Day 7: Budapest (The Quick Version)

We spent the day in and around Budapest. We toured the various sites of the city, including lots of famous buildings and the Heroes Square. We also went for a boat ride on the Danube river (no Yuri and Roman this time, unfortunately).

We had a delicious three-course supper at the Carmel restaurant, and then went to the Budapest Intercontinental (yes, there really is an Intercontinental Hotel in Budapest, believe it or not) to hear Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis speak, which turned out to be arguably the highlight of our day.

After that, we boarded the bus for the final time: to head back to the airport. Akiva would not be accompanying us back to Israel; he was flying to Uman to direct a tour group there.

Goodbye, Eastern Europe!

Day 6: Shabbos Kodesh!

Shabbos in Prague. Ah... How can I describe it? Well, for starters, I'll begin by saying it was one of the most uplifting Shabbosim in my life. Yes, I'm serious about that! Let me tell you a bit about it.

We started out Shabbos davening in the shul of the Maharal, the Altneu (literally, "old-new") Shul. The Altneu shul's usual crowd is quite small, and probably not too loud or lively on an average Shabbos - probably like 20 people or less. But we were apparently going to change that...

My first clue that this was going to be no ordinary Shabbos came even before Lecha Dodi (which is usually when the singing starts, if any). They were mechabed our rosh yeshiva to daven for the amud, and before going up, he passed on the message that we should liven things up a bit, that it was time to bring a little simchas Shabbos to this community. And so, when we reached "Mizmor L'dovid", all of us burst thunderously into song, much to the surprise of the locals, singing Carlebach's version of the psalm. The locals seemed stunned for a moment, then joined our singing and dancing in circle all around the shul. This scene repeated itself several times throughout davening, and the locals seemed overjoyed to have this exciting change from their ordinarily dull routine. One of them even went so far as to tell my friend Yechiel that seeing us gave him the chizuk to live the whole next year!

After davening we headed over to the nearby Dinitz restaurant for a delicious seudah, but not before snagging ourselves some guests - a couple of not-entirely-religious guys names Yuri and Roman. Yuri is studying in some kind of university in Prague, and Roman was visiting him. They came along with us to the restaurant, never suspecting the awesome experience they were about to have.

We made kiddush and washed, and then the singing began. The singing seems to be the heart and soul of any major meal in our yeshiva, and this one topped the charts. Throughout the meal we sang song after song, frequently getting up to dance or just to shake back and forth to the beat. The achdus was tangible as we all swayed back and forth together, singing songs of Shabbos. At one point, Roman said to Yuri: "I wish every Shabbos would be as great as this one!", to which Yuri answered "yeah, we need to go to America, or Israel, TOMORROW!". I'm not kidding. This kiddush Hashem really happened.

But what really took the cake was when random passerby started popping on to check what was going on. I kid you not. Random Jews, religious or not, started coming into the restaurant to find out where all the lively singing was coming from! Of course, each time we invited them to take off their coats and join us for a lechayim and some singing.

All in all, it was a meal to remember, enjoyed immensely by all. Gabi, the Israeli guy who runs the place, said that since they opened the restaurant they had never had such a wonderful and exciting group for Shabbos.

After the meal, we headed back to our apartments. Many guys went to sleep, but in our apartment we had an oneg Shabbos consisting of nosh and Akiva's cholent. Is was actually quite good, especially considering how short a time it had been cooking for.

Shabbos morning was pretty much the same as the night before: we davened at the Altneu shul, and then had another lively seudah at Dinitz. Having enjoyed the night before so much, Yuri and Roman joined us once again.

After the seudah, we went for a walk with Akiva through Prague. We walked halfway across the Charles bridge, and saw the "Kadosh Kadosh Cross" - I'm a little hazy on the details, but apparently a Jew was forced to build a cross with Hashem's name on it as punishment for not wanting to pay the bridge toll collected by the church. Or something like that.

We then backtracked across the bridge, and went to find a statue of the Maharal. We wandered around in circles looking for it, although we did come across a street musician playing some kind of weird instrument that looked like a cross between an accordion and a crank-operated pencil sharpener (yeah, don't ask). We eventually found the statue, which depicted the Maharal flanked by a woman and a dog. This was done because allegedly the Satan came to the Maharal on two occasions, once disguised as a woman and the other time as a dog (if you can verify, clarify, or dispute this, please post a comment below).

We finally headed back to our part of town, where I managed to catch a quick nap before mincha. Mincha was once again at the Altneu Shul, after which we joined the kehilla for seudah shlishis in the JCC auditorium. The kehilla members sat on one side of the room, and we sat on the other. We ate, and sang some songs. The rabbi then gave an emotional speech about how much our visit meant to them, after which the rosh yeshiva told us to sing one more song before benching, this time dancing together with the locals in middle of the auditorium.

We then went to daven Maariv and hear havdalah at the Altneu shul, and then went back to our apartments to pack up our stuff, and shower for the last time before we would return to Israel. We then rendezvoused (is that a real word?) with the bus, dumped our stuff onto it, and then headed back to the Danube for a boat ride. We were joined by... You guessed it: Yuri and Roman! I think they really like us.

We got onto our boat, and we each got one drink of our choice. We sat around on the enclosed lower deck and chilled out for a while, then went upstairs to the open-air upper deck for a beautiful kumzitz, accompanied by guitar.

When the boat returned to the dock, we parted ways with Yuri and Roman, trading contact information and promising to keep in touch. Roman, in particular, said he would be visiting Israel in a few months, and he would definitely look us up.

We then boarded the bus, and headed out on our final long ride: from Prague, Czech Republic, through Slovakia, all the way to Budapest, Hungary, which will be our last stop on this trip.

Day 5, 5:15 PM: The Rest of Friday

Our bus finally came. You know what took so long? I'll tell you... trust me, you can't make up something this good.

You see, when we were trying to find our first stop in Vienna yesterday, Akiva borrowed the bus driver's portable GPS unit, and we set out to find the Ohel Moshe shul on foot. To make things a little easier, Akiva set the GPS on "bicycle mode" so that it shouldn't drive us crazy with one-way streets and the like.

Now, when he returned the GPS to the driver later, no one remembered to change the GPS from "teeny weeny bicycle mode" back to "jumbo humongo beluga-whale-sized bus mode". And as a direct result, the bus (trying to find us) turned into a street that was roughly the width of a standard sized no. 8 rubber band. Needless to say, he could not go forward, and needed the help of several cops to get back out. Adding insult to injury (or in this case, stupidity), the cops fined the driver 200 Czech crowns, which is astonishing, considering that in Amercian dollars that's only ten bucks. That's right. Just ten bucks for going up the wrong street! Let's see you try to get away with that with the NYPD.

Anyway, we finally reclaimed our precious bus and set about the important task of defrosting our frozen fingers and toes. This did not prove to dificult, though, since to pass the time while waiting for the bus, we had started an impromptu leibedige kumzitz, complete with dancing and all. But while doing whatever defrosting was needed, we drove to the cemetery where the Nodah B'yehudah is buried. Unfortunately, we did not merit to get to the actual kever, because the cemetery gates were already locked. We were told not to scale the fence because that would jeopardize our tour guide's job, so instead we just said some tehillim outside the gates as close as we could get.

When we finished, we got back on the bus and headed for the Pinkus shul, which borders on the cemetery where many of the gedolim of Prague are buried (I'll get to that in a minute). We walked through the Pinkus shul, whose walls are inscribed with thousands of small words. Our guide explained to us that these were the names and other particulars of every Jew that they (the people designing the memorial) knew about that was deported by the Germans. The aron kodesh itself had the names of all the concentration camps inscribed on either side of it.

We then went out into the cemetery adjoining the shul, where many great people are buried: the Maharal, the Kli Yakar, R' Baruch (I think that's his first name) Meisels - the mayor of Prague who built the aforementioned Meisels Shul - and quite a few others.

After leaving the cemetery, we went to one more quick indoor exhibit of artifacts related to Prague's ancient chevra kadisha, and then it was time to head back to our apartments.

Now, here's the fun part: at some point the nigt before, Akiva decided that we couldn't have a Shabbos without a decent heimishe cholent. So he asked those of us staying in the same apartment as him if we'd be wiling to chip in as much as would be necessary to make it happen. We said fine, although most of us figured it was just a pipe dream.

But Akiva, as it turns out, is a man of action. He is not to be underestimated. Friday afternoon, after we finished our tour, he and one or two other guys hit the local stores and bought everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. They bought pots (yes, plural - Akiva decided to make TWO cholents), knives, peelers, potatoes, beans, kosher meat and chicken, barley, soy sauce, spices - you name it. Someone took the kitchenware to the local mikva to be toiveled, and then the action began. Potatoes were peeled, beans were checked, and before you knew it, we had two full pots of cholent cooking merrily away.

So now, Shabbos is coming, and we have our cholent, no less. I can't wait to see how this Shabbos turns out...

Day 5, 12:30 PM: Morning in Prague

Ah, Praha. Or as we call it, Prague. Home of the Maharal, the Kli Yakar, the Nodeh B'yehudah, and many others. This is where we will be spending Shabbos. Not in a hotel, but in a bunch of small rental apartments, so that we could be closer to the Jewish part of town.

We woke up at a little after eight this morning, and went to daven at the "Hoich Shul" (however you spell that), so named because it is, well, hoich (meaning "high" or "tall"). We then had breakfast downstairs in some kind of dining room/auditorium/whatever. During breakfast, Yaakov Schwab (our contact here in Prague) announced that the table full of rolls and other eatables (is that a real word?) was for us to pack up our own lunches for the day.

After breakfast, we went with another guide to the nearby Meisels Shul, which has been converted into a museum. During our tour, when we got to the area of the aron kodesh, Akiva suddenly called for quiet. He announced to the museum at large (whoever cared to listen) that this was once our synagogue, that we are sad that it has been turned into a museum, and that we would now say a small prayer to "rekindle the spirit and holiness" of the synagogue. He then led us in saying Shir L'maalos, after which someone said kaddish, and we then sang "Uvney Yerushalayim".

After leaving the shul/museum, we came to one of the bridges that span the Danube to wait for our bus to pick us up. That is where we have been waiting here for quite some time, and the bus better come soon, or my fingers are gonna freeze off from typing in this weather...

Recap of Days 2, 3, and 4

I apologize for the lack of updates over the last few days. I know I said I would post on a daily basis, but I've been having some difficulties in doing so. Besides for the fact that we're quite busy actually doing all the things that I'm supposed to be writing about, I have a much bigger problem: a cut near the tip of my left thumb. That may not sound like much, but when you consider that all of my typing is being done on a three-and-a-half inch thumbpad keyboard, you can understand how difficult it is to type so much when each key on the left side of the keyboard hurts. It only hurts a little bit each time, but the irritation adds up quickly, especially when you consider how fast I type on this thing:



But anyway, enough excuses. Here's what I'm gonna do: working with the assumption that a little is better than nothing, I'm going to give you a quick recap of everything that happened from when we left Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin until now. Not too detailed, no pictures - maybe I'll have time to add them later, or after the trip. Once we are up to date, the newer posts will hopefully be more detailed again. Anyway, here goes:

Majdanek.

Tuesday, day 2: After leaving Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, we went to the Majdanek extermination camp. We were supposed to go to the cemetery in Lublin first, but the person whom we needed to unlock the gate could not be reached. So we went to Majdanek first, with Rabbi Teller as our guide. It was a somber, emotional experience - especially when, crowded together like sardines in a tiny room near the gas chambers, the Rosh Yeshiva gave an emotional speech ending with him leading us in crying out "SHEMA YISROEL, HASHEM ELOKEINU HASHEM ECHAD!" and then singing the famous Ani Ma'amin sung in the gas chambers. It was one of the most emotional moments in my life.

We then went to the Lublin Jewish cemetery, where we davened at the kevarim of the Chozeh of Lublin, the Maharshal, the Ba'al Yerakos, and others.

The Chozeh of Lublin.

Afterward, we left for Krakow. Upon arriving in Krakow at 11:30 PM, we ate supper and then checked into Hotel Galicia for the night.

The Rama's shul.

Wednesday, day 3: We davened Shachris at the Rama's shul, ate breakfast, and then went to the cemetery. We davened at the kevarim of the Rama, the Tosfos Yom Tov, the Megaleh Amukos, Reb Hershele, the Bach, the Ma'or Veshamesh and others.

We left Krakow at noon, and arrived at Auschwitz at around 2:30 PM. We were at Auschwitz itself (the smaller camp, with the famous "Arbeit Macht Frei" gates) until about 4:15 PM; we then went a short distance away to Birkenau (also known as Auschwitz II), the much larger camp with the track leading directly into it, which was where most of the Jewish prisoners actually were.

Auschwitz II: Birkenau.

I won't dwell much on the subject of Auschwitz (and wouldn't even if my thumb weren't injured), because like Majdanek, it is a very difficult and emotional topic for me to write about. I am sure you will understand. Besides, there is enough literature on the subject out there already as it is.

We finally left Auschwitz-Birkenau at around 6:15, and had supper at the nearby "Center for Dialogue" before leaving Poland for good. We arrive in Bratislava (also known as Pressburg), Slovakia, at around 2:00 AM, and check into Hotel Turist (yes, that's how they spell it) for the night.

Thursday, day 4: After a brief shiur from the Rosh Yeshiva in the hotel dining room, we leave for the Pressburg Jewish cemetery. The cemetery was actually once a large one, but only a small part of it remains, in an underground sort of manmade "cave" built to protect it from vandals. We davened at the kevarim of the of the Chasam Sofer and the other tzadikim buried there, including R' Meshulam Igra.

The old Pressburg Jewish cemetery.

We left just before noon, and headed for Vienna, Austria.

Once we arrived in Vienna, we pretty much abandoned the bus and went on a "walking tour" of Vienna. Our destinations included: davening Mincha at the Ohel Moshe shul, shopping at the Kosherland supermarket, eating lunch at the "Milk & Honey" restaurant, a statue depicting Aharon Hakohein making peace between people, a memorial to the Austrian Jews killed in the Holocaust, the Judenplatz Museum (a small museum about Vienna's oldest shul), the Schonbrunn Palace (we didn't actually get in due to the late hour, but we did see the entrance, for what it's worth), the place where Hitler yemach shemo held his first rally, and the only shul in Vienna that survived Kristallnacht. We then boarded the bus and headed toward the Czech Republic. Destination: Prague.

And that is where we stand, ladies and gentleman. I am currently sitting in Prague, and I am zonked. Not to mention that my thumb is acting up again... I'm going to sleep. See ya tomorrow!

Day 2, 10:30 AM: Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin

We left for Lublin with a new guide on board: a local Polish chap named Malek. Akiva stayed behind to conduct some kind of tour or something for another group in Lizhensk; he would be meeting us later that night.

We arrived in Lublin later in the moning, and went straight to the legendary Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin. The yeshiva is housed in a glorious yellow building that until recently was being used by some kind of nursing school or something, before some generous person or persons purchased it back for the Jewish people. It is now slowly being restored to its former glory.

At the yeshiva, we met up with the legendary Rabbi Hanoch Teller, who would be joining us as a tour guide for the next few days.

Rabbi Teller began by first telling us a bit about the history of the yeshiva and of Rabbi Meir Shapiro, and the extraordinary caliber of the talmidim who learned there (an average farher covered between three and five HUNDRED blatt of Gemara by heart). We then went into the yeshiva itself, where we sat in the beis medrash and learned for a few minutes as a reminder of the great yeshiva that was once there, after which we sang and danced a little.

