business

Since the "cultural experience" of the mikveh, it's been a series of similarly unfathomable antics. No time to properly write at the moment: we're back in Jerusalem after a week of constant dashing-around, doing wedding prep, family management, political action, and friend-visits.

A brief schedule:

Monday
shopped for chuppah decorations etc., ate amazing hummus in the Old City, attended a war-victims (both sides!) benefit rock concert, drove at midnight through the lovely West Bank (and flew through all checkpoints due to, I think, having a beard and kippah in the car), got locked out of the moshav (Aviezer, like a kibbutz) that we were supposed to stay at, got let in by security patrol at the moment we were about to turn around and drive 40 mins back to Jerusalem...

Tuesday
slept in, drove to Tel Aviv, frolicked with the gorgeous tan people on the beach, visited a friend, went to see "The Slave" at the Gesher Theatre--a play based on an I. B. Singer novel about an enslaved Jew who converts a Polish woman, performed with great style and physicality by a company made up of Russian immigrants, drove to Haifa...

Wednesday
fussed with camping gear in Haifa, drove to Tuba-Zangariyya (a Bedouin town in the upper Galilee) to meet a group of traveling peace activists, found them not-there, drove into the Golan Heights to marvel at ex-Syrian bunkers and to go swim in a beautiful freezing waterfall/pool, back to Tuba-Zangariyya for an evening of 'listening circles' and huge gaggles of adorable munchkins (as our pal Eliyahu calls kids), over to Rosh Pina to stay with our friend Ohad, the far-out "sacred sexuality" rabbi/teacher/artist...

Thursday
beautiful breakfast in a breezy courtyard at Rosh Pina's cafe (with fascinating conversation by Ohad), dusty-brambly trek to Syrian-built swimming pool (fed by natural spring) in the Golan, visit to Tzfat for tastes of that city's intense Hassidic mysticism and of course dinner (from the same restaurant which provided me with amazing soup in January)--heard snatches of conversation all about the war aftermath, back to Rosh Pina to argue vehemently with Ohad about gender...

Friday
woke up at 6am to travel to Neve Ur (N's sister Irit's kibbutz in southern Galilee), grabbed her three sons (Yarden, 11, Snir, 9, Lotem, 6) and drove to the north end of the Dead Sea via the mostly-empty Jordan Valley and Jericho, swam/basked/coated ourselves in mud (just wait for the photo!), showered and ice-creamed, climbed up the desert mountainsides to Jerusalem, ate lunch with Sarit and Tomer, showered, set the kids to video mode, napped, Kabbalat Shabbated a little, had dinner, crashed out!...

Saturday
giant family party for the Shabbat before the wedding!

...more soon, but I've got to go shower as we have a meeting in Jerusalem in half an hour!