One Shabbat

 It’s a Saturday afternoon after lunch, after kehila, and I am laying in bed in my first pair of shorts this spring. I want to read one of the books in the stack by my bed-- a collection of Berry’s agrarian essays? A Tozer theology work? But I can’t keep my eyes open. The sunshine coming through the back windows and onto the backs of my legs feels so delicious… and even though we live in one of the world’s capital cities, the light, far away rattle of plastic game pieces and the sporadic pleasant murmurings of the kids playing a board game is all I can hear from my room. On a breezy Shabbat afternoon, there are no cars racing down streets or highschoolers cheering, or construction machines clanging or bat mitzvah rehearsal DJs  blasting. Just quiet. A belly full of shawarma. And a yummy sunspot. And …zzz….

Ivrit

 

The Mehane Yehuda market (souk) is the most popular souk in the Jerusalem area outside of the Old City itself. I’ve not yet walked through it when shops are open for business, but on one occasion shortly after our arrival here, I remember walking across its entrance, the sounds that floated in my direction sounding like the bazaars in Disney’s Aladdin. At the time, I was still insecure about navigating Jaffa Street, and my oldest child, in punctuated whispers, scolded me for how American I looked as I studied Google Maps every few steps. Apparently, I was sticking out like a sore thumb. I no longer find my way around town with my eyes glued to my phone, and now people often assume I am Jewish, or at least Israeli, but one doesn’t have to scratch very deep to see I’m not quite the real thing. What is the real thing? 

I would venture to say that most people in Jerusalem are first or second generation Israelis. Every language can be heard on the train; after Hebrew and Arabic, English and Russian are the most common languages that you hear, with French and Spanish close behind. Israelis of every color and language.

 

But what does a Jewish person look like? Jewish expression in Israel is so wildly varied. Some women wear wigs because they believe they are not supposed to show their hair. Some opt for fancy tall headdress scarves instead. But not all Jewish women cover their hair. Some men wear little disc-like kippas to cover their heads. Some wear hats with brims, like fedoras. Sometimes if you get really lucky you might see the ones my kids call “the big kahunas,” orthodox men wearing large, boxy, fur covered toppers. (Known as shtreimel, these special holiday hats are primarily worn by some Hasidic Jews of the Ashkenazi variety.) A head covering and tassels (tzitzit) are pretty standard wear for Jewish men and boys. The prayer tassels are for males only- on the bus, at the store, at the park, poking out under tailored suits, from under school uniforms and dirty preschooler play clothes… A man not wearing them here might still be Jewish… but is likely not a practicing Jew. 

 

 

Oftentimes we will see ladies on the trains or at bus stops saying their prayers which they read from books (siddurim) with moving lips. Prayer without ceasing! But just because someone is not reading from a prayer book doesn’t mean they’re not Jewish.

 

 

 

Cell phone yes or no? Well, no smartphones anyway for Orthodox Jews, these people are single-handedly keeping the brick phone market alive! Maybe this is why they seem to be fascinated by the phone screens of others. They will openly read over the shoulders of strangers if they can understand the text. One day while riding the light rail train, Noemie got so annoyed by her curious neighbor that she texted, “Hello woman sitting next to me reading my messages...” The woman looked away shame-faced and didn’t read anymore. 

 

 

 

Does a family have five "stairstep" children? Six? Seven? Likely Jewish. With my four kids, such a small family, people can't really tell if I'm Jewish or not. Can the men shake hands with women or touch them at all? Can they look directly at a woman? Tovi’s Hebrew teacher definitely avoids looking at and talking to me so I think he’s this kind. He’s much friendlier by text messages. Most Jewish families keep kosher. Not eating pork is pretty universal, but what about having separate refrigerators for meat and dairy? Some do, some don’t.

Someone looking at me might stare at me a little longer than usual trying to figure me out…

She doesn’t cover her hair... She doesn’t limit herself to skirts... She’s not carrying a prayer book... She does carry a smart phone…

If I check off all the “no's", people tend to think I’m just a secular Jewish woman- I must be Jewish, no doubt, by ethnic heritage. My family must have made aliyah (migrated to the motherland) and I just came along for the ride. The fact that I say “Ani lo mevinah Ivrit” (I don’t understand Hebrew) throws them off.

