Whistle while you work

I realized yesterday that Snow White and I have quite a lot in common.

1. We have many woodland creature friends

Sheep friends in the Zurim Valley

Galilean Toad

Big black bird in Masada

Matriarchal She-goat at Neot Kedumim Bible Lands Reserve. We had to herd her herd as a group activity, and she took a liking to me. Guess whose group had the fastest time? Oh yeah. That's right. Follwed me implicitly.

Feral Cats at Ein Gev, Galilee. (DON'T LOOK, DAD!)

The Kibbutz chef gave me his hat and I had to make good use of it.

Wild Baby Ibex at Ein Gedi National Park, right by the Dead Sea. Incidentally, Ein Gedi translates as "spring of the kid." This was my kid. He loved leaves, and I loved him.

perhaps you can't tell from the picture, but his horns were quite sharp.

2. We have much work to do.

She had to clean up the cottage, I have to study for finals. And try to make the very best of my last week (MY LAST WEEK!?) in the Holy Land.

I lied, though. I can't whistle very well.

But I'm going to do a lot of catch-up blogging before I go home. Until then... Happy Hannukah!

Some upcoming highlights:

Bethlehem at Christmas time

Spectacular student talent show and christmas concert

Perhaps (finally) something about Jordan (The Hashemite Kingdom of)

The Separation Barrier

Adventures in the Old City

Adventures in Palestinian homes

Med Sea, Red Sea, Dead Sea

Lessons and epipheries.

Love you all,

Banana

I'm going to do something a little strange

I think Kali's going to give a lovely, comprehensive run-down of our Galilean days, so I'm going to contribute by way of my journal entry from our last day there. I think it sums up the magical ten before in the best (and most personal) way I can.

Suffice it to say, like many of old, I too experienced the healing influence of Jesus Christ on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

I committed to myself to learn faith through raging tempests.

And I lived the entreaty,

"Peace, Be Still."

November 25th   -- Special Rock, Sea of Galilee

Right now, I wish I could paint.

I wish I could somehow capture the colors and beauty and wordless thoughts rolling over each other in my mind.

Even then, how could it include this palpable presence of a Divine Creator, presiding over my last Galilean sunset? Breathtaking rays striking my very being. Inspiring Molly to be up on the rocks somewhere behind me, playing "How Great Thou Art" on her violin with such soul it drew tears from some unknown depth right to the surface of my eyes.

I never want to forget this.

I can feel time trickling, running, rushing through my fingers now. I can't paint and my camera doesn't do the scene justice, but thank the Heavens I can write.

Words too, though, sometimes fail.

I put so much trust in them, but there are so many spheres that exist and penetrate, far away from the grasp of language.

Maybe that's where music lives?

(Now she's playing "Whenever I Hear the Song of a Bird." I have such deep nostalgia over that song. And it's her anthem to this magical phenomenon. I'm glad we're sharing it, even if she doesn't know it)

I've heard "Where words fail, music begins." But even so, sometimes no words and no pictures and no notes exist to express the burning, the swelling.

And so a wordless, thoughtless, completely intangible prayer of thanks arises somewhere from my core and simply continues to exist here at the forefront of my consciousness.

I read in Jesus the Christ today:

"It is well to know that prayer is not compounded of words, words that may fail to express what one desires to say, words that so often cloak inconsistencies, words that may have no deeper source than the physical organs of speech, WORDS THAT MAY BE SPOKEN TO IMPRESS MORTAL EARS. 

The dumb may pray, and that too with the eloquence that prevails in heaven. Prayer is made up of HEART THROBS and the righteous yearnings of the soul, of supplication based on the realization of need, of contrition and pure desire."

I can't paint and I can't play the violin, but I'm pretty good at feeling, and I can pray. "Pray always"! What a gorgeous invitation.
I can write too. I feel like a poem is forming inside, but can't gather up the right words to work its way out of my psyche. I can write poems, but perhaps I'll never be a poet.

...that's a sad thought.

I'd like to found out who I am so I can discover what I can be, you know?