We then looked around at the rest of the building (there were some pictures and other exhibits in some of the rooms adjoining the beis medrash). After that, we went outside to pose for a group picture on the stairs, and then loaded the bus to head out for our next stop.

Day 2, 8:30 AM: Recap of Lizhensk

After spending pretty much the whole day travelling, we arrived in Lizhensk at a little after 11 PM. We davened Maariv together in the shul before heading off up the hill to the tzion of Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk.


If I had to describe what the scene looked like in as few words as possible, I would use just one: Meron. The scene was strongly reminiscent of Meron on Lag Ba'omer, albeit on a much smaller scale. At the top of the hill is the Ohel, with the path leading up to it lined with people collecting tzedaka for various causes, distributing candles, selling souvenir coins blessed by the venerable His-Name-Escapes-Me-At-The-Moment Rebbe, etc. The Ohel itself is so packed with people that I could not honestly testify in a court of law that my feet were touching the ground the entire time as I made (read: squeezed) my way to the kever itself. It's a sight to behold: people from all walks of life, all gathering at the tzion of the holy Rebbe on the day of his yahrtzeit to pour out their hearts to our Father in Heaven, ad beg for a yeshuah in the merit of this great tzaddik.

At the bottom of the hill, once again similar to Meron, lots of evidence is visible that the Lizhensk Hachnassas Orchim organization is hard at work. From providing for the community the simple service of marking off the area until which kohanim are allowed to go, to providing buffet-style meals to thousands of people free of charge 24 hours a day, these people are amazing. The also distribute candles, have a crew of goyim keeping the place clean at all times - they even have a cellphone charging gemach.

Really, I kid you not. Near the "buffet", they have a bank of like two dozen different cellphone chargers plugged into two power strips taped back-to-back, with plug tips for almost every cellphone around. You just find the one that matches your phone and plug in, and you're ready to juice up.

Anyway, after Maariv, we were presented with a bit of a problem. The original plan was to leave Lizhensk at 3 AM for Lublin and sleep on the bus. However, these Eastern Europeans have some kind of irritating law (like most of their laws) that every bus must lay over for 9 hours at night. Even if you have a brand new driver, it doesn't help - to put things in lomdishe terms, "the issur is chal on the cheftza", meaning that the bus itself must "rest". If you can imagine.

So as a result, we would have no transportation until 8 AM the next morning, leaving us with a whole lot of hours to fill, with not much to do besides davening. And daven we did. We davened, we danced, some of us fell asleep in various hallways and corners of various rooms throughout the complex - eventually, morning came, and we all davened Shachris together at vasikin.

After Shachris, the Rosh Yeshiva went with a bunch of guys to go daven at the tzion again one last time, this time as a minyan. We then ate breakfast at the Hachnassas Orchim's dining room, and packed up lunches using the supplies they provided us with. We then did one last rekidah, and headed back to the bus, shortly after 8 AM.

Next stop: Lublin.

Day 1, 11:00 PM: The Ropshitzer

We paid a relatively brief visit to the tomb of R' Naftali of Ropshitz on our way to Lizhensk. Akiva give us a quick speech about R' Naftali before we got off the bus: how he always served Hashem with simcha, and used badchanus as his avodah.

In fact, the Chozeh of Lublin once felt himself unable to recite tikkun chatzos, and later discovered that R' Naftali was engaged in a badchanus routine at the time. "His badchanus is greater than my weeping over the Beis Hamikdash", he said.

May has memory be a blessing.

Day One, 5:30 PM: Somewhere in Slovakia...

Okay, we're on the road now. Not that there's anything really special about that at this point; I estimate that we'll be spending about 27 hours per day on the road over the next week. It's the stops in between that will count. Here's what's been going on so far:

At roughly 9:00 AM, we landed at the Ferighy Airport in Budapest. Our little school-bus-with-wings spat us out into two standing-room-only buses, which then took us to the terminal. Of course, as an experienced Egged rider, I had no problem with the bus. Once in the terminal, I got through passport control without any problems, Baruch Hashem. I even got a smile from the border control agent for saying "thank you very much" in Hungarian. Baggage claim, on the other hand, was another story for another time, but we managed.

Once out of the terminal, we met our tour guides, Akiva and Reuven, and loaded up our bus.

We took a brief drive through Budapest (brief, because or real visit to Budapest will be on Sunday), eventually visiting a money changer where we each changed about $10 into Forint, the local currency. The Hungarian Forint is one of those near-useless foreign currencies where one US dollar is equivalent to like 63,000,000,000,000,000 units of local currency, although the government plans on dealing with that by switching to the Euro eventually.

After changing money, we went to some local shops in the area, including one little Jewish shop selling products imported from Israel, to by some food and soda. I personally didn't buy anything, since I brought plenty of supplies with me from Israel. So at the moment, I still have all 2,260 of my Hungarian Forint in my pocket, and unless I spend it when we come back on Sunday, I'm gonna have some pretty useless souvenirs. (At least the Euro can be used in other countries; the Forint can only be used in Hungary.)

Anyway, after finishing with the food stores, we said goodbye to Reuven (our local Hungarian guide) until Sunday, and got onto the bus with Akiva (our imported guide from Israel) to begin heading north to Poland, via Slovakia. It's supposed to be an eight hour trip, so don't be surprised if I'm still on the bus in 13 hours or so.

Many of us begin to drop off to sleep as the bus meanders north toward the border, eventually finding Slovakia almost by accident (plus the driver has a GPS unit that keeps yakking in either Russian or Ukrainian. Or both. I don't know and I don't really care). We crossed the border without any incident whatsoever for the very simple reason that there wasn't, technically speaking, anyone guarding the border. There was just an empty booth and some signs, and presto! - we were in Slovakia.

Shortly thereafter, at about 1:30 PM, we pulled over at a gas station to stretch our legs and daven mincha.

Some of us also took advantage of the opportunity to get some food out of the storage area beneath the bus and eat some lunch.

After that, we got back on the bus, and have been on it ever since. We did stop a few times - a couple of times at gas stations for directions or something, and once because a really bored cop decided he wanted to see all our passports, but gave up after like the fifth one - but we didn't actually get off or do anything special since mincha. We've been mostly sleeping, reading, learning, planning the next Slovakian revolution, etc. - nothing too major.

Assuming we haven't actually reached the North Pole by tonight, we should be in Lizhensk, Poland, just in time for the yahrtzeit of Rebbe Elimelech. And that's when the interesting part really starts. Meanwhile, we can just wait.

Tick, tock, tick, tock...

Head (Whole Body, Actually) in the Clouds

I'm sitting here on a plane - a Boeing 737-700, to be specific - flying high above some mountains. I don't know which ones. Maybe they're the Alps. Or the Rockies. Or maybe even the Catskill Mountains (I have my suspicions about that one). All I know is that we're somewhere between Israel and Hungary. In fact, I know that we must be headed to Hungary because everything on this plane says "Malev HUNGARIAN Airlines" in big bold letters (we Hungarians are very proud of our airplanes, thank you very much).

So what am I doing, heading to Hungary? Good question. I'm glad you asked. Let me back up a little, and I'll explain.

My yeshiva has a tradition of organizing a trip each year to mekomos hakdoshim in Eastern Europe for those interested, shortly before Pesach. Last year, for instance, we traveled all over the Ukraine (some of my more keen readers may have spotted references to "The Ukraine Chronicles" in older posts on my blog - that was supposed to be a series of articles about our Ukraine trip, but they never quite materialized). This year, we're travelling to (or at least through) no less than five countries: Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, and Poland.

The trip is actually critical in helping the yeshiva function properly in the second half of winter zman. Here's why: as you undoubtedly know, there is an unfortunate syndrome that exists in many yeshivos known as "sof zman": as the long winter zman moves into its waning half, bochurim may begin to slack off a bit and start coming late to - or even skipping - sedorim. Not in our yeshiva, though: we have an "incentive" program, whereby if a bochur comes to all tefilos and sedorim on time (except for a few token misses which are allowed), he will receive discounts on the price of the trip, depending on his record. If a bochur has a near-perfect record for the entire latter part of the zman, plus he accomplishes certain bonus goals - such as making a siyum on the entire masechta being learned in yeshiva - then he earns the entire trip for free.

Baruch Hashem, this program is astonishingly successful, and our beis medrash remains packed with bochurim learning all their sedorim b'hasmada rabbah, long after the point where guys may otherwise begin to drop out. It is truly a kiddush Hashem to behold.

But I'm digressing (you older readers know that I tend to do that quite a bit; you newer readers better get used to it quickly). The point of this article is the trip. And I am pleased to announce that although on last year's trip I was dismally delinquent in in my reporting (come to think of it, this entire YEAR I've been dismally delinquent in my reporting), I will attempt not to be so dismally delinquent this year. (Yeah, I know the "dismally delinquent" stuff is probably getting annoying by now, but I like how it sounds. Dismally delinquent dismally delinquent dismally delinquent.)

This year, I will b'ezras Hashem be reporting directly from the scene... WITH PICTURES. That's right. Pictures. Yeah, I know I used to be against posting pictures on my blog for many reasons (privacy concerns of the people in the pictures, bandwidth consumption for mobile users, etc). But after trying it out with "The Purim Brigade" (below), I decided that maybe pictures are not such a bad idea after all. Especially since, in the words of some famous dead person, "a picture is worth a thousand words" - so that'll make my standard dismally delinquent 800-words-or-so posts a cinch to write.

So join me, dear readers, as we begin our journey into Eastern Europe. You won't even need a passport. You will even be spared the agony of eating dismally delinquent airline food. All you gotta do is check back here on a regular basis. Compared to how I used to post once a week or so back in the day when this blog was popular, this week will be a relative roller-coaster of posts, with a minimum of one or two posts every single day - maybe even more, depending on the amount of activity that day. True, they probably won't be 800-word articles, but it's better than nothing, I assume.

Okay, we should be landing soon. I'm going to stop writing for now. So I'm signing off with these words of wisdom:

Dismally delinquent dismally delinquent dismally delinquent.

The Purim Brigade

Although most cities celebrate Purim on the fourteenth of Adar, cities like Yerushalayim that were "mukaf chomah" celebrate it on the fifteenth (known in the rest of the world as "Shushan Purim"). So for people living in Yerushalayim, the fourteenth of Adar is just another ordinary day. Some people choose to travel to Bnei Brak or other nearby Purim-celebrating cities for the day (effectively getting two days of Purim), while others just stay home, enjoying the relative peace and quiet (except for the occasional firecracker).

Many bochurim in our yeshiva, however, did something totally different. In what was a first-time-ever occurence, our yeshiva, in conjunction with the orginization "L'chayalim B'ahava", arranged for a busload of our bochurim to travel to an army base in the "Bik'ah" to deliver mishloach manos to the soldiers, and bring them a little bit of Simchas Purim.

We left in the morning, dressed in our Purim costumes, and arrived at "Machaneh Tsha Ma'ot" (Camp Nine Hundred) shortly after noon. The bus parked in an empty lot near the camp, where we worked together to assemble 900 packages of nosh and useful items, to be given out to the soldiers. When we finished, we got back on the bus, and after receiving security clearance, we entered the base itself.

We took the base by storm, taking the soldiers quite by surprise with our singing and dancing. It didn't take long for the simcha to spread to them, however, and they joined us enthusiastically. This scene repeated itself quite a few times as way made our way around the camp. The soldiers were more than happy for the break in their ordinary daily routine, and we were greeted with smiles wherever we went.

Between the various parts of the base we went to, we gave out all 900 mishloach manos packages we brought along, and spent several hours shmoozing and singing with the soldiers. One of the bochurim even managed to get some of the non-religious soldiers to put on tefillin.

We finally left after four o'clock in the afternoon, exhausted but happy. The commanders thanked us profusely for coming, saying that our visit was a tremendous morale booster, and that we could not have come at a better time. We were glad for the opportunity to have a great time while making a tremendous kiddush Hashem.

Here, Kitty Kitty!

I figured out why the Israeli government has been cutting child allowance payments and grants to yeshivos. It's because they need the money for other things, like wasting it on rescuing stray cats from weird places.

I kid you not. I went to the Kosel last night to daven Maariv and to say "goodbye", so to speak, since I will be leaving Israel until Elul. When I got there, there were two major commotions in progress: a chefetz chashud (suspicious object, which may be a bomb) was being taken apart by a bomb squad robot, and a cat was stuck on a ledge about 30 feet off the ground right near the Kosel.

I don't know what's wrong with these people, but the cat was getting a LOT more attention than the potential bomb. A major rescue effort was launched, consisting of bringing a device that looked kind of like a free-standing elevator down to the Kosel plaza, and raising it up to the ledge, hoping that the cat would be stupid enough to give up its nice, comfortable perch in the center of attention in favor of a rickety metal platform that was whining and making all kinds of scary mechanical noises.

I don't even know why they were working so hard to try and save the cat - it's not like there's a shortage of cats around here. In fact, scientists estimate that there are approximately 2,000,000,000,000 different cats living under our dira's kitchen window alone. But it certainly made for a good show.

Anyway, when the Einsteins running the show finally realized that the cat wasn't going to climb onto the platform by itself without sending up someone to "help" it, they lowered the platform back down to the ground, and - you guessed it - sent it back up empty again. I'm serious. They actually raised and lowered the platform a few more times without doing a single thing to improve their strategy, as if they expected the cat to eventually give up and say, "alright, alright! I'm coming down!"

Finally, they realized that this just wasn't going to work, so they decided to try and appease the cat by sending it some food. Really. They put a tray with what appeared to be some tuna on it on the platform, and sent it back up.

At this point, the cat finally decided he had enough. Instead of going for the food, it turned around and jumped up a few feet into a window that was just above the ledge, leaving the guys who brought the machine open-mouthed. After a few moments, they just shrugged and lowered the platform down, and then carted the machine away. I kinda felt bad for them - they looked like they were hoping they were gonna get a round of applause when they got down, and now that opportunity was lost forever.

Now, here I am sitting in the airport, and my flight is being delayed. I wonder if maybe it's because there's a cat stuck on the wing...

All Aboard the ChaCha Train!

Filed under Tidbits

You know, I knew that my blog had been getting more and more visits lately. Especially since I was pretty much the first person to post the long awaited name of Tinok ben Aviva Feiner (Avraham Yeshayahu, after the Chazon Ish) on the web, being that I did it just moments after the name was given in Jerusalem's Great Synagogue this morning. But you know what really made me feel like I'm finally "on the map"? Getting noticed by ChaCha.

First, a quick little introduction for those of you who have just arrived from some distant planet and do not yet know what ChaCha is: ChaCha is a text-messaging-based mobile search service. Simply put, that means that you can send a text message with any question you want to "CHACHA" (that's 242242 on your phone's keypad), and you will generally get an answer within a short time. For example, you can ask "what is the current exchange rate from US dollars to Israeli Shekels?" or even "what time is candle lighting this Friday evening?" and they will tell you.

See, the way it works is, your question goes to one of ChaCha's many "guides" (people who ChaCha pays to answer questions). The guide performs a quick Google search for the answer, and sends it to your phone via text message. At the end of the answer is a web address that when accessed, shows your question, the answer, some info about the guide who gave the answer, and - here's the important part - a link to the site where the guide got the answer from.