 

 

I am trying! I’m trying to teach myself and I think I’m doing pretty well! But sometimes I embarrass my kids. Like the time I picked a seat next to an orthodox boy on the bus. He must have been about eight years old--  stiff as can be in what I later understood to be a silent panic. He moved (politely) to a different spot on the bus at the next stop. And my kids turned to me, "Mami, how could you?! Didn’t you see he was Orthodox?" I saw it but I didn’t think about it. So I don’t quite fit in. Yet. But you know what? One time a waiter held his hand out to retrieve Noemie's menu and she, not quite understanding his intention, gave him a hearty handshake. So I'm not the only one lost around here.

Thankfully, I embarrass myself more often than I embarrass my kids. Teaching yourself a new language is hard! I have tried most tools in my toolbox- my working vocabulary has reached about 200 words but only about 10 of those are verbs so I can’t do a whole lot with what I know. I started off with a few mostly useless words from Duolingo. (We have been here almost two years and, contrary to what Duolingo would have had me believe, I have not yet come to a moment where I have needed to say, “The dove loves 

wine.”) I picked up a lot more words from analyzing the lyrics of our worship songs at church, only to find that worship music (and poetry and Biblical text) uses different grammar than regular spoken Hebrew. So I picked up some children’s books but they were still too advanced for me. I was looking up almost every word and I didn’t understand the way the sentences were constructed. I decided to write my own “children’s book.” I decided I would start with a simple, three-word sentence: Carrots are orange. What a mess! I started with Google Translate, then double checked with friends, and got five different responses to how to translate that one simple sentence! Gever hu… gever hem … gever ze gvreem… And so I learned that not all of my Hebrew-speaking expat friends had quite mastered the tongue.

 

 

The arduous climb continues. One day at the homeschool community, I called across the meeting room to one of the girls, telling her to come to where I was. “Bo!” I called out with determination, excited to know this simple command. “BOI,” all the girls around me corrected me in giggles. Sigh. Imperatives have genders too?!

Another day I was on a field trip with our teens. I overheard a new girl say “Gamba Beit.” I had just learned the word for red pepper was gamba and of course everyone know that beit is house. “Pepper house!” I interrupted excitedly. And then with some confusion I asked, “Why did you said Pepper House?” The student looked at me like I was bonkers until we figured out that what she had actually said was “Gam ba’beit” which means “also in my house.” Where’s my "stupid" sign? Then one day at church I was really excited to explain to a couple of Danny’s friends (a Brit and a Canadian) that I had been able to discern from the preaching that day, what the Hebrew word for chapter was: “Pecker!” I exclaimed with pride. I realized as soon as it left my mouth that that could not have been it. As both men stood agape, I corrected myself as nonchalantly as possible, “I mean Pereck…” and shuffled away quickly pretending I didn’t know what I said. The men never did quite recover. You’d think I’d give up… but lo (no)!

Last week, one of the girls in music class pointed at an eighth note and asked, “ma ze?” which means “What is that?”…: And I understood her! And better yet, I could bark back "hadash!" which means "new!" I could have said "ze hadash" (this is new) but usually I get so flustered when I’m caught off guard that I can’t master more than one word at a time. Like a caveman-woman. Meanwhile, the Russian deli lady finally had enough of Danny with his Google Translate laziness and she decided to teach him the Hebrew words for 250 and 300 (the number of grams of Swiss cheese and cheddar cheese, respectively, that we buy every. week.) Matayim be’Hamishim. Shloshmot. She waited for him to repeat after her. Shlosh…mot…. You can do this.

