Whine or beer?

Well, since it's early afternoon, and beer is expensive here, I think I'll have to settle for whine. Yep. No pictures today, folks. In fact, probably not a post worth reading, but since this is supposed to be a candid account of the goings-on of my Israel trip, I think it's fair to include the disillusionment as well as the excitement.

Today, I have hit that point that I remember hitting in Germany. The point where you pretty much just want to say "enough!" and crawl into bed or call the airline and inquire about preponing the return date.

I don't want to falsely describe this place as a jewish concentration camp for masochistic linguists, but I think they acquired a few nasty habits from the Nazis. Sure. I'm paying them to push my limits and expedite learning, but somewhere in the fine print I missed the part where I waived my right to sanity...and while we're on that particular etymologic root, sanitation. Yeah, cause with a campus of thousands of students, it seems that the only place people seem to know about where one can do laundry is this elusive Tolkienesque "French Hill" which I can't seem to find on any map. Should I be able to locate it, going there would entail one of two unreasonable concessions. First, I could walk with my laundry (somehow) the fifteen minute walk to wherever this place is and then trudge back with it. Option Two would be to pay for a cab both there and back. The former seems like suicide in the heat and would require doing one load at a time - as much as I could fit into a backpack. The latter would be unduly expensive. So - I have a hygiene dilema which I am simply too mentally bankrupt to remedy.

I have a big exam tomorrow on all the material we've covered since the beginning - which I 'm not terribly worried about since I had one of the highest scores on the initial exam. Nevertheless, I have a lot of homework to do in addition to preparing for the test itself. Right now, I would be most happy to go back to my room and take a nap. BUT - it's a bit too hot to go back to the dorm now. The only AC is the breeze at night, which I am allowed to enjoy if I happen to open the window after my roommate falls asleep. He and his middle-eastern thermostat find it too cold to leave the window open. So, one of us sleeps well while the other resents him. I think that even with the window open, I still lose when you factor in the noises he makes trying to breathe.

Anyway - hopefully I'll be re-inspired - today was just a really tough day. I almost burst into tears in the language lab. We have these funky norwegian consoles where we sit and "interact" with a recording. The thing both plays and records us though the little headset/microphone combo AND the teacher sits at the front console and can switch her channel to "listen-in" on any one of us at any time. Mind you, the thing we listened to today could have been in Swahili as far as I am concerned. I just got bits and pieces and couldn't really "respond" to very much - and when I did - I did so at a delay which cut into the next utterance. Sigh.

I have had some fantastic conversations with Jews about Judaism, and I should really write a book. I don't want to get into it all on here - at least not now, but I am constantly surprised at the discovery that Judaism is essentially a religion of being Jewish and little more. That is to say, the religion of modern Jews consists in how you answer the question, "Are you Jewish?" If you answer yes, you're cool. If you answer no, you get a pitiful stare which seems to say at once, "G-d, how unfortunate for you that you aren't Jewish AND you have no appreciation for how lucky you are that you aren't Jewish." It's the most mixed message ever. Not to mention, everyone who asks has his own idea of what a "yes" answer means and assumes you agree, AND everyone who answers, reserves the right to define Judaism in such a way that it includes him but draws the circle's boundary mere inches from his own toes. I am increasingly shocked at how much more I know about Judaism than most Jews. I am ALSO increasingly shocked that they realize this, are uncomfortable with that fact, yet never seem to take initiative to learn about the implications of their preciously peculiar adjective for themselves.

Anyhow - that's the news for today. I still feel safe despite the posters they just tacked all over campus cautioning us that this Gaza/Palestinian/Kidnapped-Soldier crisis is likely to incite some extremist whack-o's to violence. So, I guess we'll see. All I know is that anyone who has been to New York City and felt like they were entrenched in cultural chaos and at arm's length from the world's oddest and most unstable characters, should go into downtown Jerusalem and talk to the re-incarnate jesuses and king davids that wander Ben Yehuda Street. Fun times.