Sunday October 30th through Saturday November 5th

I'm back to blogging after 4 and a half days without wifi.  My overnight accomodations in Tel Aviv were adequate, overpriced, and a giant step down from what I had become used to in Ukraine.

On Sunday Morning, having been strictly instructed to be back at the airport between 9 and 930am, I was on the street in Tel Aviv at 730am looking for a taxi.  After rejecting one taxi with a greedy driver who would have sapped my chi in no time, I was happy to pay 150 Shekels to a driver named Elijah (Eliohou in Hebrew) who gave me a 10 Shekel discount for my volunteer service.  We had a nice conversation and he thanked me for volunteering as we said goodbye at the airport named for David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister.

I arrived at the airport at 8 am and met the volunteer coordinator for Volunteers for America and was told to relax and wait.  

At about 11am groups were formed, apparently by language spoken (there was a group from France) and by age and we were sent to our respective buses after briefly meeting our leaders (Madrichot in Hebrew).  Our Madricha is a 21 year old woman who is a corporal in the Israeli Defense Force and is Mexican-Israeli (fluent in English, Spanish, and Hebrew) and a "lone soldier", meaning she serves Israel and her parents live abroad. (I'm having problems posting pictures but will do so later, when the tech Gods are smiling on me)

We traveled for about two and a half hours with a stop at a restarurant for lunch, finally arriving at our Army base in mid afternoon.  We were a group of 8 men and 5 women, all 60 or over except a young French Canadian woman in her 20s, an American woman from St. Louis age 27 volunteering with her mother, and a 24 year old former forest firefighter from Oregon who hopes to join the Israeli Army.  There is a married couple, 4 New Yorkers, and a former Canadian, now American citizen from Birmingham, Alabama who holds several world land speed records on a motorcycle.  Somehow, I can clearly hear my Mother saying "a nice Jewish boy does not ride a motorcycle".  I still think she would like Sidney Conn of Birmingham, Alabama.

We were outfitted with uniforms, mostly ill-fitting and beat up, but we accepted them in good humor.

 We had our first Army meal Sunday evening and it was surprisingly good.

 We also had a look at the soldiers serving in our area of what we learned is a very large Army base.  They seemed a bit standoffish as, I'm sure, we did to them.  Within two days we had met and dined and joked with many of them and they are amazing young people.  Unlike any other army in the world, everyone in Israel grows up knowing they will serve in the Army or the Air Force or the Israeli Navy when they grow up.  They come into their required service (three years for men and two years for women) knowing they are responsible for protecting the people of Israel from enemies who have sworn to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews and live right next door to Israel. 

On Monday the 31st we had breakfast at 745am and the obligatory flag raising ceremony at 830am.

 This was the schedule every day followed by our work assignments. The work was mostly warehouse work.  Removing and reorganizing equipment and supplies for combat soldiers.  Sometimes a bit of heavy lifting but mostly dirty and dusty work.  We are supervised by soldiers as young as 19 and its great fun interacting with them.  They are very curious about us and very grateful to the point that it's embarrasing.  We remind them that its we who thank them for what they do to protect Israel.  Tuesday and Wednesday brought us closer to each other as we learned more and closer to the soldiers from whom we learned so much.  The work continued to be dirty, sometimes tedious, and tiring.  I'm sleeping on an Army steel frame single "bed" which sags terribly even with three foam mattresses stacked on it.  That being said, I sleep soundly every night.  After dinner at 730pm we have some kind of activity.  On Sunday we introduced ourselves and told the group of Volunteers what our motivations and expectations were for our time in Sar-El.  Monday the base commander met with us and expressed his gratitude for the help we provide.  Tuesday, two former elite soldiers, now reservists, told us about their difficult training and service in the days prior to Israel's leaving Gaza in 2005.  Wednesday we talked about our work experiences and played charades with animal names and the answers had to be given in Hebrew.  Thursday we worked for an hour and a half and had an early lunch before boarding a chartered bus to Tel Aviv.  There we said goodbye to three of our Sar-El mates who were serving just one week.  I and two others, Debbie from Australia and Ed from London took a bus to Jerusalem and then the Jerusalem light rail train to our neighboring Hostels/Hotels.  Mine is a Hotel on Jaffa street, right on the lite rail line and in the middle of a nice commercial area.   It took about six hours traveling from our base to finally arrive in Jerusalem that we (me and Debbie and Edward) didn't do much besides get something to eat and rest up for Friday.  Friday I got up early and went to Jerusalem's main market area at Kahane Yehuda, a 20 minute walk from my hotel.  It was intense and crowded with people buying things for Shabbot/Shabbas/the Sabbath, beginning at sundown, but most of the the Jewish owned stores are closed by 3pm.  The market is wonderful and I found myself just standing and watching all the people going about their business in, what seemed like organized chaos.