Why bother learning? Well, besides the benefits of being able to function better in this society (like understanding what the train conductor is yelling or being able to answer someone who needs help with directions), it opens up the Bible to new understanding. For instance, recognizing that the name for God, Elohim, has the plural ending (im) is to recognize that the name of God implies a plurality of persons, affirming the idea that the Trinity is a reality, built into God's name from the beginning. Or understanding place names might gives us a clue about the reputations or significant features of ancient Biblical cities. Lechem means bread, so Beit Lechem (Bethlehem) means "house of bread." Beit Shemesh means "house (or temple) of the sun." Beit Geulah, the name of our kehila (worship community or church) is not an ancient city, of course, but it was exciting to me to piece together its meaning as I learned more words. It means "House of Redemption." Geulah is the noun "redemption", its participle being go'el... We sing a song at church that says that there is no one like God who is...Go'el Israel, and Moshia ha'olam. The Redeemer of Israel, and Messiah (Savior) of the world. How about the relationship between space and time as depicted by the single word olam (meaning world, universe, space, and eternity) or how the Psalmist gives a pre-Einsteinian nod to the theory of special relativity by describing God's robe as the fabric (yeriah) of the heavens? And isn't this the object of all learning? To make us have a better understanding of the One who is the source of all knowledge? Ken! (Yes) !

When in Rome...

There was some tension in Jerusalem last week. I mean, there’s always tension, but there’s not always a hostage/prisoner exchange coinciding with a U.S. Presidential inauguration. So we went to Rome on a whim. Well, it wasn’t really a whim. 

We used the airline credit from our canceled Thanksgiving trip. While we were eating pizza (naturally) at a restaurant on a rainy day (every day was a rainy day) I spotted a man at the table next to us with the same square jaw and John Travolta-esque chin cleft that was a notable feature of my college-best-friend’s husband… who, I remembered, was of Italian descent. So even though I haven’t talked to this friend more than 3 times in the past 5 years, I had to take a stealthy picture of the unsuspecting restaurant patron and send it to her to let her know that I was pretty sure I found a long-lost cousin. Being my college-best-friend, she took it totally in stride and confirmed that the relationship was a possibility. Then she asked me about the ceasefire that had just commenced. “The one in Gaza or the one in Israel?” I asked. Like many others who have reached out to me in the past several months, she admitted that the news isn’t covering much of what is really going on in Israel. So I thought I would endeavor to paint a little picture of our day-to-day existence for the past month.

On Christmas Eve I was wrapping presents to the sounds of interceptor rockets, courtesy of Yemen. What does that even mean? 

Ballistic missiles (big, nasty, 50-ft-long, rocket-propelled explosive projectiles) that come from Yemen (or from their provider, Iran) take a couple hours to arrive in central Israel. This means that there is time for the Israeli military to prepare and to track the missiles, and there is time for their multi-layered air defense systems (Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow) to mobilize and intercept the incoming projectiles. There are interceptor launchers located all over the country of Israel, though I’ve never seen them. Some are quite close to our home. (Interceptors launchers launch interceptor rockets whose purpose is to detonate rockets and missiles in their air before they strike their intended targets on the ground.) When there’s an incoming projectile, be it rocket, missile, or drone, there are sirens that will sound off in the neighborhoods where an impact is expected, and we usually have a minute or two to make it into a bunker or safe-room. Within seconds, the interceptors will launch, which we hear as deep, resonant booms. And so on Christmas Eve, I wrapped presents, and felt the reverberations of the boom of the interceptors in the distance. I did have one fleeting worry that Noemie would not get to see that I bought her an Arabic Ud for Christmas. 

But the missiles were, as usual, intercepted. And Noemie got her Ud.

The Israeli airforce responded with retaliatory strikes in Yemen two days later, hitting the airport (where the World Health Organization’s Director was getting ready to board a departing flight, as it so happens. That certainly wasn’t going to improve those relations.) The Houthi-controlled seaport and oil refineries were also targeted. The day following Israel’s aerial attacks, there was another missile, and a terror attack near Tel Aviv, as an 80-year-old woman, a Holocaust survivor, was stabbed outside her assisted-living facility by a Palestinian man who resided in Israel. We heard sirens in Jerusalem again on December 28 as interceptors took out another missile from Yemen and rockets from Gaza. How does Gaza still have rockets and launchers? Why does Gaza continue to ask for further destruction? A fourth missile was on its way from Yemen early on the morning of Dec 31-- a week still hadn’t passed since Christmas—this one was also intercepted but the shrapnel, the size of a small car, made impact with the roof of a house in Bet Shemesh, just beyond the valley where David fought Goliath.