So why am I mentioning all this? Because, like I said before, I am honored that ChaCha has begun to take notice of me. What I mean by that is that believe it or not, on more than one occasion, ChaCha guides have used MY humble blog as the source website for their answers! My blog has provided useful information (if that's even possible) for answering questions about everything from the major snowstorm in Jerusalem this past winter, to details of the aforementioned bris of Avraham Yeshayahu Feiner. So if that's not justification enough for wasting my time writing this thing, well, then I don't know what is.

So in closing, I would like to point out that I have suddenly become a much bigger fan of ChaCha than I already was, now that I see they're becoming bigger fans of me. I highly endorse (assuming I have the power to do that) ChaCha for all your mobile search needs.

But of course, one must weigh that against the fact that when asked recently what the Feiner baby's name is, a ChaCha guide replied: "The baby boy is named Tinok ben Aviva." So I guess maybe they aren't perfect, after all...

NOTE: Unfortunately, ChaCha only works in the USA, not in Israel or anywhere else.

I Have Good News and... Well, More Good News

Filed under Tidbits

Tonight's update is about two very special simchas (well, to me, at least), Baruch Hashem.

First of all, it is with great joy and gratitude to Hashem that I report that my sister had a baby girl. (Thereby making me an aunt?) Now, I have plenty of nieces and nephews, b'li ayin hara. But what is special about little Blimi B. is that she is a major milestone for me (well, for our family): this is the thirtieth time I became an uncle. That's right - Uncle Moishe's "fan club" now has 30 members, b'li ayin hara!

Second of all, remember Tinok ben Aviva - the son of Rabbi Eitan Feiner Shlita, who was in the NNICU for several months after he was born? The one whom our "Super Bowl Seder" was to be a z'chus for (covered here)? Well, I am pleased to report that he is doing much better, Baruch Hashem - and is finally having his bris tomorrow morning!

May Klal Yisroel continue to share only simchas from now on!

UPDATE: Tinok ben Aviva finally has a name: Avraham Yeshayahu, after the Chazon Ish. Mazel tov!

An Interesting Tail

Although we no longer have Tutzy or Norman (who are currently both pursuing lucrative careers in the field of decomposition), there is apparently no shortage of pets to be had in this country. And no, I'm not referring to the cockroaches the size of microwave ovens that one can sometimes find. No, I'm talking about something else completely: I'm talking about donkeys.

I'm not sure what on earth possessed him to do so, but last week a guy from my dira purchased a donkey from some passing Israeli kid for just 100 shekels. I dunno if it was a smart idea, but hey, nobody asked me for my opinion. But hey, a hundred shekels is a small price to pay for some quality entertainment, no?

In fact, when you think about it, it can actually be a pretty good investment. With gasoline going for the equivalent of roughly eight dollars a gallon here in Israel, even a moped ("tus-tus" b'laaz) can start costing some serious cash. A donkey, on the other hand is a nice, convenient, environmentally-friendly grass-powered form of transportation, although perhaps it's a bit bumpy. Plus if you want lots of attention, you don't need to install chrome rims or anything: everyone will be staring at you as it is.

One of my yeshiva's diras has a front yard with a fence around it, so we kept the donkey there. For a week or so it lived there, eating and performing whatever other activities donkeys like to engage in, occasionally being taken for a ride or even just a walk through the streets.

Unfortunately, the fun was not to last. Once of the neighbors, who had apparently been learning the part of this week's parsha (Parshas Balak) about Bilam's donkey with too much kavana - decided to rat us out to the authorities. I didn't know donkey ownership is illegal, but then again, I don't know a whole lot of other things, either. All I know is that the municipality sent someone down to investigate the matter, and when he saw that there was indeed a donkey present, he promptly called for backup - meaning someone with a truck - to come take it away.

Fearing for our beloved pet, two guys distracted the municipal worker, while a third guy snuck the donkey out of there and ran off with it. When the guy with the truck finally came to take away the donkey, it was nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, though, since donkeys are not a very common sight around here, everyone along the escape route noticed it, and thus the municipal people had plenty of eyewitnesses to tell them where the donkey went. They followed the trail of eyewitness accounts all the way to the Arzei Habira park, where they finally caught up with the donkey. Unlike Bilam's donkey, though, ours was unable to talk and defend itself, and thus found itself being taken away in the back of the truck to who-knows-where.

Wherever it is, I hope it's having a good time. And maybe, eventually, it'll meet the grandchild of Bilam's donkey, and learn to tell some good jokes...

We're Back in Business

Filed under Tidbits

My apologies for the lack of new posts here on the blog recently. I have been having some severe problems recently with my Blogspot account, which prevented me from posting. Long story made short, I had several Blogspot employees burned at the stake, and the rest of them, seeing I meant business, got things working again.

And now, back to my deranged ranting informative journalism...

Water, Water Everywhere...

Filed under Tidbits

Try to picture this: I'm walking down Rechov Sonnenfeld this past Friday afternoon, carrying a case of 2-liter Ein Gedi water bottles in my right hand, and two bags of shirts from the cleaners in my left. (Don't ask why they're in bags. For some reason, in this country, someone decided that "boxed" actually means "bagged", and I'm smart enough not to try to ask any dumb questions as to why. I just wonder what you get if you ask for "bagged".)

Anyway, as I approach the intersection of Sonnenfeld and Lendner, almost without warning there is a huge RIIIIIIIP!!! (Kinda like the sound you might end up hearing if you wear pants that are way too small for you.) The case of Ein Gedi water, in a dramatic display of balance, splits in half RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE, ejecting 3 bottles out of each side and sending all six 2-liter bottles rolling down the hill, each one racing off in its own direction, some down Sonnenfeld and some down Lendner.

As I toss the shirts aside and go racing after my precious water, I think to myself: someone is gonna get it over the head for this one. I'm not sure who, but someone is gonna get it. I mean, this is ridiculous. What has this world come to?! Exploding water bottle cases?! Whatever shall we do if the terrorists get hold of these things?!

Introducing the Tidbits System

I received a complaint about my blog the other day.

Well, that's not really news, since I get complaints about my blog all the time. (Such as: "Who taught you English? Some kind of weird alien from planet Talabojo?") The nature of the complaint wasn't new either: it's one that I get at least 20 times a day. The complaint was that, in a nutshell, my blog is kinda short on reading material these days - in other words, I should be posting a lot more often. But unlike all the other complaints I get of this nature, this one was different. This one was special. This one was unique because...

Okay, I lied. It frankly was not more special than the identical complaints I get from people all the time, who must have way more spare time than I do if they have been reduced to reading my blog as a way of killing time. Oh, sure, they claim they're just interested in knowing more about what goes on in my life. As if I'm really supposed to believe that, when I'm not even so sure I'M so interested in what's going on in my life...

But getting back to the complaint, it got me thinking (which I have to admit must take talent, since I'm sometimes accused of not using my brain often enough). I decided to analyze the situation, and here's what I came up with:

See, the reason I don't post that often is that I've kind of "painted myself into a corner", so to speak. I've gotten into the habit of making my blog posts into these long, 800-word articles, as if this were my own personal newspaper column or something. Which is all very fine and good, except that most topics don't occupy 800 words, even if you really stretch it. So I'm left with two options: either mention a few lines about that topic as part of another full-size post, or simply scrap that topic altogether. And more often than not, I end up going with option B, because it's much simpler.

But due to the aforementioned complaints, I've decided to make some serious changes around here, to accommodate more frequent posting. I will be starting a new category of posts called "tidbits". These will be kind of like mini-posts, possibly only a few sentences in length. The difference is that tidbits will have a "label" at the end of the piece declaring it as such, which you can click on to read only the tidbits. Likewise, ordinary full-size articles will have a label at the end of each one declaring it to be an article, and you can click on the label to view articles only.

Another difference is that tidbits will be announced by a different kind of email notification message than regular articles. You have the option of being notified of tidbits only, articles only, or both (or neither, for that matter). If you want to be added to or removed from either list, now would probably be a great time to let me know.

Anyway, I hope this new system will work out. If you have any questions, comments, or requests, post them in the comments section below.

Hafganah!!!

Okay, we finally have some serious action to talk about. Not a snowstorm or another boring visit from George "Dubya" Bush, but something way more interesting, as measured in total number of dumpsters set on fire. I'm talking about the wave of hafganot that started last night, are continuing tonight, and may continue for the whole next week.

"Hafganah" is the Hebrew term for demonstration. But we're not talking about a simple demonstration by a few bored souls yelling "power to the people!" or some other mindless slogan; we're talking about serious stuff, the kind of demonstration where if Iran fired a missile at us, it would never hit us because it would be blocked by a dense protective layer of flaming garbage receptacles covering the streets of Jerusalem.

See, what happened was that some poor guy from Brazil was killed in a car accident on Kvish Shesh (Highway 6), Rachmana litzlan. Not content with letting the victim rest in peace, the police want to do an autopsy on the body. They want to investigate the "cause of death"; apparently they believe that being dead is not enough proof that something caused the victim to die.

Needless to say, autopsies are forbidden by halacha, so the anti-religious cops are all excited that they have an excuse to tick off the Chareidi community. However, the Chareidi community has no intention whatsoever of taking this sitting down, and so a wave of hafagnot has begun.

Your average protest around here consists of taking the huge green dumpsters that can be found all over Jerusalem, setting their contents ablaze, and pushing them into the street, thereby clogging the city's already delicate traffic system and causing massive jams. Ironically, while making the biggest "hefker velt" possible out of the city, the participants yell "Yerushalayim eino hefker!!!"

Thinking about this system, I decided to carefully analyze the cons and pros of such a protest.

CONS: Such protests are an inconvenience for innocent civilians such as myself, cause untold property damage in the form of destroyed dumpsters (which rumor has it the city will no longer be replacing, forcing the residents and merchants to figure out some other way of disposing of their garbage), cause a major chilul Hashem in the form of non-religious taxi drivers and cops cursing out all chareidim in general, and result major traffic delays and ridiculously altered bus routes (in one case, a number 2 bus headed for the Kosel ended up passing through Denver, Colorado).

PROS: On the other hand, they sure are fun to watch.

So we can be sure that there will be lots more action in the coming days. Last night alone I personally saw protests on Meah She'arim and Shivtei Yisroel, on Yecheskel near Kikar Shabbos, on Yoel near Hoshea, and on Shmuel Hanavi near Kikar Zvill. And those were only the small ones.

I wonder what tonight will bring...

Other news that I never got around to posting:
- Tutzy is dead. She died a few days into the zman; we have no idea what caused her to die, but we sure miss her. We buried her in a dirt lot near my yeshiva, and marked her grave with a small piece of Jerusalem stone
- My refrigerator is dead. Remember the little portable one that I paid a fortune for (specifically, 320 shekels)? Well, it currently keeps things "cold" at a comfortable 75 degrees Fahrenheit. So I'm guessing I got ripped off as usual.
- On the plus side, my dira finally got a full-size refrigerator/freezer combo. So I guess life isn't so bad after all, huh?
- Norman (the turtle) is not dead, although he does a great job of pretending he is.
- I never got around to finishing The Ukrainian Chronicles, and probably never will. Too bad on you. If you don't like it, sue me.
- The dollar hit an all-new low of 3.26 shekels, continuing its trend of declining in value against every major world currency, as well as several major brands of tissue paper.
- Am I forgetting anything else? Post a comment if you think so...

Now it's Time to Say Shalom, Uncle Moishe's Going Home...

I'm sitting on a plane, waiting for takeoff for the sixth time in ten days. But this time, there's a difference: instead of the relatively small coach-bus-with-wings aircraft I've been flying on until now, this time it's a jumbo jet - a Boeing 747-400, to be specific. That's because I'm finally going home.

You're probably wondering why this is my sixth flight in ten days. Well, it's simple: I went on a trip with a bunch of guys from my yeshiva, first to Ukraine, and then to Italy. I haven't posted anything about the trip yet because I've been quite busy with the trip itself, and then with packing up to go home for Pesach once I got back to Israel. With Hashem's help, I hope to catch up on that over bein hazmanim.

In the meantime, while I'm waiting for takeoff, I'm taking a few minutes to reflect on the past six months. I'm remembering how apprehensive I was about coming here, how worried I was about what would be if it wouldn't work out. My first time in a foreign country, alone. Could I really make it?

Now, six months later, I am happy to report that in my humble opinion, it has Baruch Hashem been a smashing success. I don't think I ever had such a great zman in my life - not just in ruchnius, but in gashmius as well. Although being cut off from my "supply lines" by a six thousand mile gap was challenging, it was definitely an awesome experience. I had a great time, with lots of interesting experiences, many of which I didn't get a chance to post about (well, at least not yet). Things like my visit to Machneh Yehudah, getting into a fight (not physical, thankfully) with an Arab taxi driver, "The Kosel Project" - these are only some of those which come to mind...

And now, to answer the big question: was it worth it? Definitely. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I am Baruch Hashem blessed with an amazing yeshiva, with the world's greatest Rosh Yeshiva, in the world's holiest city. What could be better?

It is with these reflections that I leave the holy land. But trust me, I'll definitely be back. They're gonna have to cancel all the flights - and most of the freighters - if they don't want me back here.

And now, time for takeoff. See you across the Atlantic!

Excuse Me, Do You Have the Time?

Okay! It's that time of year again: daylight savings time! Early Sunday morning was the time for the semi-annual pointless ritual of changing every clock you can think of by one hour. You are required by federal law to do so - in fact, if you do not own a watch, you are required to purchase one for the express purpose of changing the time on it (although unfortunately, you may not claim the expense as a deduction for income tax purposes).

Here in Israel we're not changing our clocks until April, so for a while, the time difference between the US and Israel will be just six hours instead of seven. This is excellent for confusing those of us who were finally just barely getting used to the seven hour time difference to begin with. Not that I'm complaining or anything. No siree.

Daylight savings time is referred to by the acronym "DST", which stands for, well, "Daylight Savings Time". Although I personally feel it would be more accurate to say it stands for "Dumb, Silly Thing", because in my opinion, that is exactly what it is: a pointless attempt to "save" daylight, whatever that's supposed to mean.

There is a major misconception that DST was invented by Benjamin Franklin. This directly leads to many people believing that DST has to be a smart idea, because after all, if it was invented by Benjamin Franklin, it must be a brilliant concept. However, we must not forget that Benjamin Franklin was also the same genius who flew a kite in a thunderstorm which got struck by lightning (the kite did, not the thunderstorm), which fried his brain so badly that he spent the rest of his life speaking in silly idioms like "don't think to hunt two hares with one dog" or "we must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately". So maybe we should be taking his "brainstorms" with a grain - or perhaps a whole sack - of salt.

But as it turns out, that doesn't really matter, because Benjamin Franklin was in fact not the one who invented DST, although he did lament the waste of daylight hours that came about through waking up late and going to sleep late. Or, as Franklin put it: "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man - OUCH!" (At that point, Franklin was finally smacked across the face by some heroic individual whose name escapes me at the moment, which shouldn't really matter to anyone, since I just made him up anyway out of wishful thinking.)