But it's nice to just sit on my little rock here, no immediate obligations but to periodically swat off the wicked biting flies. Just encasing my spirit with wordless prayers, trying to build up an immunity to pride and selfishness and forgetfulness and temptation, so I can retain this handful of heaven for later, lonelier days.

...When I'm not reaching enlightenment on the shores of Galilee

to transcendent violin music and an ethereal sunset,

descending like a dove

to give me a warm and reassuring kiss on the forehead.

                

Love,
Banana

Fishers of Men

We leave for Galilee in the morning for ten luscious days of learning, studying, and experiencing.

• We are very sorry we've been so bad about writing
• We haven't even written about Jordan yet
• I had an amazing twentieth birthday in JERUSALEM and my friends and family spoiled me so much
• I've been a rotten blogger, daughter, sister, pal, roommate, relative, and all-around nincompoop and I'm going to start writing even when this internet of satan won't upload pictures (that's why I never do it. I can't bear to write a picture-less post)
• ANYWAY- I only have a very few weeks left in Israel and I promise I'm taking in every second. Every minute. Every precious, precious day in this city that feels so much like home. I'll do an awful lot of catch-up when I get back.

Thanks for caring (or not, as the case may be. I love you anyway),

Anna Banana

p.s. We snorkled in the Red Sea today and we fed the fish frozen peas and they swam right up to me and introduced themselves. I'm not sure if they were Palestinian or Israeli (or perhaps even Jordanian?), but they sure were friendly fish. :)

P.S. Elder Holland hugged me

Don't be fooled by the awesomeness of that title.

It was a million times awesomer than that!

Kali sat by him at dinner (no big deal)

We sang for him

He delivered a comforting, uplifting, edifying, beautiful sermon that spoke peace to my soul in such amounts I can't really use written language to explain it

He spent about 15 seconds on me of all people, hugging me, thanking me, and telling me his grandchildren are enjoying my tennis text book

he told Kali he wanted us to sing that at his funeral

And he hugged me.

The tenderest, mercifulest mercy I could have asked for.

Love you!

Banana

"His Kippa is a Watermelon!" and other adventures (aka why I want to be Jewish)

How many orthodox Jews does it take to change a lightbulb?

Answer: change?

Ha. That joke was told to us by our Judaism teacher who has graduated from rabbinical school twice but never wanted to be a rabbi, and considers himself something of a mixture of every Jewish denomination. He has absolutely no hair on his body and keeps his kippa on with double-sided tape.

While you're trying to work that one out, check out all our neat Judaica as of late.

• 
  
  Friday night we welcomed Shabbat at a neo-hassidic modern orthodox synagogue that met in a scout building. The service itself was phenomenal, with the leader totally rocking out and me finding myself being squished between two biddies gossiping away and kissing each other on the cheek, literally right in front of my face.
  
  
  
• 
  
  The music was so other wordly to my Mormon-channeled brain. It was beautiful and dynamic; somethimes upbeat, sometimes slow and mournful. All of it, though, was undeniably worshipful. And beautiful. I loved getting up and dancing with the women around the room, though I'm constantly a little bitter that they seem to always have a little more fun on the men's side. I was jealous of the little girls on the other side of the screen jumping up and down with their dads.
  
  
  
• 
  
  Best part of the service= a small boy storming up to the front to his mom, throwing down his soccer ball and delivering a heart-wrenching tamtrum in hebrew. I was laughing so hard on accident.
  
  
  
• This month (the seventh, the holiest) is the month of holidays! We've been so lucky to be here during the most important days of both Islam and Judaism. The week before last was Rosh Hashannah (Jewish New Year!), followed by Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), then Sukkot (A week of tent-dwelling, yiddish singing, street dancing, willow-whacking, all-around family fun!) When October in Jerusalem rolls around,it's party time!

• Unfortunately, it's also house arrest time. Us poor little J-center students were confined to the center almost exclusively due to the inter-religious tensions that also mark October in the Holy Land. However, we were often allowed in West Jerusalem, so we spent a lot of money on cab fare and ate a lot of nutella gelatto whipped-cream belgian waffles (i.e. heaven). We also ran into many sukkot parties and visited some museums and had some incredible bagels. I always talk about food, huh?