(Photo from Times of Israel)

 It is truly a bewildering reality to live in this area where you can talk about modern day missile attacks and Biblical events in the same breath. We rang in the new year with more rockets from Gaza, and another missile from Yemen was inbound three days later, then another missile five days after that... Before we would leave for our respite in Rome, there would be 3 more missiles from Yemen, with their accompanying red alerts and booms, and another stabbing attack in Tel Aviv. 

So we went to Rome. When the garbage trucks would come through the narrow alleys of the Trastevere neighborhood in the middle of the night, we would wake but say with eyes half shut, no, we are in Rome. It’s not a missile. 

 

We saw Michaelangelo’s Moses, a Puccini opera, Trajan’s column, and the Colosseum. 

And then Danny put a damper on that by reminding us what the Colosseum was used for. 

 

 

I would have loved to see the Villa Borghese gardens but the weather wasn’t right for it. The weather wasn’t right for anything- it rained almost every moment of every day! 

  

Since it rained every day, and I only bought canvas shoes, I was forced... FORCED I tell you... to buy new Italian leather boots. 

The highlight would have been the Vatican but by the last day of our trip Gigi had a pretty high fever so I stayed behind with her while the rest went to the public spaces of the Vatican complex. 

So they got to see La Pietà (which was smaller than expected,) but not the Sistine Chapel. And in the end I’m probably ok with having missed it. Catholic Church history and wealth makes me moody and cynical. Rome had traded the abuses done against Christians for those done in the name of Christ. Peter would be mortified to know what they’ve done to “honor” him. But the buildings are extraordinary...

 /

As we look towards bidding this summer, I’m starting to get nervous about our options. I realized while I was in Rome that I don’t want to live in Europe. I don’t want to live in places that welcome millions of tourists a year (like us, I guess) to pay homage to Man and the vain works of his hands, with monuments that defy God with their commemorations of ruthless acquisition of treasure and power. I think that’s what I loved about Swaziland and now Israel- there’s very little of the humanism that corrupted the blossom of Western culture. But where else can we go?

 

On January 19, three very frightened Israeli women civilian hostages were handed over to the Red Cross in exchange for 100 Palestinian prisoners, and the Middle East did not blow up. In the U.S., Trump became President and the world did not blow up. A Moroccan tourist stabbed four people in Tel Aviv the next day... but I guess that's just the way things are. "Congratulations!" our kids' former piano teacher in Bolivia texted us to celebrate Israel's agreement to stop military operations in Gaza and to increase aid to the Strip. "The war is over!" he proclaimed.

"Is it really over?" I asked. There are still 80+ hostages being held in Gaza. Iran is still building its nuclear program so they can wipe Israel off the face of the planet. Netanyahu and Hamas are trading accusations of breaches of contract. Is the war over? I'll believe it when I see it.

Crow's Eye View

Crows Eye View: 

Thoughts on "Young Adult" books from atop the walls of Old Jerusalem

We interrupt our (already infrequent, sporadic) coverage of Israeli adventures and war time correspondence to discuss a work of “young adult fiction.”

Last summer, one of my older kids came to me asking for permission to read a book that had been recommended by friends from an online educational platform with a Christian foundation and missional intention. Recognizing that my oldest ones were a year away from college, I understood it was time to begin to have more adult conversations about discernment and about handing off the responsibility of gatekeeping. I have been accused by some of being overprotective in sheltering my kids, but I don’t believe that is true. I have never shied away from difficult topics and issues- whether it was a book discussion on Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto; explaining a news story about abortion; having a candid, compassionate conversation regarding mental disorders and illness; or having a preparatory briefing before going out to dinner with Danny’s homosexual co-worker and his significant other. I would rather they hear it from Danny and me, where we can point them to Scripture for answers rather than the world give them a humanistic, relativistic, or atheistic point of view of these encounters.

 

Proverbs 4:19 warns, “The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.” How can a mother stand by with indifference while her children wander off behind the godless, leaving them to trip over stones and pits, to crush their wrists and twist their ankles, and mar their hands and knees with the scars of their missteps? I would rather tackle these difficult conversations with the light of Scripture, which illuminates their path “like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day” and teach them to do the same. So besides the usual pre-authorized library haul, the aforementioned child also brought home the aforementioned book and a few others like it-- Maze Runner, Hunger Games, Divergent, Six of Crows-- books of which I had no knowledge and nothing to commend them except for the opinion of some unknown youth from a home with what I hoped would have similar standards of guardianship. Some of these books were read, and my child was usually disappointed or unimpressed—shallow characters, childish syntax, disappointing story lines. And so it began, this sort of expectation that my oldest two were advancing another rung in the ladder of self-governance and independence, and that they were walking on the narrow but clear, well-lit paths we mapped out for them. And when we left the U.S. to come to Israel, the loss of library access made the question somewhat irrelevant. Until we made friends. Friends with books. 