According to Wikipedia, DST was actually invented by somebody called William Willet. I don't blame him: if I were him, I would also try to come up with some brilliant concept so people would remember me for something other than my absurdly silly name. Mr. Willet published some kind of pamphlet advocating the concept of forcing the day to start earlier after observing that many people's shutters were still closed during his pre-breakfast horse ride. Personally, I'd like to know why he was trying to look into other people's windows - the pamphlet went through nineteen editions, and none of them actually explain this critical detail. Maybe he was trying to make sure they were up for Shachris.

But getting back to the main issue here, another thing that disturbed Mr. Willet, who was an avid golfer, was that he had to cut his round of golf short at dusk. So he came up with the idea of shifting the clock. If DST were implemented, he argued, not only would people's shutters be open in the morning (although I frankly cannot determine the advantage of that, anyway), but he even would be able to play all the way through his round of golf while it was still light outside. Apparently he figured it would be easier to put the whole nation through the hassle of changing their clocks and getting used to a new schedule than it would be to simply start his round of golf a little earlier.

So anyway, fast-forward a bunch of years to today, and that's where the matter stands right now: we have to change our clocks twice a year because of someone's lousy game of golf. This should further highlight what a pathetic sport golf is: in addition to being the only sport where the game would look exactly the same and proceed at exactly the same pace with the exact same level of excitement as it would even if all the players involved were deceased, golf now has the distinction of being the only sport capable of getting the clock changed in its favor.

Hang on, I think there's a thunderstorm brewing outside. Let me go get my kite...

Elevating the Super Sunday

I should have posted this a week ago. I really should have; I just didn't have the time. But like they say, "better late than never". Especially when the subject is something as amazing as what I am about to tell you.

Sometimes you come across something so wonderful, an idea so incredible, that you have no idea how to describe it. But you have to try. And thus, I will try to describe what transpired in my yeshiva last Sunday night.

First, let me give you a little background information. Let's analyze what was going on in the rest of the world. For those of you who are not followers of sports, last Sunday night was the Super Bowl (I'm not into sports either, mind you, but even I heard of it). The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League. It is perhaps the most watched sports event in the world. Additionally, "Super Sunday", as it is called, is the second-largest U.S. food consumption day, following Thanksgiving. So you can imagine what a big deal it is.

People all over the world watch the Super Bowl, even here in Israel. With the advent of Internet broadcasting, there is almost no corner of the world left untouched by this frenzy. Almost.

I say "almost" because I am here to tell you about a place in the world that is an exception to the rule, an oasis of normalcy in this insane world. I am here to tell you about my yeshiva, and the Kiddush Hashem we made. On a night when millions of people were watching a bunch of grown men chasing a ball, we dedicated the night to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. We stayed up the whole night and learned.

This is actually the second year that my yeshiva has done this, but only my first year here, so it's only my first time experiencing it. The fact that we do this on the night of the Super Bowl has earned it nicknames like "Torah Bowl" or "Super Seder". But whatever you call it, the idea is the same: to dedicate a night to Hashem. And not just any night: a night when the rest of the world is busy with other pursuits, and there is a very strong nisayon (for some people, at least) to join them. A night when the world is full of tumah, we attempt to turn it into a night of kedusha.

It is interesting to note that even though the seder was not mandatory, everyone nevertheless participated. And I mean EVERYONE: bochurim, avreichim, rebbeim - it looked like the middle of the day.

This year's seder was dedicated as a z'chus for the refuah sheleimah of the three-week-old son of Rabbi Eitan Feiner Shlita. Rabbi Feiner is a famous lecturer for Gateways, and a close friend of my rosh yeshiva. He speaks in our yeshiva every second Monday night. His son, who was born several weeks ago after many years of childlessness, has been in the NNICU (Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit) since he was born. The doctors have absolutely no idea what is wrong with him; they say that in the history of medicine, they have never seen a case like this one.

When Rabbi Feiner heard that the seder is being dedicated as a z'chus for his son, he was so touched that he said he wanted to be part of it. And thus he came to join us, and he spoke for us at 1:00 AM. He spoke very well - in fact, it was one of the best speeches I have heard recently, and I hope to soon be able to post it online so that you can download and enjoy it as well.

After staying up the whole night learning, the whole yeshiva walked together to the Kosel to daven Shachris vasikin. After davening, we danced in a circle and sang "ashreinu, mah tov chelkeinu, uma na'im goraleinu" - how lucky we are, how good is our portion, how sweet is our lot. Truer words have never been sang, I thought, watching the rising sun. We were not the only ones to stay up all night, I'm sure... but we are fortunate that we, at least, have what to show for it. We made a Kiddush Hashem.

May it indeed be a z'chus refuah sheleimah for Tinok ben Aviva, b'soch shaar cholei Yisroel. Amen.

Winter Wonderland?

You know, if you stick around Israel long enough, you get to see some pretty interesting things that you would never otherwise see in your life, such as the Egged No. 2 bus arriving on time. Last night and today, I got to see something very interesting that I may otherwise have never seen: a snowstorm in Yerushalayim.

Six months ago, I never would have dreamed of witnessing snow in Yerushalayim. That's because I never dreamed I would come to learn in yeshiva on this side of the Atlantic. I figured the only time I would ever come to Israel would be to visit, and the chances of running into an Israeli snowstorm during a short visit are probably about as good as Ariel Sharon's chances of becoming Prime Minister again in his current vegetative state (although considering what an incompetent fool Olmert is, Sharon would probably be more competent even if he were deceased).

But time has passed, things have changed, and now here I am, learning in Israel. And here I am, experiencing my first ever Israeli snowstorm.

Snow is very uncommon in most of Israel; non-existent, even, in certain parts of the country. (And you thought only Customer Service was so hard to find, eh?) My brother-in-law tells me that people from B'nei Brak come all the way to Yerushalayim when it snows just to witness this amazing sight. And of course, whenever it snows, the cover of every self-respecting Jewish American newspaper is required by federal law to show the same picture: the Kosel plaza covered in snow.

Two of my friends, who I will refer to only as "Y." and "A." so that you will not figure out that they are "Yechiel" and "Avrumy" (and I certainly will not tell you their last names out of a sincere desire not to find a huge, wet snowball inside my pillowcase as punishment for disclosing their identities), decided to get such a picture. But while most run-of-the-mill (meaning "sane") would-be photographers would wait until a decent amount of snow had accumulated, Y. and A. decided to hike to the Kosel just a short while after it started snowing... at one o'clock in the morning.

They actually invited me to go along with them and have a snowball fight along the way; however, I am pleased to report that my brain is still somewhat functional, and thus I declined. In the short walk back to my dira, I had already gotten soaked to the bone even without the benefit of being pelted with wet wads of slush travelling at speeds exceeding one hundred miles per hour, so I could only imagine what I would look like after a nice, fun-filled hike in such glorious weather. Besides, I don't have any gloves here, so if I tried making snowballs, my fingers would probably be ready to crack off after the third one.

But Y. and A. made it all the way there, and came back looking like they forgot to take off their clothing before diving into the swimming pool. They got some pretty interesting pictures of the virtually empty Kosel plaza, but as I predicted, there wasn't much snow to be seen. In fact, most of the white stuff in the pictures was actually kvittelach wedged into the cracks in the wall, not snow. But hey - who's gonna know the difference, anyway?

But unfortunately, the nice part did not last very long. Although we were expecting approximately 20 centimeters (8 inches) of snow, we never made it that far - the snowstorm changed into a heavy rainstorm, making a big, wet, sloppy mess of the streets. And since this country does not possess snowplows - apparently, they've never even heard of such wondrous inventions, except perhaps in fairy tales - the stuff is not gonna get cleared, either. It will have to melt on its own, which will be no easy feat, seeing as how the weather does not seem to be improving. Not only does the precipitation continue, but it keeps changing every so often between rain, snow, sleet, and occasionally even hail.

I guess it goes without saying that most people here do not have proper winter gear, including me. Jerusalem stone is slippery enough as it is, but a slush-covered sidewalk made of the stuff has me sorely missing my Yaktrax. And let me tell you a little secret: not having boots is probably not the smartest idea either, if you prefer to keep your feet dry.

Many local establishments have bravely responded to the adverse conditions by remaining closed today. I don't think the Egged buses were running either, and the taxis that were operating today were having a field day, charging as much as five times the normal rate for some trips. And you would have to be really brave (meaning "stupid") to try to drive a moped in this weather.

The truth is, the snow alone probably wouldn't have been too bad. A snow-covered Yerushalayim would even make a nice postcard picture. It's when things started getting slushy that everything went to pot. In fact, when I first started writing this post, I titled it simply "Winter Wonderland", since it was still snowing nicely. It was only when the snow switched to rain that I added the question mark, since that's when I realized that the kind of weather we're gonna have is the kind where you get the feeling that it should be illegal to have to get out of bed in the morning on that day.

But I'm not complaining. I still love Eretz Yisroel, slush or no slush. I'm glad to be here, even in such adverse weather. I'm also excited to have merited the possibly-once-in-a-lifetime experience of witnessing an Israeli snowstorm.

Now, if only I could witness the No. 2 bus arriving on time...

BANG!

My dira is suddenly plunged into total darkness: the main fuse has blown for the 4,000th time this week. And it's only Sunday night.

You'd think that we'd be used to it by now, but every time the power blows, it somehow still comes as a rude, unexpected shock (har!) to everyone. And as the guys perform various rituals related to getting the power going again, I begin to think if there is anything I can do about the situation.

I suppose I could write a really nasty post about the situation. It wouldn't help matters much, but it would definitely help me blow off some steam, although considering how cold it is these days, I don't think I could afford any. Besides, there is always the lashon hara aspect of things; in fact, this is actually my third attempt at writing this post - I scrapped the first two drafts despite putting a lot of hard work into them, because I was worried that they contained too much negative information. So let's see if I can try to give a somewhat impartial analysis of the problem:

The main fuse has been blowing steadily for at least the past two months. Nighttime is bitterly cold these days, and apparently, the building's power supply can't handle all the heaters in the dira. It is getting to the point where I am tempted to tape the breaker into the "ON" position, fire hazard or no fire hazard. Worst comes to worst, the wires will catch fire, which will probably make the dira a lot warmer than it is now.

See, the problem is that our main breaker has a capacity of 40 Amps. In laymen's terms, that is a lot of electricity for a one-family dwelling, perhaps, but a pitifully small amount for 21 people spread out across 3 floors. Four electricians have allegedly been here already, and they all claim there is no way to increase the amount of incoming electricity without the cooperation of the electric company. The electric company, in turn, refuses to cooperate because a good deal of the dira consists of (surprise!) an illegal extension.

Meanwhile, pretty much everything here operates on electricity - the lights, the heaters, the hot water boiler, some people's brains, etc. - so we naturally have a bit of a problem. You know how those old-fashioned car radios had a row of buttons that could have no two buttons pushed in at once - whenever you pushed one, all the others would pop out? That's kind of what it's like in my dira: we can have lights, heat, or hot water, but we can't have two of them at the same time. The heat and hot water in particular do not coexist well; if you try turning on the hot water heater (or "dude", as it's called in this country) while too many heaters are on, then BANG! - you can guess what happens next.

The temperature in the dira is also not helped much by the fact that the window above my bed is faulty: thanks to the brilliance of the rocket scientist who installed it, I have a window frame that is about two inches narrower than the opening it is supposed to fill, and that gap lets in an awful lot of cold air. It is slated to be fixed (like everything else around here) sometime during the next century, and in the meantime I have taken to stuffing the gap with all sorts of otherwise useless garbage - towels, plastic bags, politicians, etc. It doesn't really help much, but it's the best I can do for now.

Perhaps the problem wouldn't be so bad if people here had common sense. But simple ideas like turning off your heater - or at least putting it on a lower setting - before turning on the hot water boiler just doesn't seem to occur to some people. "What," they say, "are you crazy?! I should shut off my heater?! It's WINTER, man!"

I've all but given up on trying to educate these people. I've also all but given up on trying to get the yeshiva to do anything about the problem - they claim they're working on it, and I believe them, although I frankly don't know why I do. Somehow, I get the sinking feeling that if this were, say, the Beis Medrash, it would have been fixed ages ago, by hook or by crook. But in the mean time, I'm just gonna have to learn to live with--

BANG!

Sigh. Where's my flashlight?

Boxed In

I'm missing a chasuna tonight. It's not the first chasuna this winter that I'm missing, and it certainly won't be the last, although it is probably the one I am most disappointed to miss of all the chasunas I've been invited to throughout the winter zman. It's yet another chasuna that I'm missing because it is taking place in America, and I am in Israel.

I have to admit, it makes me feel kind of boxed in, as if I'm living in a different world than my family and friends back home. I mean, I love living here in Eretz Yisroel, and to a certain extent I'm still very much in contact with America - I can still call, email, or SMS people just as if I were in the states - but there are certain barriers that cannot easily be broken. Such as the barrier of location, of being - seemingly - in what may be perceived as "the wrong place at the wrong time".

It takes missing a special event like this to really hammer home the fact that after all is said and done, despite the fact that home is just a phone call away, the Atlantic Ocean is still a formidable barrier that is expensive and time-consuming to cross. And unless the occasion is special enough to warrant it, the barrier will simply not be crossed.

Am I upset? Do I regret being here, instead of America? Of course not. I have the privilege of living here in the holy land, and I am loving every minute of it. I wouldn't trade it for anything. But there are definitely sacrifices to be made, and this is one of them, perhaps even one of the smaller ones. In fact, I am thankful to Hashem for providing me with yet another opportunity, another stepping stone along the path of learning to appreciate that which I do have. After all, there are many possible reasons for a person to miss a wedding, many reasons that are far more mundane. Some that are even dreadful and tragic, chas v'shalom.

I am happy for the chosson and kallah. I am happy for their families. But most of all, I am happy that my reason for not being there is a privileged one.

Mazel tov!

Last Year's News

I have recently come under fire for not writing anything on my blog in a long time.

Actually, I am lying through my teeth. The truth is that besides for one or two people, no one has said a word to me about the fact that I haven't written anything in almost a month. But it sounds more impressive this way.

Anyway, I have not written anything in a while for several reasons, not the least of which is that I'm running out of interesting topics to write about. I guess I could write about the leaky toilet in my dira, or the new payphone they're installing in my yeshiva, but somehow I don't think that would cut it. Perhaps it is time to engage in the real challenge of journalism: writing about truly mundane, boring topics in an exciting fashion, as if they were the Presidential Elec- no, wait, that's still too boring...

On second thoughts, that IS what I have been doing until now - writing about theoretically boring topics as if they were majorly exciting world events. And judging by the fact that I've succeeded in stringing along my readers for several months like that, I'd say it's working. So I guess for now I'll continue on the same track.

Meanwhile, until someone is kind enough to suggest a more interesting topic, let's do a little history lesson: I think I'll write about some of what's been going on in my life since the last time I wrote almost a month ago. After all, I believe that was meant to be the original purpose of my blog, as stated here, before everything went to pot. I am, however, calling it a history lesson since the following events technically occurred last year, during 2007, which is no longer with us. (Sniffle, sniffle...)

First on the list of recent events of historical significance is the marriage of my cousin to a girl from South Africa. (No, no one in the family has a series of shrunken human heads on a stick. They prefer to put their shrunken human heads on a chain instead.) Since the wedding took place here in Israel, it meant that I merited a full-scale familial invasion, consisting of my parents, my brother, three of my sisters, several aunts and uncles, and a truckload of assorted cousins.

