Thieves! Damn Thieves!

My camera was stolen today from my locked room, along with my one roomies laptop and iPod, and my other roomies iPhone.  So, despite the fact that I haven't updated my blog recently, I lost all of my recent pictures.  More to follow when we hear back from the police that were supposed to come out here today to dust for prints.  Lugubrious.

Kibbutz Life

So, after some unexpected goading from my relatives, I realized that I had not yet posted any pictures of where I live.  I suppose a brief description is first in order.  I live on a kibbutz (suburban Israeli communal town) called Ramat Yochanan, which is located on the outskirts of a city called Kiryat Ata.  Its about 20 minutes from Haifa by car, and we can actually see the city lights from the road that leads to the Kibbutz.  Kibbutzim (Kibbutzeses) generally have an income-generating industry and the people all pay into a central bank and have the money divided up according to a person's needs.  IE: a family with 6 children would receive more funds and larger, or nicer, accomodations than, say, a 28 year old single guy.  There are certain benefits to this lifestyle though.  Generally, the kibbutz gives you free meals, provides cars, has leisure activities, supermarkets with reduced prices, post offices, banks, and in the case of Ramat Yochanan, a health care center and nursing home.

In the case of Ramat Yochanan, their "income generator" is an orchard, a dairy farm, and a multi-national plastics company called Palram.  Palram has a factory on the kibbutz, a factory in China, a factory in Allentown, PA, and one somewhere in Europe.  They are the largest supplier of plastic sheets to Home Depot, and they pretty much built China's olympic stadium.  Ramat Yochanan (the kibbutz) owns 78% of Palram, and is the second "richest" kibbutz in Israel.  The other being Magan Michael- which is on the sea, and therefore decidedly better (and harder to get into) than Ramat Yochanan.

Anyway..here's some pictures:


This is my room..its actually cleaner than normal in this picture


gated community

This is the health clinic

We have a school that teaches elementary through high school

This is a kibbutznik's house

The whole place is basically a giant park

We've got the dairy farm- and we sell all the milk, none of it is used on the kibbutz for some reason.

Tennis courts and basketball courts too

This is the dining hall, or Hadar Ochel, there is a resident artist that did the mural

There is a pub that is open on Thursdays and Fridays

This is the outside of the Ulpan rooms

We also have a covered, olympic-sized, swimming pool. Its currently drained of water due to a prior water festival that involved geese and ducks in the pool.

This is where we have bonfires and such

This is the grapefruit orchard

Cool view of the mountains. To the right of this ridge is Mt. Carmel
...and for the last entry on this blog post...there's the safety aspect of the kibbutz. Below is a video of the Ulpan bunker. I've never seen a bunker that was in use as a bunker until I came here, so until I hear a siren or explosion, I think its a cool place.

want to know what i love about Israel?

the sunsets.

עכו (Akko)

Went to Akko today, and I didn't believe everyone when they told me how amazing it was.  HOLY MOSES!  Coolest place I've ever been in my life.  The city is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in Israel, and was first mentioned in historical texts concerning the Pharaoh Tuthmosis III around 2,000 BC.  It is also mentioned in the bible (Judges 1:31), and has seen Greek, Roman, Crusader, Ottoman and Arab conquests throughout history.  There are ruins which you can just walk on- no payment, no tour guide, and the "old city" section of Akko is medieval.  I watched the sun disappear on the horizon of the Mediterranean, I walked through a crusader tunnel, saw a real open air arab market, ate some shwarma and took lots of wicked pics and videos.  Here are some, and the videos are coming soon- they take a while to upload.  I'm going back with the kibbutz people on a group tour later in the month, instead of just going with some friends like today.  So, more on history to come, I'm sure.  Thats all for now, enjoy the photos :)

edit: so, here's a video and a picture, the internet is slow.  more to come later.




this is when we first got there, just a panorama of the old sea wall and the old city







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The Chicken Ritual...

update: I know some of the pics aren't opening up to a larger size, but I'm not sure why.  Check them out on my flickr page.  link is on the right side.  also added a video of some jews chanting :)

So, I went to Tsfat last night.  Tsfat is one of the 4 holy cities of Judaism, the other three being Hebron, Jerusalem and....  ok, right.  So, Tsfat is one of the 4 holy cities of Judaism.  During the high holidays, and specifically on Yom Kippur, thousands of Israeli Jews flock to one of two places- Tzfat and Jerusalem.  That's the story.  So, the day before Yom Kippur is the ritual of Kaporot.  The "traditional" Kaporot ritual goes like this:  Orthodox rabbi takes a chicken, grabs it by the neck, and swings it around in a circle above the head of himself and another Jew five times.  The bird is symbolically absorbing all the sins of the person who's head it is being killed above.  Nowadays, they do it like this: they hold the chicken above the head of another person 5 seperate times, slice open its neck, let it bleed out into a bucket, and feed it to the poor.  All the chicken must be eaten, as this makes it a mitzvah (good deed).  In the interests of not being stoned by orthodox Jews, I didn't take any pictures.  However, I'm sure that a youtube.com search would yield results.

Tsfat is a really nice looking place, and despite the fact our tour was at 11pm, I did manage to get some pictures of the city.  It's an incredibly old place, so the parts of the city I saw were quite medieval looking, which at night made it even more interesting- albeit not easy to photograph well.  Below are some pictures, and they're mainly of streets and shuls, but I put up some of the better ones so you can see some of it for yourself .  I've made plans to scooter back there with my roommate so we can get daytime pictures- it was that sababa (cool).  Anyway...  pics!!

 The guy in the white, center, looks like Jesus to me...  link

outside a synogogue  link

really old section of the city.  link

Same picture with flash.  link

Entrance to a park.  link

more of the old city.  link

just looking at rooftops.  from this point, during the day, you can see the Med.  link

walking past some shuls in the Old Jewish Quarter. link

Ruins of a building on the outskirts of the city.  link

That's all for now, folks.  I'm going to make some Turkish coffee and head into town on foot and take some videos.  There's an eerie silence here right now, since literally no one in the country except police, fire, and EMS vehicles are on the roads.  NO ONE DRIVES on Yom Kippur, if you do, the people will throw stones at your car and cause injuries to you and damage to your vehicle.  The streets are filled with bicycles and pedestrians instead, so it should make for some interesting footage :)

safed

I'm heading to Tsfat tonight with the ulpan.  I'm told its where kabalah originated, and that all of the haredim go to Tsfat (also called Safed) or Jerusalem for Yom Kippur.  This should be interesting, so I'm going to try and take a lot of pictures.

שנאה טובה

I'd write this in Hebrew, but no one would really get it. L'shanah tovah, chag sameach, v'ata v'mishpachot. Happy new year to you and your families. May it be peaceful and successful. Every rosh hashana here we (because I'm officially an Israeli citizen) say a prayer that gilad shalit be freed and reunited with his family. Rosh hashana is less spiritual here and despite the Jewishness of the holiday, it's more of a secular holiday here. People spend time with families and friends and go to new years parties, just like in the US. They celebrate new years in january also, but they call it something completely different. It's somewhat weird how everything closes here like on new years in the US, but rather than freezing temps and snow, it's like 90 and humid right now. We're all going to a giant kibbutz party, so I'll keep this short. Shanah tovah, and to all my Christian friends....uhhhhhhhhhh....enjoy your Wednesday.