All things work together for good… 

At home we started dealing with the tension of a new dynamic— we now had two high school seniors, and a high school freshman who began to regularly challenge the liberties given to his older siblings but still denied to him.    

How come they can stay up until 3 am?

Because even though they didn’t manage their time well, we’re paying for these college classes and their GPAs can make or break their scholarship eligibility.

How come they can have their own social media accounts? Their own phone?

Because they have proven themselves to be faithful in the little things and this big thing is required for them to be independent on the streets of Jerusalem.

I’m responsible. When can I search for memes at my leisure? Create my own Pandora station? Why can’t I… ?

How come? Why? Porque? Porquoi? Lama?

Last summer, Six of Crows had been returned to the library unfinished because time did not allow for it to be finished. So when the book was discovered in a reading pile at a friend’s house, the book came home with us. One child read it. The next child read it and then picked up its sequel. Then the third child said, “I want to read it!” After all, his siblings had read it, and his friends had read it, and he was tired of feeling left out. But the response from the other two was an emphatic no. [Insert raised eyebrows here]. 

And why not?
He needs a few years, they both said.
Hm.

I had a candid conversation with one of the older ones and asked to very clearly have his concerns explained to me. Ok, the main characters are criminals and some of them are prostitutes. “This better be redeemed…” I said. I was assured that this was more or less the case, at the end- their livelihoods were essential to the plot, not gratuitous, and the good guys win in the end. I thought about how the heroes in Les Miserables match these descriptions and Les Mis is one of my favorite books ever so I said I would trust his judgement and I let it go. Well the younger child was dismayed and pleaded with me.  
Ok, Younger Child, I trust you. You are responsible, and you are a high schooler. Go ahead. About 100 pages in, Older Children came to me and repeated with much concern, no, Younger Child cannot read it.
FINE. I’ll read it.

And so I read it. And boy was I angry. The story is about human traffickers exploiting human traffickers in a metaphorical river of human trafficking in an ocean of human trafficking in a world of human trafficking… sex trafficking, slave trafficking, drug trafficking… it’s dark. Most of those being trafficked are children and teens. And all sexuality is glossed over in an endless array of euphemisms so that when these children “make their livings on their backs” or are “bedded” and so on, the effect is numbing. We aren’t actually talking about sexual violence, right? It’s just a “sweaty romp” here and a tantalizing peep show there. It's not a dirty brothel, no, it’s is a “pleasure house.” When two of the main character (who spend half the book lusting after each other) find themselves freezing, it only makes sense that they should spoon naked together to stay warm. Naturally. Putting the gore aside (like the incident where the hero carves out the eye of a rival gang member with an oyster shucking knife); and the trope of the religious leaders being the cruelest of the villains; ignoring the elements of witchcraft and the hinted homosexuality of two main characters; even putting aside the scenes inciting prurient interest, the sanitization of child sex work was perhaps the most vile undercurrent of this book. And I was mad. Why did my older children not see this for what it was? I started to think about that question and that led me to thoughts concerning discernment. Discernment is a spiritual gift— it comes with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to all who give their lives to Jesus Christ. But as a spiritual gift, it is also given in greater measure to some than others. Perhaps this is a gift my kids are still working to develop. Another realization that I had is that Danny and I have had years of training to recognize grooming and child predation. And further, I studied marketing in college and have that extra edge in recognizing subliminal messaging. But most importantly, discernment is one of my gifts.

Guard your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.