Needless to say, a visit from home is the best thing that happened to me since I got here. That's right: I finally got some more cold cuts and tuna fish. But best of all, I got to have my very own Amigo for a week. An Amigo is a rental cellphone from the Israeli cell carrier Mirs, which is the local equivalent of Nextel. This means that they have a "walkie-talkie" feature, which enables you to talk to another Mirs phone user just as if it were a regular phone, except that there is a distinctive "prip-prip" sound at the beginning of each transmission, which serves the important function of notifying anyone nearby that you are using a Mirs phone.

The wedding itself took place at the Hadar Sheraton City Tower in Ramat Gan, on the night of Sunday, December 23rd. In case you haven't figured it out from the name "Hadar Sheraton City Tower", it was an extremely memorable (meaning very fancy, and presumably expensive) affair. I personally had a blast, and hope to be completely sober once again sometime before Pesach.

I am, of course, lying through my teeth again. I couldn't have gotten drunk if I would have tried; anyone who knows me at all knows that I can't stand alcohol. My primary interest in an alcoholic beverage would be to see if I can set fire to it. But I thought it sounded good, so I wrote it anyway. If you don't like it, sue me.

On Monday night, I spoke at the sheva brachos. It was the first time I allowed myself to be coaxed into speaking in front of a large audience since my arrival in Israel. I think it went pretty well, despite my initial nervousness. I attribute my success to the fact that I consumed three shots of Johnny Walker Green Label before ascending the podium, which, to be frank, is three shots more than I ever drank in my whole life. I'm not sure what I said in my speech - it seemed to make sense to me (and any other patrons of Mr. Walker) at the time, though I'm not sure it made any sense in the long run...

On Tuesday, we rented a bus, and all my family members and cousins who were interested went to Teveria, Tzefas, and Meron to daven at various kivrei tzadikim. We were roughly 20 people on a 50 passenger bus, so it's a good thing we had the walkie-talkie phones, or some people may have gotten lost. Come to think of it, maybe some people DID get lost. So if you ever rent a bus here in Israel and you find some random, dazed individuals who don't appear to be from your tour group, give me a call. Thank you.

Perhaps the most interesting sheva brachos of all was the Shabbos Sheva Brachos, which took place in Netanya, at the Galei Sanz hotel, smack in middle of Sanz-Klausenberg-ville, and right on the shore of the Mediterranean. The kallah's family had sent out scouts to hotels across the country, and Galei Sanz was the only one that met the two critical requirements of 1) having a top-notch hechsher, and 2) being available in the middle of holiday season. The entire Shabbos was beautiful, and very well organized. There was even a printed schedule that was distributed to all the guests, which was strictly adhered to.

I am, of course, lying through my teeth again. As I'm sure you have figured out by now, trying to get a bunch of "Heimishe Yidden" to conform to a printed schedule is like trying to fit an elephant into a Volkswagen Beetle: it just won't work. Period. So everyone got used to a new schedule: one that was dictated more or less orally, created pretty much on-the-fly. Which suited me just fine: I'm a big fan of improvisation, just so long as it doesn't spread to, say, helping a choking person. ("I can't remember the Heimlich maneuver, so let's try sticking this vacuum cleaner nozzle into the victim's mouth and see if we can't suck the ole' blockage outta his throat.")

Seriously, though, Shabbos in Netanya was absolutely wonderful. But for me, the highlight was that I merited to meet Rabbi David Orlofsky, whom I quoted extensively in Coming Home to the Wall. To my pleasant surprise, he told me that he had actually read it when it was published in the Hamodia, and had even commented to his wife "Hey, look! This is the first time I've been published in the Hamodia since I stopped writing for them!"

And this time, I'm not lying through my teeth.

Destination: Teveria

I imagine you are wondering (yet another indication that I have a very vivid imagination) why I haven't posted anything in more than two weeks. There's a very simple reason for that: my phone - which is the device I use to do all of my writing - took a fall two weeks ago, and the screen broke. Although it was still functional, it nevertheless was no longer the optimum input device for composing blog posts, to say the least, since I couldn't see what I was writing. I could easily type my credit card number by accident and never know the difference until my bill begins sporting outrageous charges originating somewhere in the Caribbean. Perhaps that's the same reason why some presidential candidates sound as silly as they do - their speechwriters compose their speeches on computers without screens, and thus they never realize how little sense the speeches make until... no, wait, they never actually find out, since no one (including the speechwriters) is foolish enough to actually listen to presidential candidate speeches. So I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I bought a new screen through eBay, had someone bring it to Israel, and then performed open-motherboard surgery on my phone. The "new" screen is actually not as good as the old one - the color is a bit washed out, and there are some marks on the screen. But after having no screen at all for two weeks, I've learned to count my blessings.

Now that I'm up and running again, my two-week absence means I have a lot of catching up to do. There were quite a few noteworthy events that I missed the opportunity to write about, such as when my yeshiva went to Teveria for Shabbos. Also, I didn't get to write anything at all about Chanukah, which unfortunately is over already. I don't know if I'll have the time and patience to catch up on everything (especially since I don't get paid for this kind of thing), but I'll do what I can. We'll start with the Shabbos my yeshiva went to Teveria. To make up for the lack of posts recently, this post will be double the length of my previous posts (I'll let you decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing).

Our trip began on Thursday night, at 2:00 AM JST. (JST stands for Jewish Standard Time, which means you leave a minimum of one half-hour late). The first of four buses pulled up outside the yeshiva building in Yerushalayim, and we began loading up. We would be the only bus leaving at that unearthly hour; the other three buses would be leaving the next morning. The reason for the timing is relatively simple: since we had Friday off anyway, the itinerary included (for those who were interested) a choice of extracurricular activities for Friday morning - either driving an ATV, or touring the North in a jeep. But to get to these activities in time, we needed to leave in the middle of the night, so that we would already be there by morning. The guys who weren't participating in either activity - as well as the avreichim coming with their families - left Yerushalayim the next morning, at an arguably more sane hour.

We traveled on the Israeli version of a coach bus. It is very similar to an American coach bus, except that there is no bathroom on board. But there was another great feature that I wish American coach buses would adopt: a back door. I cannot overemphasize what a great idea a back door is, even better than an on-board bathroom. I've been on quite a few American coach bus Chol Hamoed trips (for instance, the one I wrote about in New Hampshire Report), and believe me: it is SO much more pleasant when you don't have upwards of 50 people tripping over each other and trying to pass each other in an aisle the width of a Fruit-by-the-Foot™, all using the same one door as both the entrance and exit. Maybe someday we can arrange some kind of "intelligence exchange" between Israel and America, like when they trade nuclear secrets or missile technologies or cholent recipes or whatever: American busses will get a back door, and Israeli busses will get a bathroom. We'll even throw in a complimentary case of toilet paper.

Anyway, we arrived in Teveria at around 4:30 AM, at the kever of Rabbi Meir Baal Haness. We had come to daven Shachris before moving on, but it was still to early to daven. Most guys elected to sleep on the bus until we were ready to daven; the rest of us decided to get off the bus and stretch our legs, and check out the mini 24-hour "flea market" outside the kever. There were two vendors there, each with several stands selling soda, ice cream and music CDs, as well as a plethora of Middle-Eastern souvenirs: keychains, wood carvings, tambukas, paintings, scarves, silver goblets, scented candles - I wasn't kidding when I said it was a flea market. I bought a keychain tehillim, a small hand-carved wooden whistle, and a silver birchas habayis plaque.

As the sun came up, we prepared to daven Shachris. The kever itself was still locked, so we davened in the courtyard outside. Later on, when the kever was opened, we went inside to say some tehillim at the grave of the holy Tanna.

For breakfast, we had bagels and cream cheese. You could tell that it was planned by a bunch of guys, and not a woman: there were no plates, napkins, or even knives involved. We basically tore off chunks from our bagels and dunked them into the cream cheese as if it were chumus. Definitely better than nothing, though.

After breakfast, we loaded up the bus and headed for the Kinor hotel. We unloaded our luggage into a storage room, and then whoever was going ATVing got back onto the bus (the guys who were going touring in a jeep stayed there - they would be leaving later on). We then proceeded north toward Moshav Dishon.

When we got there, we were shown that there were three kinds of vehicles available: a standard ATV, a jeep-like vehicle called a Ranger, and another jeep-like vehicle called a Prowler. An ATV is kind of like a motorcycle: both riders sit one behind the other on a "saddle", and both the gas and brakes are operated by hand controls. The Ranger and the Prowler are built more along the lines of a traditional vehicle: the two riders sit side by side in normal seats, and driving is done through an ordinary steering wheel, with gas and brake pedals. The Prowler was officially the more dangerous of the two, since it had a "sport" engine, which means that if you press the gas pedal hard enough, it will start tearing up turf like a backhoe (without actually moving very far). Also, being more top-heavy, it was more likely to flip over if not driven properly.

I chose to drive a Prowler, since it was officially the most dangerous of the vehicles. I figured that I spent my whole childhood participating in all sorts of foolish and dangerous activities (such as spelling bees), so why stop now? Although apparently almost no one else agreed with my line of reasoning, since in the end, my "co-pilot" and I were were the only ones who took a Prowler.

I have to admit that driving an off-road vehicle is quite an experience, especially when your companions are a bunch of real "fun-loving guys", which is defined as "guys who would like nothing better than to rip through the terrain at upwards of 100 miles per hour, leaving trails of flaming mud in their wake". We did have guides riding with us, though, spaced one every three or four vehicles or so, and they kept things more or less normal. We drove for around an hour through all kinds of terrain - woods, fields, paved roads, huge puddles of mud, etc. - before stopping near some kind of stream. Some guys decided it would be a good idea to jump into the stream by swinging from a rope tied to a tree on the bank, but soon regretted their decision when the cold water froze their blood in their veins, turning them into human ice cube trays. But they made it out alive, and soon we were ready to move again. We switched drivers, and started heading back toward our starting point. We took a very different route on the way back - a really bumpy trail that truly put the off-road vehicles' capabilities to the test. Pity I wasn't driving anymore - it sure looked like fun...

We got back to our starting location, parked our various vehicles, thanked the people in charge, and got back on the bus. Upon arriving at the hotel, we found that kugel was being served, and our rooms had already been assigned. Each room contained two regular beds, one folding cot, and one small "sofa" that sort of folded out into something resembling a bed, for a total of four people per room. As luck would have it (or, as we say, it was bashert), I unfortunately got the fold-out sofa thingy, which as it turned out was clearly manufactured in S'dom - I cannot remember ever laying upon such an uncomfortable sleeping surface. Sighing, I figured every room has such a "bed", and Hashem had some good reason why I was destined to be the korban in this particular room. I consoled myself with the knowledge that I would probably sleep well anyway, having not slept a wink Thursday night. (I later turned out to be absolutely right.)

I settled in as best as I could under the circumstances, and went for a self-guided tour of the grounds. The Kinor hotel is located on the shore of the Kineret, but it was rather cloudy on Friday, and thus I didn't really bother going down to the water. The rest of the grounds were quite nice, though. Lots of palm trees, lush green lawns, a basketball court, and even a playground for the little kids. I took some pictures, and then went to get ready for Shabbos.

Our yeshiva davened together in our own shul on the lower level of the Kinor's main building; we then went up to the upper level for the seudah. We all sat together at one end of the huge main dining room. We were a bit worried about the food, since the kugel served on Friday afternoon was kind of lousy (I personally did not taste it, but I was told by those that did that compressed cardboard would no doubt have tasted better), but Baruch Hashem we were quite surprised - the food was actually very good.

The seudos were arguably the best part of the weekend, even better than ATVing. Although we numbered roughly 200 people including the avreichim and their families, there was nevertheless an amazing feeling of camaraderie in the air, as if we were truly one big family. Many of the avreichim's children suddenly gained a whole bunch of new "uncles": it was not at all uncommon to see bochurim holding various babies and playing with various youngsters as if they actually were their own nieces and nephews.

There was also lots of spirited singing, as well as several speeches by various rebbeim, and even some of the bochurim. Those of you who know me well (especially my family members, and my friends from my former yeshiva in Flatbush) will be shocked to learn that I was NOT one of the bochurim that spoke. So far I'm still "lying low", I guess, and have not yet spoken in public since I got to Israel.

Thus the Shabbos passed peacefully and enjoyably. The benchers that were distributed had the words "Shabbos Achdus" written on the front, and I could not agree more: the incredible atmosphere of true brotherly love that permeated the weekend will hopefully stay with us for a long time. Hopefully until Moshiach comes. If not, I guess we'll have to have another such a Shabbos.

I certainly wouldn't mind...

Some Comments on Common Comment Security

If you've ever tried leaving a comment on my blog, you've undoubtedly come across an interesting feature: you are asked to read a series of weird-shaped random letters, such as "irbmnteug", and manually retype them in the provided box before your comment can be posted. In fact, some people have been prevented from leaving comments at all due to this feature (presumably because these people cannot read, so goodness knows what they're doing on my blog in the first place). I've been asked why this feature is necessary, and so I've decided to post an explanation.

First off, I should note right off the bat that I think it is a very useful vocabulary building feature. Without it, many people would never learn such wonderful words like "vrlnmkd", "cyrklmpt" and "zrcxopft", which will undoubtedly be very useful to know if, say, you should ever visit Czechoslovakia, where those are actual words in the local language. Without the benefit of my blog's comment security feature, you would be totally unfamiliar with such words, and you would have to resort to doing what most tourists (and many of the residents) do, which is to make them up. ("Waiter! I'll have the ckljrto soup with a side dish of prkzltch!")

But there's another reason for this "feature" - the real reason why good ole' Uncle Google implemented the feature in the first place. But to explain it, I may have to get a little technical. Therefore, please note the following warning:

WARNING: THE U.S. SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED, WHILE TAKING A SHORT BREAK FROM MESSING AROUND WITH THE WORDING OF CIGARETTE AND LIQUOR LABEL WARNINGS, THAT THE U.S. SURGEON GENERAL IS NOT LIKELY TO GET A RAISE UNLESS THE U.S. SURGEON GENERAL BRANCHES OUT AND STARTS DOING WARNINGS FOR OTHER PRODUCTS AS WELL. THEREFORE, THE U.S. SURGEON GENERAL HAS DECIDED TO EXAMINE THE FOLLOWING EXPLANATION, AND HAS DETERMINED THAT IT MAY CONTAIN SOME COMPLICATED TECHNOLOGICAL TERMS, AND SHOULD NOT BE READ BY UNTRAINED PERSONNEL WHILE OPERATING HEAVY MACHINERY UNLESS THEY ARE WEARING A FULL-BODY BIOHAZARD SUIT. THANK YOU.

Still with me? Good. Sorry, I just had to shake off those losers who get scared of big, scary, technical terms like "garden hose". Now, let's get down to business. The reason for the security measure is to prevent "comment spam". You may recognize the term "spam", which generally refers to the wonderful email messages you often get from kind-hearted strangers who are genuinely concerned with your well-being, and who generously offer to refinance your home for just %0.7, or give you the opportunity to earn $650,000 a year by working from home for only 17 minutes a week. (See, who said strangers aren't kind people?) However, in recent years, these people have decided that they're not doing enough for the good of humanity, and they need to branch out and expand their kind humanitarian work to other venues as well.

