Update Time!
These past few weeks have been fun and interesting. A lot of work and a lot of good food as well. Seems to be a theme.
On the topic of food. A few weeks ago I decided to cook a non traditional Shabbat dinner, the main course being homemade macaroni and cheese with a little hot pepper twist, it was DELICIOUS. I highly recommend.
My internship is starting to pick up a bit more and I have had some interesting interviews to conduct and stories to write. I interview 4 young participants here on a program where they study, volunteer and tour together, they were all 18. So young, such a different perspective on life and Israel, yet still very interesting. This time I met them all at the places where they volunteer, it was nice to actually see them in their environment and see new places in Jerusalem. Very bright, nice young people.
While conducting all of these interviews I found myself near the shuk and just had to find this Indian restaurant my friend had been telling me about, it took a bit of searching and asking Israelis who thought I was crazy looking for and Indian restaurant in the shuk but I eventually found it. Highly recommended.
My boss also gave me an interesting mission. There was an article written about a pretty famous chef in Tel Aviv. In the article it mentioned how he went to a Hadassah Youth Village for a year as a child so my boss wanted me to get a hold of him and interview him. I wasn’t sure where to begin but I emailed the lady who originally wrote the article and I contacted the restaurant. The next day I was pleasantly surprised to get a phone call from the restaurant manager willing to setup a meeting with me. He said you can talk to Aviv on the phone in Hebrew or you can come in and talk with him in English and I will help if there is language problems. So I figured why not? And I made a plan to visit them the next week. My boss was so excited for me and helped me plan out all of the necessary questions to get his full story.
I arrived at the restaurant and it was quite a nice place. A big restaurant room and a big bar area. They had me wait at the bar for him. I sat there trying to look busy, not sure how long this could take. Eventually he showed up with his restaurant manager. Both very friendly guys and we began chatting, I tried to write down as much as possible but they were chatting in Hebrew and I was trying to follow them and write everything down in English. Not so easy but fun.
We got chatting about his childhood – he made a lot of trouble as a kid, kicked out of a few schools and eventually the army as well but finally found his passion in cooking and has done pretty well for himself. I will post the article once I finish it. I started to ask him about the best burger place in town, he thought about it for a few seconds then decided to order me his burger. I have to admit it was pretty tasty. I had already eaten lunch but I wasn’t going to pass up a free, gourmet meal and ate the whole thing. Yum.
That same day was Idan’s final cooking course, he had been studying once a week for almost 6 months. The last week was reserved for them to invite family and friends to join them at their “restaurant” as they served us food they made. It was quite a nice experience. A 4 course meal prepared by the students. The first plate was ceviche (raw fish on top of cut up strawberries and kiwi). I am not the biggest ceviche fan but it was pretty good. Then we got a bowl of bean soup. On top of it was a turkey\chicken ball that was tempura-ed with a homemade breadstick through it. Soup wasn’t my favorite but the rest was quite tasty. The main course was beef over a pile of cooked spinach and mashed potatoes with a hint of wasabi in them and a ball of wasabi on top with a caramel gravy. It was to die for. They were bringing out second plates. The dessert was the classic warm, chocolate cake with this interesting homemade stick cookie on top covered in cinnamon and sugar with a bit of vanilla sauce. Tasty as well. As you can see, I ate well that day.
I have also had a lot of progress with my group project for school. I joined a new team this year and our focus was to work on a “green” initiative in Jerusalem. After almost a whole semester of meeting with people and searching for a good partnership we found this community center in Nachlaot (the center of the city) who is starting a composting initiative in their community. So we are working with them to help perfect the distribution of composting buckets, aid in their marketing plan and advise them on how to move forward with the next steps of their program. They are happy to have us and we are happy to work with them, they are organized and ready to move. Its nice to finally find a project a be a part of a team that is going somewhere. Because I am now working to help this community spread compost, I must begin myself. The community center gave each of us in our group a special composting pail and this week I have begun. I am lucky to have a community garden right below my apartment so I hope this is fun and easy. I will let you know how it goes!
(our compost bin, day 1)
This week an interesting opportunity was offered to me, visiting an Absorption Center just outside of Jerusalem. For those of you who do not know, an Absorption Center is a place where new immigrants come to live and learn during their first year or two of live in Israel. It is for anyone but often there are a great deal of people from the former Soviet Union and particularly Ethiopian Jews.
My cousin was here on a program last summer and put me in touch with a women he met that works at the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem. I met her last week for coffee and she was telling me about her job here, organizing different mission trips for people visiting Israel. She offered for me to come with her on the next one and I figured, why not? What a cool experience.
So yesterday I met her at the Absorption Center in Mevasseret, a community just outside Jerusalem. As we waited for the group to show up I met the guest, Benny, who was speaking to the group, a man who was born in Ethiopia and made aliyah when he was a child. He has been in the country for a while now, acclimated well and is now a teacher at a boarding school where many Ethiopian students study. He brought along one of his students who wanted to see what he was doing and where he was speaking.
What made the experience all the more interesting to be a part of is that the group was a group of African American professionals from all over the US. AIPAC sends a group almost every week of different people from the States in order to better educate current and future leaders of the situation that actually exists in Israel.
This group had very little knowledge about the country and the recent large scale Ethiopian immigration. So we sat in the center’s library for a while talking about Benny’s story, the story of his student and the story of the Ethiopian people in Israel. The group was fascinated, as you can imagine. It was quite interesting to witness this conversation and their interactions.
Afterwards they were taken on a tour of the whole center. First we went into a classroom where the adults were learning Hebrew. For some of these people it was one of their first weeks in the classroom. They were learning the basics, the letters and their name. They were seems so nervous as we walked in but one of the students said he spoke English and told a bit about his story. Said he was in Israel just over a week and point out his wife sitting next to him who was 6 months pregnant. He was so happy to be in Israel and so thankful. There are a million different reasons why this was an unreal experience for everyone at the same time I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was going on but everyone enjoyed it. Seeing a people they never knew existed, dressed unlike them. How different the worlds of both of these groups of people were but the both had their roots in Africa. Right before we left, the English speaker spoke up again, telling the group how happy he was to be in Israel, how lucky he feels and to please bring the rest of the Jew from Ethiopia. He was so genuinely happy and appreciative. One our way out the group learned the word for “thank you” in Amharic, the language of Ethiopia. Each and every face lit up once we said it. They were so happy and excited to hear something familiar.
Afterwards we toured one of the kindergarten classrooms. There were nearly 30 children sitting in chairs looking at their teachers, it was music class. As soon as we walked in they all put their hands out and wanted a high five, they had so much energy and excitement, they were all so excited to see visitors. Everyone in the room was smiling – in a situation so unfamiliar. The kids sang a song and some of the visitors joined in with the hand motions, the kids loved it, giggled and pointed. The teacher showed us 5 students who were new to Israel within the last week, one of the girls had already caught on to the Hebrew song, it was quite incredible. On our way out again we said “thank you” but you could notice very few of the kids even noticed, they are too young to really remember Amharic after all of the Hebrew they have been surrounded with for the last few months of their lives.
To say the least it was an eye opening cultural experience for everyone that day and I am glad I was able to take part in it.
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