The Million Person Rally...sort of

You have never truly cottage cheese until
 you have eaten Israeli cottage cheese

Since I've been in Israel, there has been a social protest going on. They started out as protests against a rise in the subsidized price of cottage cheese. I know that sounds absurd but you truly have not experienced cottage cheese until you have eaten Israeli cottage cheese. It is an essential part of a traditional Israeli breakfast. I refuse to eat cottage cheese in the US but I have bought it every time I have gone to Shufersal or the closer supermarket, Machsanei Lahav.

The protests started in earnest with a single tent on Rothchild Boulevard, one of the wealthiest streets in Tel Aviv. More and more people came until it was a tent city, alive at night with the sounds of drum circles and acoustic guitars. Different groups came together from all political parties to protest the high cost of living in Israel: students protested the lack of affordable housing, doctors protested their long hours and low wages, and some people protested just because that is what the cool kids were doing.

Protesting on the shoulders of my suit-mate.
 Photo credit: Darielle Shandler

That is where I come in. A month and a half into the protests they tent cities had spread to different cities throughout the country. They had held several rallies, the biggest in Israel's history, the new commentators and journalists were predicting that the protest was running out of steam. The leaders of the protests decided that they needed to rejuvenate their efforts. A million-person rally, they dreamed, by far the biggest in Israel's short existance. More than one out of every eight people in the country. There was no way I would miss it.

The night of the protest I went downtown to Kikar Hamedina, Tel Aviv's largest square, to check out the action. I went with five friends, but by the time I elbowed my way to the middle of the giant crowd I had lost all the others except for my friend Max. We felt like individual curds of cottage cheese stuffed into the container with the heat turned up to about 150 degrees. Luckily, there was no spoilage.

One of the heads of the protest, Daphne Leaf, spoke about the significance of the rally and why they should continue to be upset with the government. Then Hadag Nachash, a popular Israeli Hip-Hop group performed three songs, including the appropriate song, "Lo Frayerim," which talks about Israelis not wanting to be suckers for paying high taxes and going on mandatory military reserve duty.

This sign doesn't necessarily reflect my political
view because I have not solidified mine yet.
Whether or not it reflects your's, you
have to admit that it looks cool.

There were a lot of cool signs with clever slogans and striking designs, one of which I snagged from the side of the road after we left. It reads "The nation is mentally ill (sick in the head). Sometimes Advil isn't enough and you need to switch it's head." This of course, is a reference the the Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, and was sponsored by Kadima, the opposition to Netayahu's Likud Party.

On the way home we quietly chanted the slogan of the protest to ourselves: העם דורש צדק חברתי (the nation demands social justice).

The next day the media outlets reported that the rally totaled approximately 450,000 people across Israel. Not nearly the million protestors that were promised, but still the largest protest that ever existed in the country. More than fifteen percent of the population participated and I still didn't see anyone I knew. Maybe this country is bigger than I thought it was...

Mailbag

Israel's postal service. Do'ar Yisrael:
In everyplace, for everyone

Hey everyone, while I hope that you are enjoying my blog posts, I wanted to put some of the choice in the hands of you, the reader! Next week I will write a mailbag post, following after my favorite writer on ESPN.com, Bill Simmons. Feel free to write me any questions about my experience as a comment on this post, a message on facebook, or via e-mail.

The Nineteith Minute, Part 2

No, he is not hurt, he is kissing the "land" of Israel.

When we got off of the airplane I had a wave of nostalgia for the country I had left just several hours before. We got off the plane and walked down a staircase to the ground and boarding busses instead of walking straight into the terminal. Now this might sounds ridiculous, but I remember when you used to fly into Ben Gurion Airport and go through the same process. It used to be a little different because the when more religious passengers stepped onto the tarmac, they would get down on their knees and kiss the 'land,' which was sort of strange because the asphalt there hasn't even been there since the time of Herzl, let alone the time of King David.

Once through the teensy airport we got onto a chartered bus that took us to our hotel. On the way, an Israeli woman named Orit told us a little about the Island and some activities she organized for all of us (if we were interested). The two of us were surprised and happy that we could understand everything that she was saying in Hebrew. We decided that we were not interested in touring around Malta with a bunch of Israelis who were, on average, 15-20 years older than us.