So some brilliant "philanthropist" hit upon the idea of using blog comments as a new medium for propagating their "services". Posting a blog comment is a form of communication that anyone can engage in without any qualifications whatsoever - even being human is not required. A computer program - called a "script" - can be written, which can post dozens, if not hundreds, of comments to someone's blog, all of them promoting "useful" services such as online casinos where your odds of winning are about as good as those of a duck in an industrial trash compactor, or other such services which the world would be a truly grim place without. Hence the term "comment spam" - it's like ordinary email spam, except it targets the comments sections of blogs instead of electronic mailboxes.

However, there's one teensy weensy flaw in the spammers' line of reasoning: the general population is simply not quite interested in hearing about these "services" on a constant basis, even less than they are in dealing with telemarketers. Specifically, the average member of the general population would not be opposed to legalizing the shooting of spammers with incendiary rocket-propelled grenades for sport. However, some pesky little outfit calling itself the "Government" does not allow people to engage in such fulfilling pursuits, and thus people have to engage in a more pacifistic approach: Self-defense - attempting to block spam from reaching them in the first place.

So that's where the "retype these weird letters" business comes into the picture: it's an anti-spam security measure. See, for a human being or similar creature (such as a tort lawyer) who is posting a legitimate comment, it's not such a big deal to copy the letters over. However, an automated script attempting to mass-post tons of spam will be prevented in doing so, since most scripts have not graduated the first grade, and thus cannot read.

Since some of my readers have indicated that they feel such security measures are a major pain in the neck, I'm thinking of disabling it. But if I do, keep the following in mind: if you see any advertisements or the like down there in the comments section, DO NOT follow the links they provide - I do not endorse them, and never will. Anybody I endorse - such as Paskesz Candy, which makes the greatest kosher candy in the world - will be mentioned up here, in MY part of the blog. Do NOT follow any links that spammers may post downstairs, in the public part of the blog. (Did I mention that I wholeheartedly endorse Paskesz Candy?)

I hope to disable the feature as soon as I gain access to an ordinary computer. Believe it or not, every single one of my posts since "Touchdown!" has been composed entirely on my phone, using its little three-and-a-half inch slide-out keyboard, and posted through Cellcom's GPRS network. But there is only so much a little phone can do: I cannot change most blog settings from my phone, and thus need to do so from a full-size computer. But once I do, I hope more people will be encouraged to comment on my writing - I really appreciate the feedback very much.

But if and when spam starts appearing on my blog, I will have to re-enable the security feature. I'm sorry, but it's the only easy - yet effective - method of preventing spam. Well, at least until the script writers learn to speak Czechoslovakian.

EDIT: The word verification feature has been disabled. Have fun!

The Holiest Place at the Holiest Time

This past Shabbos, I merited to participate in another unique Israeli experience: Friday night at the Kosel.

I had heard plenty about what it would be like from various friends and family members, both from a spiritual standpoint, as well as the more mundane aspect of seeing so many different people from so many different walks of life all in one place. But nothing could have prepared me for the awesome experience it turned out to be.

I heard from a friend of mine that unfortunately, there are bochurim who have been learning in Israel for ages, and yet they have never gone to the Kosel - not just Friday night, but even during the week as well. "Yeah, I'll make sure to go before I go back to America," they say. These poor souls have no idea what they're missing. Going to the Kosel is always a special experience for me - even if not for the spiritual aspect of it, then at least for the "sightseeing" aspect. Some day, these poor souls are gonna to the Kosel, and then they're gonna kick themselves - hard - for all the missed opportunities they could have had to go, but instead gave it up for total narishkeiten.

But enough about them - let's get back to my story. I started out Friday afternoon, pretty close to Shabbos, looking for a cab to the Kosel. Not knowing which of the main streets in the neighborhood would be the best place to flag down a cab at that time, I asked a more experienced friend: "Where's the best place to get a cab now?"

"New York City," was his reply. It turned out he wasn't kidding. If you wait too close to Shabbos, you'll find very few cabs - possibly only Arabs, which is not exactly the most reassuring form of transportation. Armed with 30 Shekels, I headed toward Shmuel Hanavi. With Hashem's help, I found a Jewish (albeit non-frum) cab driver who was willing to take me for 25 shekels, but only as far as Sha'ar Yaffo. It was better than nothing, so I took the offer, figuring I would deposit the remaining 5 shekels in the pushka at the Kosel before shkia.

The driver dropped me off just up the hill from Sha'ar Yaffo, barely waiting for me to exit the cab before racing off again. Not wanting to walk through potentially hostile territory alone (not to mention that I did not know the way at all), I asked two Israeli bochurim who were heading there anyway if I could walk with them. I needn't have worried, though, since we ended up being part of a group of roughly 50 people, all walking to the Kosel.

My "guides" elected to take the shorter route, cutting directly through the Arab shuk. I would have been quite apprehensive of doing so alone, but I guess there is something to be said for the power in numbers - the Arabs were not about to start up with a group of 50 people. I was kind of glad we went through the shuk: I have to admit, it was a fascinating trek. The shuk is basically an alley just a few feet wide - so narrow, in fact, that the awnings over the shops on either side were often overlapping each other, creating the illusion that we were walking through a tunnel. Dozens of shops line the alley on either side, selling all kinds of merchandise: hot food, clothing, hand-carved wooden chess sets, silver-plated shofars, fresh and dried fruits, nuts, baseball caps, scarves - you name it, all in a bright cornucopia of colors, shapes, sizes, and smells. I only wish I would have come at some time other than mere minutes before the onset of Shabbos, when I would have been able to slow down and look around a bit.

After proceeding through the shuk for a while, turning the occasional corner, we finally reached the Kosel security checkpoint. I thanked my "guides" as we patiently waited in line among the throngs of people waiting to pass through the metal detector. I finally got through security, and headed out of the security booth to the top of the staircase leading down to the Kosel plaza.

Have you ever felt like you wanted to laugh and cry at the same time? That's a bit of what I felt like at the sight that greeted my eyes: there was my beloved Kosel, but somehow, it was not the same as I had seen it before. There was something different about it, something special. The arrival of the holiest day of the week to the holiest place in the world, filled with people of the holiest nation was perhaps the formula that comprised the special feeling that seemed to permeate the very air.

I proceeded down the stairs, put my remaining 5 shekels in the pushka, and headed across the plaza to the Kosel, joining the crowds of people at the Wall. There were literally thousands of people there, from all walks of life - chasidish and litvish, ashkenazim and sefardim, frum and non-frum. There were young teenagers with ponytails or Mohawks and backpacks the size of telephone booths, older tourists wearing cardboard yarmulkes with expensive cameras around their necks - an assortment of humanity that a cross-culture integrator could only dream of.

As I got closer to the Wall, the composition of the crowd shifted more toward the serious kind: aside from the occasional ponytailed spirituality-seeker clinging to the Wall, the people were mostly religious people going about the sacred ritual of welcoming the Shabbos. That's not to say the crowd became stereotyped at this point: on the contrary, there were many different minyanim, davening according to different nuscha'os, from chasidish to mizrachi. Perhaps the largest was the Vizhnitz minyan, occupying the leftmost twenty percent or so of the Kosel. Although I actually davened in the minyan next to them, I nevertheless immensely enjoyed overhearing their davening. Actually, it would have been kind of hard not too - especially their rendition of Lecha Dodi, sung by everyone in the minyan together with a sweetness that could probably not be matched by any earthly sound.

After I finished davening, I joined up with my host and his sons, and we headed back toward Arzei Habira, taking the route through Sha'ar Shechem. If anything this route was even more dangerous, but like I said before, there's something to be said for the power in numbers, and we were far from alone.

After the seudah, as I walked back to my dira, my mind inevitably began to wander. I thought of everything I had seen that night, of how Jews from all walks of life - from the most devout chasid to the simplest non-frum tourist - had all joined together for one single purpose: to visit the House of Hashem. Even those who only came to the Kosel merely as a tourist destination surely felt something, the feeling of the pintele yid longing to return to its source. That's what a saw: a melting pot, a potpourri of elementally pure souls, all yearning to somehow, in some way, do the right thing. All yearning to come home.

May we be zoche to see the fulfillment of that yearning speedily in our days.

Give Thanks to Hashem

Today is part of Thanksgiving weekend, which is a holiday that commemorates something or other involving the pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower. Apparently they were thankful to have made it all the way to the New World with most of their internal organs pretty much intact, which was quite a feat when you consider the fact that motion-sickness pills had not been invented yet.

Thanksgiving is not, technically speaking, a Jewish holiday, although that doesn't stop too many of us from eating turkey anyway. However, for those of us living in Yerushalayim - particularly in the Bais Yisroel neighborhood, this year is different: we have our own reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving weekend, to celebrate and thank Hashem for the wonderful miracle which occurred last night.

Last night, at 2:22 AM, there was a tremendous explosion on the fourth floor of 24 Rechov Zonnenfeld (which happens to be just two short blocks away from my dira). The huge fireball pretty much destroyed the entire fourth floor, hurling debris in every direction. The shockwaves of the explosion shattered dozens of windows of both cars and buildings in the area, including one in my dira. The sound of the explosion was heard as far as Sorotzkin and Ramat Eshkol.

No one knew what caused the explosion - whether it was an accident, or chas veshalom a terrorist attack. Initial reports speculated that several people were killed, and dozens more were wounded.

Within minutes, the sounds of sirens could be heard, as dozens of emergency vehicles came rushing to the scene. Police, firefighters, ambulances, Zaka motorcycles, army vehicles - everyone feared for the worst. Magen David Adom even called for an MCI - a Mass Casualty Incident - expecting an untold number of victims. Hundreds of curious spectators filled the streets - quite a few in their pajamas - trying to find out what happened. The police cordoned off the area around 24 Zonnenfeld while they investigated.

As time went on, the picture became clear: somehow, a propane tank (or perhaps several) in the fourth floor of the building had exploded. So Baruch Hashem, it was not a terrorist attack. Even more amazing was the casualty count: zero. That's right: not a single person was killed or even seriously injured by the blast. A few people were lightly injured - some cuts and bruises, but nothing major. As one Hatzalah member told me, "we didn't have to take anyone to the hospital".

Another amazing fact is that no one was hurt by the flying debris. I saw chunks of stone and cement the size of a sack of potatoes - but obviously way heavier - that had been hurled more than two hundred feet. It is an absolute miracle that they didn't hit anyone while airborne, since I doubt a person would've survived the impact. Okay, granted, it was after two o'clock in the morning and most people belong in bed, but it was Thursday night, and thus there were still people in the street even at that hour. Besides, the fact that the explosion did not occur in middle of the day when the streets are crowded is a miracle in itself.

Indeed, the whole story consists of one miracle on top of another, cleverly woven by the Guardian of Israel, the Master of Miracles. Hinei lo yanum v'lo yishan shomer yisrael!

On Top of the Mountain

First of all, I would like to start out by thanking all of the people who took the time out of their busy schedules to call, email, or otherwise contact me to inform me that something I wrote ended up in the paper.

For those of you who have just arrived from some distant, newspaper-free galaxy, I should point out that I am referring to the fact that someone apparently sent in one of my blog posts (specifically, the serious one about my first trip to the Kosel) to the "Reader's Forum" section of this past week's Hamodia. It was in the "Community News" section, page 39.

I actually did not send it in on my own; I don't have the guts to send anything to a newspaper that lots of people actually read (as opposed to my blog, which for all I know probably has just a small handful of really bored people reading it). Although I was glad to hear that someone else did send it in - I figured getting published in the Hamodia would be a great first step in becoming a famous syndicated journalist, and I would become so fabulously wealthy that I would regularly leave luxurious mansions with 4-car garages as tips. Or perhaps I would end up living under a highway overpass in a refrigerator carton. Whatever. It can go either way.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, we can move on to more important topics, such as my trip to Har Nof, where I spent this past Shabbos. My brother-in-law told me that years ago, people used to refer to it as "Har Nof, USA" because it is a rather American-intensive area. Although in recent years, things have changed, and the American influence is more visible in other areas as well - even Meah Shearim is starting to strongly resemble 13th Ave. in Boro Park, minus the double-parked cars (here we have triple-parked mopeds instead).

So there I was, at 3:00 PM on Friday afternoon, walking to the bus stop in Geulah, hoping to catch the number 15 bus to Har Nof. Someone warned me that he heard the last bus was at 2:30 PM, and that I would have to take a taxi, but I figured I would try my luck anyway.

If you're one of the people who has absolutely nothing better to do with your life than to waste your valuable time reading my blog, you may recall that a little while ago, I posted a rather negative rant about the bus service here, claiming that the buses are unreliable. However, I'm afraid I must retract that statement: to my utter surprise, a number 15 bus to Har Nof rolled up to the stop where I was waiting at promptly 3:10 PM, just five minutes after I got there. So now I don't know what to believe. Are the buses reliable or not? Perhaps we should demand that the US Congress stop fooling around with silly things like tax reform and illegal immigration and convene a special blue-ribbon investigative panel to focus on the more important issue of Israeli bus punctuality.

I know what you're going to ask me: "But why on earth would the United States Congress care about the buses in some other country?" My answer is quite simple: be quiet, and stop asking me silly questions that I don't have good answers for. Besides, I don't really care whether there's a good reason or not; I feel that if Congress can waste billions of dollars on stupid programs like "National Eggplant Ripeness Week" or "National Tractor Mechanic Appreciation Month", then they can afford to spend another few bucks to help a desperate American tourist figure out what on earth is going on with the Israeli bus schedule.

But getting back to my trip to Har Nof - which, as you may recall (although I highly doubt it) is supposed to be the topic of this post - I boarded the number 15 bus, and settled down for the 15 to 20 minute journey. I got off on Katzenellenbogen street (perennial winner of the prestigious Most Unnecessarily Long Street Name With Approximately Two Million Syllables In One Single Word award), and proceeded to number 76, where I would be staying for Shabbos.

Har Nof is designed in a very interesting fashion. Because it is built directly into the side of a mountain, and not on flat ground, many of the buildings have two entrances: on one side of the building the entrance is on the first floor, while on the other side of the building, the entrance is on the fifth floor or so. Really. I am not making this up. The buildings also have 2 addresses because of this; for instance, the building where I was staying was 76 Rechov Katzenellenbogen only from the fifth floor entrance - from the first floor address, it is known as 43 Rechov Agasi. Likewise, the buildings on the other side of Rechov Agasi have their second entrances even lower down the mountain, on some street whose name escapes me at the moment (not that I really care, and therefore neither should you).

Shabbos in Har Nof was very nice: not too Israeli, but not too American either. It was a nice blend of the cultures (at least as far as an uncultured individual like me could tell). On Shabbos afternoon, I went for a walk with my hosts to the very top of the mountain. The view from there was magnificent - we could see as far as Hadassah hospital.

As we marveled at the view of the spectacular mountains surrounding us, my host told me a vort that he personally heard from Rav Hutner z"l: the pasuk says "Yerushalayim harim saviv lah, v'Hashem saviv l'amo" - just as Yerushalayim is surrounded by protective mountains, so too Hashem surrounds and protects His nation from their enemies. Imagine, says Rav Hutner, just like the mountains surround and protect Yerushalayim - they are the "taful" (secondary) and Yerushalayim is the "ikar" (primary) - so too Hashem, out of His great love for His people, makes Himself "taful" - secondary (as it were) - to His people to protect them from their enemies.