Coincidentally, the day I finished the book, I also read a newspaper article about Elon Musk’s role in stirring up some controversy in the UK. (He’s always stirring it up somewhere.) He had been badgering UK’s leadership over a failure to administer justice to the more  than 1,400 girls who were sexually exploited in the town of Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. In these cases, girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators, with the majority of known perpetrators being of Pakistani heritage. Musk used his platform to highlight the failures of the British judiciary, constabulary, social services and politicians, alleging that these colluded in downplaying and/or dismissing the cases for fear being seen as racist or of upsetting the illusion of the peaceful assimilation of their immigrant communities. The article went on to describe some of the accusations in blunt, concrete, legal language, using terms like “gang rape” and assault. Now contrast these harsh words with the world created for Six of Crows where child sexual exploitation is sanitized to the point that one doesn’t shudder, but accepts it as par for the course… it is normalized. The difference is as stark as night and day. Why? Why would an author do this? I started to look into the author a little more. Her portrait on the back cover of her book is innocent enough but her website has a more updated image of a goth girl with black lipstick and bondage-style accessories… or is this a subtle allusion to sadomasochistic eroticism? Her next books are titled Hell Bent and Demon in the Wood. I sensed a theme. Satan is after our kids' minds. 

I sat down with my kids and read passages to them from the text. One squirmed. The other argued.
“The characters had to sleep naked like that! What else could they do to keep from freezing?”
“This is a work of fiction! The entire scene was a creation of the author’s imagination!” Sometimes the blinders get stuck. (Consider Common Sense Media’s positive ratings to see just how stuck they can get.)
It was a good conversation. A constructive conversation. There’s a sort of complacency home-schooled Christian kids can develop where a lack of ideological friction keeps them from exercising their critical thinking skills and from sharpening their tools of defense. They casually drop their magnifying glasses when they should be taking a closer look into the spiritual realities that are coursing through the petri dishes of our culture wars. We are in a spiritual war. We aren’t to forget that. 

 

So we interrupt our (infrequent, sporadic) coverage of Israeli adventures and geopolitical wartime correspondence to discuss a work of “young adult fiction,” except as you see, it’s not really an interruption at all because a worldview that denies divine order and moral absolutes and universal truths does not stay in its neat little box of YA reading options but seeps into the unsuspecting guileless minds of the next generation--  minds that will someday create policies that advance human trafficking, child exploitation, and racism in the name of good. Satan knows this. The leaders at the UN know this. The author of the Six of Crows knows this. Do we parents know this? And are we on guard?

Dune(s)

Senior year is supposed to be a relaxed year- the worst of the standardized testing is usually done by now, GPAs have been calculated such as to give colleges an impression of a student's scholastic aptitude and comparative ranking. Not so in our home. Our oldest ones have been working harder than ever! Both are taking three college classes each while competing for academic scholarships at the school where they have both committed to attend next fall. The grades they get in these courses will follow them and bear weight on their scholarship eligibility. So at four in the morning, you might catch Dominic trying to make sense of the words now swimming on the page of a literary insight paper on Dante's Divine Comedy. Or perhaps you will catch Noemie practicing her Russian verbs with consternation as she misses another night of youth group or has to pass on a beloved session of chokehold-escaping body slams.

For one more week they must power through Theology, Rhetoric, Physics... before they can rest. And of course, by rest we mean perform cello recitals, write scholarship essays, catch up on correspondence and pet projects, prepare for the spring semester... I feel their pain. Danny's office has been understaffed for months and he has had to help carry the portfolios of the three empty chairs in his office. From the time we returned from our summer R&R in early July till Thanksgiving weekend, our family didn’t leave the city of Jerusalem (with the exception of Gigi’s sprints to the orthodontist in Tel Aviv). For much of that time we were under security restrictions that prohibited us from traveling outside of those 5 square miles unless it was to Tel Aviv, where American diplomats were also on lockdown. Feeling overwhelmed with work and just a wee bit claustrophobic, we made plans to take a break in Central Europe for Thanksgiving, but after Israel struck Iranian military infrastructure in the last week of October, all international carriers began suspending service to Israel and by mid-November our flights were canceled. We were stuck, as the remaining Israeli carriers’ flights were either full or unaffordable. The first week of November, security restrictions were lifted so that we could move about a little more freely, but areas north of Netanya (Nazareth, Galilee, Caesarea, Haifa) were still off limits. So were Bethlehem, and Jericho. But we still needed a break. While Danny dropped his head in defeat, I used my womanly charms to convince him that he needed to save our vacation (i.e. I threw a fit). With two weeks left till the holiday, my hero secretly threw together a stellar weekend retreat. 