Also, we had some scuba diving to do!

Krispini: a way to put Christmas
cheer on your hands and that romantic
garlic smell on your breath

We got to our hotel in the early afternoon. Josh decided to go for his first dive so he took a bus to the diving center while I took a nap and then went shopping for some groceries. In the area we were staying there were no big grocery stores, but there were lots of cute markets, sort of similar to a makolet in Israel. I bought us provisions for the coming days including a curious snack of garlic-flavored hollow crunchy sticks. We were surprised by how good they were when we ate them the next day, but I was a little creeped out by the Christmas-like green and red residue that they left on my hand that resembled glitter in look and processed garlic and salt in flavor.

On the first night Josh and I decided to take a nap before finding a place for dinner. When we woke up in the morning, we realized that we had taken a bit more than a nap. Rejuvenated and ready for the coming day, we packed sandwiches and headed down to the continental breakfast buffet. We liberated a few fruits from the buffet and then got picked up by the diving school.

In the process or scuba diving certification I had to watch three videos that looked like they were made in the 80's, replete with musical transitions of synthesizers and drum-kits, short-shorts, and different dated fonts for every important note that you needed to remember in order to prevent injury. At the end of the last video, the copyright date said 1999.

The other section is the practical, where you actually get to go into the water and practice the skills that you saw in the videos. My favorite skill that I had to learn is the controlled emergency ascent which involves taking your regulator (mouth piece) out and yelling "AAAAHHHHHHHHH" as you ascend to the surface. Yelling is not necessary, but I learned that it makes it a lot more fun. The idea is to prevent the air in your lungs from expanding too much and causing your lungs to burst, therefore you expel at a consistent rate until you reach the surface.

Me and Josh

The open water dives that I went on were very cool. I got to swim through schools of tiny fish and swim around the rusted metal skeleton of an old ship. I don't think I could tell you more about what I saw down there because I was too busy concentrating on maintaining my buoyancy and equalizing the pressure in my sinuses (think clearing your ears on an airplane).

The Nineteith Minute, Part 1

I apologize (sincerely) for my lack of posts. Every week of ulpan has gotten more intense: more material, more homework, and more grammar. We did, however, get a three day break (plus two days of weekend) off from class. What did I do, you ask? Flew to Malta and learned how to scuba dive. I'm sure you had a nice weekend too...

My trip started badakah hatish'im, that is to say, in the 90th minute. In Israel, the expression "הדקה התשעים" (hadakah hatish'im, the 90th minute) means the last minute. It is a reference to the 90th minute, the last, in a regulation soccer game. It is also the name of an Israeli travel website where you can book cheap last minute deals. Josh, my classmate from ulpan, would say that it is also a good metaphor for the Israeli culture, but that is another post.

For those of you who knew nothing about Malta
(which included me until a week and a half ago) here is a map
showing where Malta is relative to the rest of the Mediterranean. 

The aforementioned Josh approached me at the beginning of last week and asked me if I wanted to go scuba diving with him in Malta over the long weekend. I think you'll agree with me that it was reasonable for me to be skeptical. Traveling with a relatively new friend to a relatively obscure island country in the middle of the Mediterranean. On top of that, trying something new with potential risks like being eaten by relatively obscure scaly animal with teeth the size of my fists.

I simultaneously investigated and tried to convince my parents to let me go, in case I actually decided to give it the green light. It was a good price for the tickets and the hotel and, did I mention, I was going to learn how to scuba dive?!?! Josh confirmed the flight on Thursday and the flight was to depart at on Friday at 4:30am from Ben Gurion Airport. When we got to the airport, we found out that the flight was actually delayed for three and a half hours.

We spent an hour swept up in an angry mob of Israelis, who booked the same flight, looking for someone to get yell at. We tried to appeal to a manager, but he had already gone to sleep, not surprising since it was past 2 in the morning. Josh and I decided to take after the manager and found a corner to sleep until the check-in opened up.

We boarded the airplane at around 7:45 and I don't think that I could have stayed awake, even if I had chugged two Redbulls and ran an IV of Mountain Dew. Two hours later we woke up in Malta.