It was with these words of inspiration in mind that I left Har Nof on Motzei Shabbos, after thanking my hosts for their warm hospitality. As I walked across the street to the bus stop, I thought to myself: we are indeed surrounded by evil enemies on all sides - whether the Arabs who would think nothing of taking our lives, or Chiloni instigators who would think nothing of taking our souls. But who can possibly harm us when Hashem is personally protecting us?

Of Feathers and Fridges

As you are doubtlessly aware, the value of the US dollar keeps on falling lower and lower each day. Just turn on the radio and tune in to any station, and you'll hear numbers like 3.88, 3.90, and 3.91. Don't get your hopes up; that's just the price for a gallon of gasoline. The actual exchange rate for shekels is way lower.

While digesting these important facts, one thing immediately became clear: there is no way in the world I am going to write a blog post about economics. I cannot do my readers the disservice of providing them with possibly useful information; in fact, before each and every entry gets posted on my blog, it undergoes a thorough fact check by a crack squad of proofreaders equipped with pruning shears. If they encounter any bit of information that looks even remotely like an important or useful fact, they rip it out immediately, with great force.

So instead of economics, we'll do something far more interesting (well, at least to some of you) today: an update on life in my dira.

First of all, we have a new roommate. We finally got a bird: a gray cockatiel (which looks like a large parakeet, except that it has a hairstyle strongly reminiscent of Tintin). My roommate, who bought the bird, claims it's a female. (I don't know how he knows this. Perhaps the bird is always talking on the phone. Or perhaps it's always asking him "do these feathers make me look fat?")

The bird has so far been named "Tutzy" (pronounced "TOOH-tzi"), and for a very good reason: a sensible, smart person like me was not consulted first - my roommate decided to give it that name on his own, although I wonder what kind of narcotics he was under the influence of at the time. I personally cannot think of any logical reason to give the poor thing such a weird name, but that's none of my business, is it?

At least the turtle has a semi-normal name: Norman. We chose that name because it acts like an old geezer, spending most of its time sleeping or bonking slowly but deliberately into the walls of its tank, and we decided that Norman sounds like a real geezer-ish, Harry-esque name.

Norman and Tutzy are good neighbors: Tutzy's cage is perched (har!) on top of Norman's tank, and except for the time Tutzy pooped straight into Norman's tank, scoring a direct hit into his water bowl, they each seem to mind their own business. I doubt each one even knows the other one exists.

In other animal-related news, the highly annoying neighborhood rooster has been very quiet lately. Perhaps the rooster read my blog, and realized what he would be in for if he didn't shut his noisy little beak. Or perhaps he thinks Tutzy and Norman are gonna gang up on him. Although if that's the case, he really doesn't have much to worry about: poor Norman doesn't even seem capable of ganging up on his food bowl.

At least his food doesn't need to be refrigerated, thank goodness, since the dira fridge has still been neither fixed, nor replaced. At this point, the mold colony growing in the fridge has grown so advanced that they're registering to vote in the upcoming elections. Rumor has it that we may be soon getting a replacement, second-hand fridge, but I'll only believe it when I see it. Call me a pessimist, but as far as I'm concerned, the chances of actually getting the fridge issue resolved once and for all is so low you gotta dig to find them.

Personally, I already gave up on the communal fridge, and so I bought my own fridge. It's a cute little blue portable mini-fridge with a carry handle on top. And I do not use the term "mini" lightly: the interior of my fridge is roughly the size of an ice pack, only less likely to keep things cold. But hey, I was getting desperate already. I needed someplace to keep my... ummmm... my... what did I need a fridge so badly for, anyway?

Seriously, though, I usually keep a couple of small items in the fridge: a small jar of mayonnaise, a small bag of milk in a small pitcher, a small package of cold cuts, and a small container of chumus (did I mention that everything is small?) I don't know if it was worth the 320 shekel (around 80 bucks) I paid for it, but at least now I can eat my cans of tuna fish. In my humble opinion, they taste much better with mayonnaise (the tuna fish, that is, not the cans), but your preferences my vary - perhaps you like to eat tuna fish with chicken soup; although in that case, I assure you that you are completely insane.

So that's my approach for coping with the lack of a communal fridge. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for coping without a decent phone line. In a previous post, I speculated that Bezeq had perhaps excised our phone line using a commercial-grade blowtorch. Little did I know that I wasn't so far from the truth: upon opening a phone jack in the wall near my room, I discovered that the actual phone wires had been ripped from the wall completely. So any thoughts of getting it reconnected have been scrapped.

There is another jack downstairs in our erstwhile "kitchen", but while that one still has its wires intact, it nevertheless does not work. But at least maybe there's hope for getting Bezeq to hook it up to the network someday, and eventually, maybe I can even run a wire upstairs to my room and install my own phone jack.

Although if we do that, it's probably gonna be impossible to get Tutzy off the phone.

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round, Round, Round...

Today's topic is: how do you get from place to place in Israel? (Short answer: you don't. Trust me, you're much better off staying put.)

For those of you unfamiliar with Israeli society, I should point out that the primary method of getting from place to place is by walking, and not necessarily on the sidewalk, either. Israeli pedestrians have been sighted in middle of the street, sprawled across the hoods of taxis, anywhere - they have even been sighted walking on the surface of Mars. Walking is a fine idea if you plan on only going to local destinations. If you're going more than just a few blocks, though, you have several options:

OPTION #1: You can take a taxi. This option is the best method for learning how to curse fluently in Hebrew, Arabic, and a number of other languages. It also provides the immense benefit of leaving you at the mercy of the taxi driver, who - if he thinks you're a newcomer - may attempt to charge you 500 shekel per oxygen molecule you breathe (which is actually quite a bargain, considering how little oxygen some of the cabs contain). So you have to try not to get ripped off. I've already learned that the average trip can be made for 20 shekel (about $5) or less. Some people consider taxis to be a relatively expensive option, but I prefer a more positive outlook: where else can you be driven somewhere in a chauffeured Mercedes for less than five bucks? Definitely not in New York, I can tell you that. New York cabbies expect five bucks just for the privilege of not spitting on you.

OPTION #2: You can get a "tus-tus", which is the local name for a moped. Don't ask me how on earth "tus-tus" translates to "moped" - I'm a journalist, not a linguist, for crying out loud. (Personally, I wonder why they have to call it a "tus-tus" - shouldn't one "tus" be enough?) A moped is a great, economical way of getting around, with the added bonus that you get to wear a helmet that makes you look like an invading space alien from planet Zork. The only drawback of driving a moped is that the busses are WAY bigger than you are and travel at roughly the speed of a New York taxicab (which is 175 miles per hour on the sidewalk), so if you inadvertently get in the way of a bus, you will involuntarily help manufacture a new speed bump at that spot. Which brings us to our next option:

OPTION #3: You can take a bus. This seems to be the most popular option among most people, presumably because it's such a great opportunity to shove yourself, cattle-car style, into a group of random strangers, some of whom you would never have anything to do with voluntarily. You see all kinds of passengers on busses: Chareidim, Chilonim, tourists, Arabs, the occasional head of cattle, etc. A bus fare is 5-and-a-half shekel (roughly $1.38), for which you get a little receipt which you are required by law to keep until your dying day. I was told that if I don't, I run the risk that the Bus Police will burst into my dira in the middle of the night with vicious dogs, guns drawn, and take our pet turtle hostage.

Now, any one of these three options will get you where you want to go. The question is, which one is right for you? Well, we can rule the moped out right off the bat. Most people look silly on mopeds (although that probably wouldn't stop me from riding one if I had the opportunity - it sure doesn't stop anyone else), not to mention that insurance costs a fortune these days. So that leaves the cab or bus.

Busses are the cheaper option, but are ideal only if you have a LOT of time to kill, waiting at the bus stop. That's one lesson Egged seems to have learned from the MTA: promise busses every 10-20 minutes, but have them only come once every hour or two, especially if it's a bus that a lot of people really need. In fact, the more popular a bus is, the less likely it is to come.

Many Israelis tell me the bus system is usually punctual. I guess perhaps it's just my bad luck, then. I personally waited at a bus stop last week for the popular number 2 bus for over an hour. During that time, I watched more than 70 busses go by, and not a single one of them was a number 2 (I eventually gave up and took a cab). That got me thinking: you know how the Israeli security people claim that they actually thwart over %80 of terror attacks? Well, I'm betting that most of the time, they accomplish that by having busses never come, causing the terrorists to get so angry and frustrated that they go attempt to blow up useless targets instead, such as law firms.

Getting a cab is much easier. Taxis are about as plentiful in Israel as skunks are in the Catskill Mountains, except they often smell worse. The procedure for hailing a cab is quite simple: when you see a white car with a little yellow taxi sign on the roof drive by, you raise your hand, then immediately bring it down sharply with tremendous force on the head of anyone who tries to get into the cab ahead of you. Depending on your destination, the driver will either offer you a flat rate, or he will turn on the meter. Or if he's really cunning, he'll try both - like I said before, the trick is not to let yourself get ripped off.

At least that's what everyone tells me: I, on the other hand, have the bargaining skills of a slab of Formica, and usually just pay whatever I'm told to. But if the trip was beyond walking distance, then it's a small price to pay for the convenience of getting where I wanted to go in one piece. After all, I don't really want to end up walking on the surface of Mars, do I?

What Were You Thinking?

It's 2:30 in the morning, and I can't sleep. You know why? Not because of perfectly normal reasons like jet lag, insomnia, or wondering if there's a big vicious cockroach hiding in the closet waiting until I fall asleep so it can consume my entire food supply undisturbed. No, I can't sleep because someone is being inconsiderate, and making a ton of noise outside my window.

Normally, under such circumstances, the correct procedure would be to stick one's head out the window and yell "SHEKET!!!" ("QUIET!!!") with enough force to cause an avalanche. But in this case, that's not an option, because the culprit is not human. The culprit is a rooster.

Now, I am aware that roosters are supposed to crow at dawn. I even make a bracha every morning to that effect. But it's TWO THIRTY IN THE MORNING, for crying out loud. It's not even close to dawn, but that doesn't stop our intrepid little neighbor. He crows at any random time of the day or night, be it 12:00, 2:00, 3:30, etc. Probably what happened is someone bought the rooster one of those digital watches that tells you what time it is all around the world, and the rooster - unable to figure out how to work it properly - keeps thinking he's behind schedule. Personally, I'm strongly tempted to reprogram the rooster using an electric chainsaw at this point. But that would probably violate some kind of zoning law or something.

At times like this, I wonder: what on earth is the rooster's owner thinking?! Doesn't he hear how night after night, innocent civilians have to endure his rooster's antics? Why does he even HAVE a rooster in today's day and age? Perhaps no one has explained to him that the electronic alarm clock has been invented. Or perhaps he doesn't like electronic alarm clocks. After all, I know I hate mine - I'm surprised mine still has the courage to ring every morning after all of my half-asleep attempts to destroy it (let's just say it's a good thing I left my blowtorch at home). Why doesn't he duct-tape the rooster's beak shut, or at least keep it indoors?

The answer is simple: he just doesn't think. People never think. The world is full of people who don't begin to realize the consequences of their actions. Such as the people who consistently call me when it's 9 PM in the states, despite the fact that simple math would tell them that it's 3 AM here in Israel. The only reason why I don't favor having such people fined a minimum of $50,000 per offense for such cases is that most of the time, I'm up anyway, listening to the rooster. Besides, these people are not evil; they're just not thinking.

Or how about the crack squad of professional "contractors" who installed the tub/shower in my dira - they clearly weren't thinking either. People have asked me to write about the shower conditions in the dira, and believe me they are not pleasant. I don't mean cleanliness-wise, I mean safety-wise. Consider the following chilling facts:

CHILLING FACT #1: The tub is made out of porcelain-enameled cast iron.

CHILLING FACT #2: Cast iron is hard. VERY hard.

CHILLING FACT #3: The tub does not have those "anti-slip" treads like most American bathtubs do.

CHILLING FACT #4: The Australian bird-eating spider is over 6 centimeters wide and 16 centimeters long - almost the size of a human hand, and - whoops! Sorry! Wrong list of chilling facts! I'll try not to let that happen again...

CHILLING FACT #5: Porcelain enamel is EXTREMELY slippery when wet.

So what does the genius installing the tub do? He installs it at an angle, with the floor sloping AWAY from the drain. Ha ha! What fun! Anyone who has ever been to a water park and seen how a waterslide works will surely appreciate the wacky hijinks involved in trying to stand on a slippery surface - ankle-deep in a non-draining puddle of water (making it even slipperier) - and take a shower without slipping and having your brains surgically remove themselves from your head without the benefit of an anesthetic. How exciting!

And then, of course, there is the best example of someone who is not considerate enough to think of others: me. If you have read this far, then I have just wasted several precious minutes of your life, making you listen to me ramble and complain incessantly about seemingly trivial matters, when I could be writing about something more useful, like National Avocado Appreciation Week. What's wrong with me? Doesn't it occur to me that maybe people have more important things to do than reading my blog? And why do I keep asking people to please write something in the comments section - don't I realize that people are busy with more important things, like forwarding e-mail jokes? Don't I ever think?!

Of course I don't - I'm too busy hoping the rooster won't notice me sharpening the chainsaw.

Life in the Dira

Many people have asked me to write about life in the dira, as well as life in Israel in general. Personally, I think those people are - pardon my French - insane. I mean, you want to know about Israeli life, fine, I can understand that. But dira life?! Are you sure you want to know what it's like?! Do you have ANY IDEA what you're getting into? I'll give you a little hint: have you ever seen what the average teenager's room looks like? Good. Now multiply that by seven, twelve, maybe even twenty. Do you see what kind of mess we're dealing with?

But what can I do? I'm a mere journalist, whose job it is to keep the public informed. If the public wants to know, then I have to write whatever will satisfy the public's curiosity. I can, however, leave out some of the gorier details (such as what we do with the dead bodies of any Arabs caught breaking into and stealing from the dira). So here goes:

I live on the second floor of a three-floor dira on Rechov Adani in the heart of Yerushalayim. At least I think that's where I live - it's hard to tell since the roads (and especially the alleys) are so poorly marked, and all the buildings look alike. My policy is quite simple: if I walk into the building, and I get run over by seven little kids chasing a cat, then I've most probably entered the wrong dira. Personally, I don't have the slightest clue how the mailman can figure out which address is which, yet the pile of bills in front of our door keeps getting bigger, so he must be managing somehow (I suspect perhaps black magic is involved). To me, it's a jungle of stone look-alikes.

Which, by the way, brings up an interesting point: just about everything in this country is made of stone. And I mean everything: the walls, the floors, the ceilings, the sidewalks, a good deal of the food supply, etc. I guess I should be thankful the Gemaras are not made of stone, or I would no doubt sustain a massive hernia. (Insert corny comment about Artscroll's "The Stone Edition" of Tanach here.)

Anyway, my dira is located a short distance away from Meah She'arim, so shopping is quite plentiful - provided that you can find what you’re looking for. I base this statement on my trip there last week for the sound journalistic purpose of purchasing an alarm clock, which I figured would be useful for waking me up in the morning for at least four consecutive seconds until I ram the "snooze" button with a hammer (sold separately). I went through Meah She'arim, trying to determine which kind of store might sell alarm clocks. This can be quite tricky in Israel, since some vendors seem to have their priorities messed up. I mean, I saw a shoe stores selling tzitzis, and a barber shop selling (why not?) umbrellas. So I kept my eyes peeled, and with Hashem's help, soon found an electronics store.