 

I should mention that one purpose I have for this trip is to give away $51 to the poor or otherwise needy.  This started for me when I rented a phone for Israel from an Orthodox Jewish owned company in New York.  The phone and charger arrived with a folded dollar bill in the box with the explanation that it should be given to someone in need when traveling abroad.  It's a Jewish tradition  I wasn't familiar.  I was sufficiently moved by their gesture that I got 50 other single dollars to give away.  I started Friday, both with the poor who are begging and some street musicians.  It felt good even if they didn't say thank you, or maybe just didn't speak English, or maybe I just didn't undersand them.  Ultimately, giving is not about "thank you", it's just about giving.  

From  the market I walked to the Old City where I read about 50 prayers for family and friends and folded each and inserted them in cracks in the Wall.

 From the Wall I went to King David's tomb

 King David' Tomb is in a room adjacent to a small operationg synagogue.  So to see King David's Tomb you walk throgh the Synagogue and nobody seems to notice.

 I went upstairs in the same building and visited the "Upper Room" which is the site of the Last Supper.  Very few people were there and it sure feels like it really is the site of the Last Supper.

 I had visited both last year and just wanted the same experience again.  Because the Jewish businesses close early (2 to 3pm) on Friday, I took the light rail train back to the Hotel and went in search of a falafel that Phyllis and I found last year.  I searched for a while and just as I was about to give up, there it was....

It was busy and pushy and I enjoyed one of their giant falafel made in a large soft tortilla, a cross cultural culinary wonder if ever there was one.

I went back to the hotel forgetting that food would be hard to find later on Friday, but I had blog to write etc.

I got up early and ate the limited free breakfast at the Hotel.  Toast, salad, and many spreads for toast.  Some salad and four slices of toast later I set off on foot (no buses or light rail trains on Shabbot) for the Old City area.  I went to the Garden Tomb first, this is one of two places that Christ is said to be buried.  Last year I was alone in the tomb for ten minutes.  Today the Garden was full of tourists from all over the world and it would take 10 minutes standing in line to get into the tomb with a bunch of tourists.  I declined  and kept the memories of my last visit close to me.  

I returned to the Western Wall to say two more prayers for friends I had forgotten about and remembered last night.  The Wall was crowded because of Shabbot and lots and lots of tourists wearing matching hats so they don't get lost from their tour group.

Then with much trepidation engendered by the many tour groups who clogged the sidewalks I set out to visit the Church of St. Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives.  Some of you reading this have heard of my visit last year to the site of the remains of Prince Philip's Mother.  She was known as Princesse Andrew of Greece or Alice of Battenberg.  She was deaf since birth, spoke five languages fluently and could read lips perfectly.  Her Husband was a drunk and a gambler and disappeared before the Nazis occupied Greece.  She was living in an apartment in Athens and in 1942 she was contacted by a Jewish family she knew before the war.  They asked if there was anything she could do because the Nazis were executing all Jewish males age13 and up, and the rest of the Jews were being shipped to death camps.  Without hesitation she took them into her apartment and kept them safe until 1945 when the war ended.  On several occassions Hitler's Gestapo came to her door to search her apartment.  Every time she feigned that she didn't understand them and each time they became frustrated and left.  Had they discovered the Jewish family in her apartment, she would have been taken away with them.  Princesse Andrew is recognized as Righteous Among the Nations (a term to describe those non-Jews who risked their own lives to protect Jews during the war) at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Museum.  She had an aunt who was a nun and was buried in Jerusalem which caused her to want to be buried there also.  Princesse Andrew, herself, became a nun, late in life, founding her own order.  Okay, enough back story.  

