I thought maybe they’d just finished some training exercise.  Then I noticed the journalists.  Now I know that journalists don’t show up to see training exercises.  Maybe a few local stations would, but not the BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN etc.  (Aren’t ID lanyards handy?)  At this point I started to think “well maybe I should figure out what’s going on and where I should be.”  Pretty soon I'm surrounded by undercover police officers and ushered away from the area.

Turns out it was a protest by right-wing Jewish activists.  About 50 of them showed up to be protected by ten times that number of police officers.  It certainly made for an exciting morning for me.

The tour of Jaffa itself was awesome.  Jaffa is the port Jonah left before being swallowed by the big fish, Paul left Jaffa on his way to spread the Gospel around the world etc.  According to historians, it is the oldest port in the world that has documented continuous usage.  Some really cool sights.

I'll post pictures from all this later.  I promise.