 

 Thursday morning we made a 4-hour drive south through the Rift Valley along the western shores of the Dead Sea, past the city of Hebron where King David established his government before moving the capital to Jerusalem. We passed the storied fortress of Masada, and the arid town of Zohar named for one of the kings who ruled there before God destroyed it with Sodom and Gomorrah, ultimately arriving at the Red Sea resort town of Eilat where we had our Thanksgiving dinner in a Brazilian churrascaria. Just before sunset, we crossed the border into Jordan and found the lush, sprawling resort that Danny had booked for us in Aqaba.

This Movenpick property was the last tourist establishment on the Red Sea resort strip before the Saudi Arabian border. (We know because we made a wrong turn and found ourselves nearly at the border crossing.) There was a dead bird on our patio to greet us. On Friday, I would spend the day staying close to restrooms, nursing digestive troubles, well deserved for assuming it was safe to include ceviche among my breakfast buffet choices. Maybe in Peru… but not in the Middle East. With temperatures in the high 60s/low 70s only Tovi and Gigi were brave enough to enjoy the water. The resort, with its thousands of rooms, was nearly empty. Tourism in the area has tanked since the start of the war, and the staff was eager to put their industry to work, giving Gigi a face painting she didn’t really want, photographing the kids playing golf, taking Danny up on a match of table tennis. 

 

 

 

Saturday we drove to Wadi Rum (population 2000, supposedly all descendants from a single man) where we spent the afternoon exploring the Bedouin desert and its history with our gracious guide Mohammad, who would stop to pray at most of the sites while we scrambled up mountain sides and across rock bridges.

Freedom!

 

 

 

He took us to climb its famous landscapes, wander its canyons, and surf its red sands... recognizable as the backdrop for other-worldly movies such as The Martian, Dune, and Star Wars.

He showed us ancient inscriptions carved into the canyon walls. 

 

And he took us sand boarding down a steep dune. 

 

 

Danny didn't bring a jacket and was frozen through as we rode through the dunes on the back of Mohammad's modified pick up truck, especially as the sun started to get lower in the sky. 

It's a testament to how truly cold he was that Danny accepted Mohammad's offer to loan him his long Bedouin coat called a farwa. Watching the sun set over the silent desert mountains was a truly special experience. And craning our necks out of the windows to see the stars on our drive home as well...

While Gigi loved drinking black tea, sifting the red dune sand through her hands, and climbing to her heart's content, the highlight for Tovi and Dominic was seeing the expansive views. 

We smelled so badly of campfire and cigarette smoke (not ours) and dirt when we returned to our hotel room that we all had to take showers, and we didn’t make it to dinner till 9:30. It turned out to be a private dinner as we had the elegant Italian restaurant to ourselves. Nothing like having an entire restaurant's wait staff watching you eat. Yeesh.

We hadn't eaten anything all day except for a little bit of pita left over from the restaurant the night before, and black tea-- consequently we overindulged with appetizers and then couldn’t finish our dinners. Teetering on delirium, Danny cradled his head in his arms while the rest of us argued; four tired, cranky teens and their tired, cranky mother trying to coordinate the perfect gelato assortment. The waitress looked on in panic. We asked for takeaway (carryout) for our leftovers...which instead were delivered by cart to our hotel rooms exactly as we had left them, on the very same plates. Except it was now 11pm- and our dinners seemed like food-spirits sent to haunt us. I was so over-stuffed, the smell made me nauseous and I had to leave the room, and Danny was left to sort out the fiasco.

Back at the hotel the next day I put my detective skills to work to find Bedouin farwas like the one that saved Danny the evening before. 

The concierge consulted her colleague and scribbled down in Arabic the name of a place where we could find one in town, saying something about Baghdad Street. Somehow, miracle of miracles, we found them. And at $20 each, we bought a bunch! 

We probably won't wear them around Jerusalem but I have visions of collecting chicken eggs in December on my North Carolina farm someday in these hooded super-coats and we are going to just be the fanciest farmers in Asheboro! Someday...