Last year I arrived with a stone given by my Synagogue on Holocaust Remembrance Day, intending to place it at the resting place of Princesse Andrew.  (this is the short version...if you want the long version of last year's visit you can look at last year's blog by just removing "2016" from this current blog address).   I was directed to find the nun in the gift shop.  An elderly nun (wait, I'm 72, she could actually be a little younger than me) was selling souvenirs.  I waited and then asked her if she could direct me to the burial place of Princesse Andrew.  Without hesitation she asked "are you a friend of the Royal Family?".  I said no but I had written a letter three weeks earlier to Prince Philip expressing my admiration for his late Mother and telling him of my mission to place a stone at her burial place.  His response arrive while I was gone and wished me well.  I did my best and most convincing argument ever as to why I was worthy of admission to the grave site of Princesse Andrew, and after what seemed like a long speech the nun reached for a key and said "follow me"  she took me to a small room behind oak doors which contained only an oak coffin raised off the floor.  She closed the doors and we talked for 15 to 20 minutes about Princesse Andrew and she showed me pictures she had taken of Prince Philip standing where I was.  The experience had me in tears and I couldn't stop thanking her for letting me in.  

Okay, fast forward to today.  The Church and the approach streets and sidewalks are overrun with Russian tourists and I'm sure that 1. the nun won't possibly remember me, 2. She won't buy my argument about why I'm worthy of visiting Princesse Andrew's resting place, and 3. I'll leave disappointed and shedding a different kind of tears.  instead, a miracle happened.  The same "elderly" nun was selling souvenirs in the gift shop.  I smiled uncontrollably because I then knew something good was happening.  When she finished with the last customer I asked her if she remembered me.  She said "of course I remember you".  Now I know that nuns aren't supposed to lie, but I couldn't believe that she actually did remember me.  She summoned a younger nun and directed her to take me to Princesse Andrews remains.  Just like that I was in.  It gets even better.  The young nun took me to the room and said she had work to do and she would leave me there alone and to find her when I was done so she could lock the door.  By now I'm in a total state of amazement.  I spent ten minutes talking to Princesse Andrew thanking her for her heroic acts during the Holocaust, and taking pictures and lo and behold, the stone I left last year was exactly where I left it and I left this year's stone besides it.

 After, I returned to the gift shop to thank the older nun (she wouldn't tell me her name or allow me to take her picture because her work is about helping others and not at all about her.  A scene from last year repeated itself.  Last year I purchased a $2 refrigerator magnet with a $10 bill and told her to keep the change for the good work she and the other nuns do.  I had to fight her to keep the $8 but I won and she cleverly snuck five post cards into the bag with the magnet.  Today, there was only one refrigerator magnet in the whole shop.  It was a duplicate of the one I bought last year and I gave her a $10 bill and reminded her that once again I wasn't taking any change.  She was fine with it and gave me some brochures about a girls school in Jerusalem where the money goes.  We shook hand and agreed to see each other again next year, God willing.  A day in my life I will never forget.  I wasn't going to top that so I headed back to the Hotel.  I took a short cut through the Arab Quarter of the Old City and felt fine without seeing anyone else who wasn't an Arab and without seeing any police or any soldiers.  I had never been in the Arab Quarter but I somehow felt safe and comfortable.

I did some writing this afternoon and waited for the sunset and the opening of Jewish businesses, more particularly the falafel place I had rediscovered yesterday.  I went there with the two Sar-El friends who are staying nearby.  Debbie Sher is an Australian and Ed Newman is a Londoner.  At the falafel stand I met a family of 8 from Mexico City and had a great time using what little Spanish I have.  Their picture (I asked them all to say "caso" before I snapped the picture) will appear here when I have faster wifi.

I better pack and get to bed.  We have to be in Tel Aviv at 9am.  That will require a light rail ride and a bus trip.  Sunday morning is expected to be a madhouse at the bus station with all the soldiers returning to duty (and all the Sar-El volunteers) so I better be out the door by 630am.
THE NEXT BLOG ENTRY WILL BE NEXT THURSDAY OR FRIDAY FROM TEL AVIV WHERE I'LL BE FOR THREE DAYS BEFORE FINDING MY WAY BACK TO FORT MYERS BY WAY OF L'VIV UKRAINE AND NEW YORK....FEEL FREE TO LEAVE COMMENTS OR CALL ME ANYTIME AT 831-713-4359...shalom leitraot from Jerusalem