• 
  
  "dwelling" in a Sukkah for Sukkot
  
  
  

With good reason.

We eat A LOT of gelatto.


I'm obsessed with Mahane Yedhuda, the marketplace in West Jerusalem.






I've always had a thing for toasters, so this was especially exciting.
We went to the beautiful Ethiopian church in West Jerusalem, and I now aspire to live on Ethiopia street. it's all flowers and sweet Ethiopian Priests, and peace.

Another pretty church

Herod's Family Tomb

The park brings lots of fun and also (On select weeks [i.e. one a year]) tons of sukkot parties with live music and dancing and crepes and happy hassidic children! Come with us...

• Yesterday was a more solemn one, but one of the most imporant (I feel) I've spent in Israel.

 We visited Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's Holocaust Memorial Museum. I was impressed with the approach and the feel of the place. I never got the impression that it was rooted in despair and regret and blame like we sometimes experience while studying the holocaust. I did, though, sense a lot of emphasis on hope, on education, on rememberance, and on honoring the heroic acts of Jews and non-Jews that stood up for human dignity and the love of God and his children.

• The museum was made out of concrete (which is significant because it's a law in Jerusalem that everything be contructed out of limestone, the "Jerusalem Stone."), to stand as something unfinished. Imperfect. A scar. It is literally dangling off a cliff and has a breath-taking panoramic view of the Jerusalem forest and Mount Hertzl.

 The museum experience begins at one dark side with the pre-Hitler years of the European diaspora and progresses to the end, which is a large window pane, letting in the only light. So basically, you slowly make your way towards the light at the end of the tunnel the whole time.

• Something I really liked is that you can't just walk through the museum. It winds chronologically back and forth with the story of the jews (each room separated by walls and barbed wire), and each time you come back to the middle to the main hall, there's a gap explaining what's going on in the war and with the rest of the world. There you get another glance at the light at the end of the tunnel. It was a super powerful set up, because each time you get back to that gap you realize that the rest of the world is totally pre-occupied. You realize that you're completely alone (And truly you actually feel completely immersed in the story).
• The first of these gaps showed footage of a giant book burning in Germany before the war started. it was full of actual books from the period, basically anything contrary to Nazi ideology. Basically everything. I liked the quote with it:

"Wherever books are burned, human beings are also destined to be burned."

• My other favorite quote was in the hall of the righteous among the nations; gentiles who risked their lives to help jews during the war. This was from Pastor Andre Trocrne, one of those brave righteous:

"I do not know what a jew is,
we only know what
human beings are."
That man sacrificed his life.

I loved this story of Boris Saktsier. He ran an orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto (? I believe?), and when the children were taken, instead of letting them go alone, he went and perished with them.

The Chlidren's memorial was by far my favorite part. (We couldn't take pictures inside) It was a completely dark room lined in mirrors and candles, with voices reading names and ages of children in their native languages.

Well, We've been learning so much about this Israli-Palestinian conflict and there are a lot of confusing feelings involved with it for me. I'm not sure if I'll ever have it worked out. But I have found myself quite often nonplussed that this nation of people who have suffered so much and felt so alone and displaced could inflict similar pain on the people who were living in their new national home when they made it such. It doesn't make sense, right?

But I know this. The Lord still loves his covenant people of old. He didn't abandon them to the ghettos and concentration camps (like some people say) for condemning Christ.

See for yourself!

"And it [the bible] shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the bible which they receive from them? yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth the salvation of the Gentiles?

O ye Gentiles, have ye remembered the Jews, mine ancient convenant people? Nay; but ye have cursed them, and have hated them, and have not sought to recover them. but behold, I will return all these things upon your heads; for I the Lord have not forgotten my people."

-2 nephi 29:4-5

And neither have we!

Sorry, this ended much heavier than I meant it to be. I tend to ramble a bit. But just know that I love you, family and friends, and I'm jam-packing my brain with so much, and I intend to return a smarter, better girl. (So many commas there!)

Thanks for your love and Shalom!

banana