Well, not really. The store I found actually sold soda, cartons of cigarettes, various knickknacks, and also some electronics and appliances - a rather eclectic mix. I ended up buying an alarm clock, a multi-outlet adapter, and two little power-plug-adapters for 80 sheks (20 bucks).

But getting back to my dira, it's actually a pretty decent place. My roommates so far consist of a human named Avrumy, and a turtle who we haven't named yet. We're also supposed to get a bird as soon as we find a pet store somewhere.

Either way, it's definitely a lot better than I expected. On the plus side, we have a standard Israeli dual-flush toilet. This means that the toilet has two flush handles, a big one and a small one. Being a rather tasteful individual, I will not explicitly describe the circumstances under which each handle is to be used, except to use the following high-class, tasteful euphemisms: the small handle is for "drive-thru", whereas the large one is for "full service". (For a real "act of Knesset" you can try both handles simultaneously, but I don't think it makes much of a difference.)

On the down side, we have no phone (not even a local Israeli line). Apparently, the previous occupants ran up a phone bill roughly equivalent to the US federal budget deficit. When they did not pay the bill, Bezek graciously cut the phone lines (presumably using a blowtorch), until such time as some selfless hero (hint: NOT me) will step forward and offer to pay the outstanding bill.

Another problem is that we do not have a kitchen - our kitchen has been converted into a bedroom (I suspect that one guy sleeps in each sink, and one more in the oven). Also, our refrigerator is broken. Someone is supposed to come fix it, but I don't think that's a good idea: since the fridge died, the interior has developed a very sophisticated (meaning "smelly") colony of mold that has already succeeded in capturing and eating the last so-called repairman. Personally, I think the best solution would be to tackle the fridge with a flamethrower, but the compressor might not like that.

My yeshiva is about a five to ten minute walk away from the dira. That's the easy part: the hard part is once you get there, you have to climb several flights of cement stairs that were clearly designed by some crack squad of pro-women-and-minority-groups masonry "designers": no two steps are the same shape and size. Some are tall, some are short; some are straight, some are crooked, etc.

Once you do reach the top, there is a large, open space divided into a beis medrash and dining room (using bookshelves and banks of lockers as partition walls), a tiny kitchen (probably the one they stole from my dira), some bathrooms, and an office. It's a relatively simple setup, but it seems to work.

Meals are served in the yeshiva, and they're usually edible, provided you like to eat chicken in all of its various possible incarnations pretty much every night of the week. And if you don't like what's being served, you can always go to one of the local establishments where you can get some decent American-style food for the low, rock bottom price of just an arm and a leg.

Okay, I believe I wrote enough for now. If you'd like any more information on anything else in my Israeli life, leave a comment in the comments section below. Or you can mail me your questions. And if you do, please tell the mailman to show me how he finds my dira, once and for all.

Coming Home to the Wall

I decided to pay a visit to the Kosel tonight. I had been pushing it off until now, because I was worried about getting lost, and was waiting for a friend to be available to come with me. But tonight, however, having been in Israel almost a week, I decided to risk the journey on my own.

I once heard a tape by Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky about how many people do not prepare properly for a visit to the Kosel. Oh sure, they think they're prepared - in fact, they have a whole fantasy about how they will approach the Wall, and as they reach it the clouds will part, and a lone ray of sunlight will shine upon them, and the angels will sing, and they will just generally be swept away in a tidal wave of holiness.

What often actually happens, though, is unfortunately far more mundane. They cross the plaza, and find: a wall. Hmmm... all I see is a wall. A very old wall. It seems like there's nothing too special here. I'm looking around now... hmmm... I wonder what's wrong with that guy - why's he crying like that? Hey, you! Get away from me - I gave you money already!

Why do people feel that way? Simple - because it's not magic. It's an investment. As much as you put into it, that's what you'll get out of it. The more you mentally prepare yourself for the experience, the better and more spiritual the experience will be.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I boarded the number 2 bus to the Kosel. I hoped I'd prepared myself at least somewhat for the experience to come. I realized, of course, that I probably wouldn't experience the full feeling of kedusha that I'd like to feel all at once, but I hoped at least I would be zoche to feel something...

The bus ride was relatively uneventful, unless you count the few times that the bus felt like it wouldn't make it to the top of the hill that we were ascending. But we made it all they way there nonetheless. As soon as I got off the bus, I put on my "kriyah shirt" - an old shirt with a cut near the collar to make it easier to tear the required tefach - over my regular shirt, just under my jacket. I headed through security (I wisely elected to leave my Leatherman back at my dira, so I had no problems at the metal detector), and proceeded toward the plaza.

Up until this point, I had not been able to see the Kosel, due to various walls and other objects blocking me. As I entered the plaza, however, the Kosel suddenly appeared before me in all its glory, almost all at once. I was so overcome by the sight that my eyes began to tear. I approached the Kosel slowly, instinctively fighting back the tears. But when I reached the wall and kissed it, I just couldn't hold it back any longer. I burst into tears. All the pain I felt - my pain, as well as the pain of Klal Yisroel as a whole - just came pouring out as I cried like a lost child who has finally found his way home. I felt a little self-conscious, but told myself that it didn't really matter, since crying people are a common sight at the Kosel. Besides, it was raining steadily, so most of the people were in the "indoor" area of the Kosel, so no one was too close to me anyway.

For several moments I just stood there and cried - not saying any Tehilim, not having any particular cholim in mind, not even thinking about the things I had been planning on davening for - just crying for the ancient wall in front of me, for the magnificent edifice it once was, for the pain and suffering of Klal Yisroel who have nowhere to call home, for the Shechinah Hakdosha which has nowhere to call home. Mipnei chato'einu ga'alinu mei'artzeinu...

After a while, I composed myself, and went about the routine business of any Kosel visitor: davening, giving tzedaka, writing a kvittel. To the many people around me, I imagine I looked as if I returned to normal. Like I wasn't still feeling anything special. Perhaps even like that ordinary tourist in Rabbi Orlofsky's story. Like I was just another ordinary American bochur.

Perhaps I was. But that feeling - that sense of a child longing to come home - still has not left me.

I hope it never will.

Touchdown!

Okay, I'm in Israel, and I think I finally figured out how to post to the blog from my phone. Let’s see if it works...

I was supposed to catch El Al flight 012 from JFK at 1:20 AM Thursday morning. Every air traveler hopes for minimal or no delays, but that was apparently not meant to be: air travel technology has become so sophisticated that my flight was delayed an hour-and-a-half already a full day in advance. (Give airlines enough time, and they'll figure out how to already delay your flight by a week even before they schedule an original departure time for it.)

Still, one thing I gotta admit is that air travel is not so bad these days - provided, of course, that you are some alien being that is only 17 inches tall and has a digestive system capable of tackling the steel-and-cardboard "meals" they serve you. For actual humans, though - especially tall people like me - you feel like the seats were imported from S'dom, and you half-expect the flight attendants to come around with hacksaws to trim your feet down to size. The meals, too, wouldn't have been so bad if their primary intended usage had been as paperweights.

But getting back to my actual flight, I was assigned seat 54H - that's an aisle seat in the right-most section of the plane, four rows from the back. I squeezed myself in - probably shattering both kneecaps in the process - and waited apprehensively to see who would have the center seat, praying hard that it would NOT be another person my size. You can imagine my pleasant surprise, then, when my seatmate turned out to be not only a normal-sized person, but even someone I knew: the son of the director of the camp where I worked this past summer. Hashem was looking out for me even better than I could have imagined, though: five minutes into the flight, my seatmate announced that he had a friend on board elsewhere on the plane who had an empty seat next to him, and thus he was going to sit with his friend, leaving the seat next to me empty. Thus, I was able to stretch my legs considerably for the remainder of the journey, making the so-called "economy class" bearable.

The rest of the journey passed by somewhat uneventfully, Baruch Hashem. We landed - judging by the amount of taxiing the plane had to do after the landing - about 79 miles away from Ben-Gurion airport in Tel-Aviv, pretty much on schedule. Passport control, baggage claim, and customs went off Baruch Hashem without a hitch, and now it was time to figure out how to make it all the way to my dira in one piece - well, technically, one piece plus three pieces of luggage plus one piece of hand luggage plus one hatbox, for a total of six pieces. But you get my point...

I ended up taking a "tender", which is a van of sorts that carries 10 passengers and their baggage. The trip to Yerushalayim took about 40 minutes, and I learned lots of new useful Hebrew words, thanks to the driver's constant cursing. I was dropped off in front of a bakery about a block away from my dira, to the tune of 50 shekels (hereafter known as "sheks", since that what everyone calls them). Just when I was beginning to worry how I was gonna get all my stuff over to my dira, hashgacha pratis struck again: an old friend of mine from Vyelipol just "happened" to be using the payphone outside the bakery. He helped me find the dira, and helped carry my luggage there.

So Baruch Hashem, nearly 24 hours after leaving my house, my journey came to a happy conclusion in Yerushalayim Ihr Hakodesh, the holiest city in the world. Yup, definitely worth the trip...

Happy Columbus Day!

Today is Columbus Day. Well, technically it isn't - Columbus Day is supposed to be October 12 - the day the Nino, the Pinto, and the Santa Claus arrived at the Americas (the Pinto, of course, exploded just before reaching the shore; fortunately, the concept of "lawsuits" had not yet been invented). However, the government decided years ago that it would be more prudent to celebrate on the second Monday in October, for a very sound federal reason: it gives federal employees an excuse for a federally extended 4-day weekend. However, ordinary citizens like you and I must go about our business as usual (unless we still happen to be on vacation anyway, like I am).

Which is why I was quite surprised to find out that the USPS tried to deliver a package for me this morning. As far as I can tell (based on my understanding of the Wikipedia entry for Columbus Day), the Postal Service is supposed to be on vacation today. I was expecting a package (namely, the cellphone I ordered for use in Israel) to be delivered by USPS Priority Mail, but not today. You can imagine my surprise, then, when not only do they appear to be on duty today, but they even went out of their way to attempt to deliver the package very early in the morning, before anyone was available at my father's workplace to sign for it. Personally, I think that they had Postal Inspectors hiding in the bushes with Secret-Service-style earpieces in their ears, watching the front door, and whispering "The coast is clear! Deliver the Shadow's package NOW!" into the microphones hidden in their sleeves as soon as the last person
left the office last night. Not that I'm paranoid, of course. Although the only flaw I can see with this line of reasoning is that in the commercial neighborhood where my father works, there are no bushes (or anything even resembling any form of vegetation, except possibly potted marijuana plants).

Anyway, upon further investigation I've discovered, to my relief, that I am not a victim of racial discrimination (although this being America, I could probably sue anyway). It seems that only express mail and priority mail is being delivered today, so an attempt should have been made. But upon calling my father, I discovered that someone WAS there at the time of the so-called delivery attempt, and they say nobody tried to deliver anything. So I don't know why USPS thinks nobody was there to receive it. Perhaps the delivery person was under the influence of the, shall we say, "vegetation" at the time. Or perhaps not. Or perhaps the truck was struck by a fallen alien spacecraft, this whole thing is just a government cover-up.

Although I doubt the government would be working on cover-ups today - they're still out celebrating their 4-day weekend.

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New Hampshire Report

I traveled to New Hampshire the other day with a busload of friends for the sound journalistic reason of investigating whether or not it still exists (yes, it does), is still part of the United States (yes, it is), and contains a decent kosher pizza shop (no, it does not). New Hampshire, as you may know, is the ONLY state that not only lacks a sales tax, but doesn't even have a personal income tax (why people from Boro Park and Williamsburg aren't moving out there in droves is beyond me).

New Hampshire is nicknamed "The Granite State", and for a very good reason: whoever was in charge of making up the Official State Nickname was under the influence of both alcohol AND very powerful narcotics at the time. It also, as I soon discovered, contains a rather large quantity of cold air. Personally, I think that the next time Al Gore or somebody starts whining about global warming, we should make him spend the night in his pajamas atop Mt. Washington, and see how fast he changes his mind. My personal feeling about global warming is that if G-d wanted us to worry so much about it, He would have given us giant air conditioners.

Our stay in NH was rather pleasant despite the weather, though (probably because I didn't have to spend the night atop Mt. Washington in my pajamas). During the day, it wasn't as cold - I only needed a jacket outdoors and not a coat (which was a good thing, since in my infinite wisdom, I forgot to bring one). We went mountain biking and rock climbing, although I personally did not get to climb the wall, since they claimed they didn't have a safety harness my size. Bah - they were probably just worried that I'd break records by racing up the wall faster than they ever did. Or maybe I would just break the whole wall. Whatever.

Before New Hampshire, we also went to Six Flags of New England, where we got to watch David Garrity do a magic show, featuring a pivotal moment where he dropped a white handkerchief into a cage and out popped - you guessed it - Al Gore in his pajamas.

No, seriously, out popped a young lady, who we were supposed to believe was some kind of "spirit". Yeah, right. If she really was a spirit, well, then, they don't make spirits quite like they used to. I don't recall any spirit ever causing so much trouble without saying a single word, but maybe that's just me. At the end of the show she finally disappeared in some kind of spirit-exorcising ceremony involving a cape and (shhh! Don't tell anybody!) a trapdoor in the stage floor. Mysteriously, though, she reappeared on stage moments later to take her final bow (I didn't know spirits bowed to anyone; but then again, I don't know a lot of things).

All in all, it was a fun trip, and a welcome distraction from the anxiety that I've been feeling since I decided to go to Israel. Sometimes it's good to get away from reality for a while (at least until reality whacks you on the back of the head with a resounding blow), and this was definitely one of those times (the getting away part, not the resounding blow part, although that's probably still to come). Now that I'm back, though, it's time to start biting my nails again in earnest...

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I've decided to start a blog

I've decided to start a blog. There are a number of reasons for this.

First of all, everyone who is anyone has a blog. Even William Shakespeare had a blog. In fact, historians now believe that Hamlet - when stripped of all the fancy nonsense words such as "ergo", "heretofore", "restaurant", etc. - was actually a blog post in which the bard was ranting about the guy ahead of him on line at the supermarket who had the nerve to try to check out more than 10 items in the Express lane.

Second of all, I'm going to Yeshiva in Israel this zman. I figure if I write a blog, then all of my friends and relatives who are interested in what's going on in my life (yes, all 3 of you) can keep tabs on my current events, without me going through the tedious chore of making dozens of boring long-distance phone calls at bizarre hours to keep people informed of the exciting, non-stop Israeli action. ("Yes, the sun rose today, and then set in the evening, just like America." "Yes, the sun rose again today, and then set again in the evening." "Yes, the sun rose AGAIN today..." I think you get the picture. At least I hope you do...)

Finally, it just seemed like a cool thing to do. Especially if it's on Blogger, and thus being hosted by good ole' Uncle Google free of charge!

Anyway, so that's my justification for this potential waste of time. So far I'm still in America; I don't know how often I'll be able to update this once I get to Israel. But that's when the REAL fun starts, so it would be a shame not to...


So come, dear reader! Take my hand, and join me on my journey - both into the blogosphere, and eventually to the country of Israel. Together we shall venture into uncharted territory, seeing what we can learn along the way from our (or at least my) experiences.

But first, let go of my hand - otherwise, it's gonna be awfully hard for me to type.