This week we began volunteering individually. A group of us are at Gimnasia Atidim, one of the three high schools that serve Ramla. We’re all working on various different projects, from just helping tutor students in English to starting a school newspaper.

Eliza and Sarah have taken on the challenge of teaching a group of oleh hadash (new immigrants) English, but their native language is Spanish which makes the teaching more challenging. Regardless, they are both using their Spanish skills from school to help this new group learn English. Oh, and twice a week, I’ll join the girls in teaching English, thus also brushing up on my Spanish. (Gosh… all these languages are going to make things very confusing. We’ll have to remember which language we’re supposed to be speaking.)

Joey has begun tutoring a group of students for the English portion of their Bagrut (the Israeli equivalent of the SAT). He’s also pairing up with Eliza, Sarah, and me doing a group discussion class one day a week in English.

I have joined a teacher here at the school in the Graphics class, helping teach Photoshop. They’re using an older version, so once I practice a little, I’ll be acting as an aid in the class, walking around helping the students as they need help. (Since it’s a computer course, it’s taught in Hebrew, but mixed with English since the software is in English. Therefore, all the students must understand English, which means I’ll be able to help.)

Five of us (Ben, Josh, Daniel, Eliza, and I) are starting a school newspaper with a group of 10-12 students, in English only. We’re developing plans to first put it on the school’s Internet website, but hopefully also print it on a one page and distribute to the students. There are only about 400 students here, as they only teach 10-12 grades.

Josh has managed to score himself an entire class to teach. At least one day a week, he’ll be teaching his own English class. I guess from what I have heard so far they are short teachers, and since he is just four credits away from his license, they’re using him now.

More to come soon…

(Real World Update Update)

Apparently somebody actually reads what I write.

For instance, here are some updates:

• Nomi has 35 things that she can possibly do in life after her chamesh chodasheem b-ramla (five months in Ramla), and making Alliyah is number 32 on that list.

• Sarah moved in today. She’s a 24-year-old graduate of Albany who majored in history in school but has become a film producer. She would want to go to graduate school but she doesn’t want the stigma of going to film school because she made fun of those kids when she was in school.

• We have only two smokers in the house, Joey and Jay. Gabi was just hitting on those two (Joey is her “boyfriend” and Jay now her “husband” that gives bad back rubs), while everyone else has been too boring studying Hebrew that the smokers were the only ones who could entertain Sara this morning.

• Nomi is a Sabra—she was born in Israel—so she doesn’t have to make Alliyah, just return here.

• Oh, yeah, I have to write about myself here. I am neither the token gay guy nor the token loner. I like it here, and I enjoy the company of most of my housemates. I don’t regret my decision to be here; I am glad I came. I am just champing at the bit to get started because doing nothing and not sleeping sucks.

• I beat a professional. We played cadoor regel (soccer) on Yom Shabbat (Saturday), and I stood up to a professional soccer player. They put all of us Americans on the same team against the Israelis; we would lose within 30 seconds then wait 10 minutes for the next game. I know only how to play defense. A 19-year-old professional had the weekend off, and his 10-year-old brother looked so cute in goal with them. When I got in, I stepped up to defend the tall, defined young man in a black wife-beater shirt and green shorts. His little brother was screaming—how can somebody so small act so mean? Green shorts looked at me and dribbled the ball back and forth five feet away from me. “Bo po,” I said, ordering him to come to me. He kept showing me his fancy moves; I knew he would kick my ass if I attacked him, so I didn’t. When he made a fake to get past me, I stayed on my feet. Then he kicked the ball between my reglayim (feet) and snuck around me. The next time I defender him, he did the same basic shit (a different dribble this time), but this time I deflected the ball, and on my third defensive play against him I stopped him. We lost, but as we were walking off the court he and his teammates called me “Tov” (good). I was angry that we lost, but I was so surprised that they respected me and my play. When I got home, I got on a high that lasted 24 hours—I stood up to a professional soccer player.

Just like the Real World in the United States, our producers introduced some new characters.

Gabi and Liza arrived on Aug. 24, while Sara is scheduled to come on Aug. 28.

It was almost as if they were written into a television series to replace characters whose contracts ended. For their first weekend in Ramla, Gabi and Liza took over the roles played by Nomi and Aliza. Our first pair of girls were each out of town for the weekend (Nomi in Amsterdam, Aliza in Jerusalem), and the two new girls stayed in their bedroom. Then, when Nomi and Aliza returned on Aug. 27, Joey and Todd had moved out of the house–20 meters away living with our neighbors behind us, Samir and his wife, Su’ad (or Su’ad and her husband, Samir).

Immediately after Jay actually tried to quit smoking (he and Joey had been talking about slowing down their habit every day of the trip but never actually went through with any plan), Joey found a new partner in Gabi who would help fill his ashtray outside. Gabi is fluent in Hebrew. (Eager to ingratiate herself with her new supersaturated-with-testosterone roommates, she asked on Shabbat morning, “How caught up are you on your dirty Hebrew?”) She is a theater major (so Erez and Hava have been telling everyone she can run an entire program, not just a production, herself) on an accelerated master’s program. A summer graduate of birthright, she is the only other person besides me who has a responsibility to finish school when this program ends.

Gabi almost never made it to Israel. Ever since the rest of us landed at Ben Gurion Airport, Erez said that she was coming and would come soon. The other Oranim five-month program, Wizo, a group of girls north of us who are working in trauma, said that their 11 girls and one boy would be joined by another boy or two. As days continued to pass and Erez continued his circumlocution, we stopped believing him–when he finally gave us a date and time that her plane would land, we had to pinch ourselves when we saw the cab charrioting a balance in our gender ratio. Before the cab drove in front of our house, her plane was overbooked by 30 passengers, and she didn’t know she was on the flight–in business class–until she had.

Gabi’s new roommate, Liza, does stuff and needs to catch up on three weeks of Hebrew.

(Liza is pronounced Lye-za. Our producers liked Ah-lee-za, so they just made up a similar name. To be fair, Nomi was also a hit in the ratings department–when she was on camera–so she was recast with someone whose name similarly has only two syllables and ends in an “ee.”)

Ok, seriously, our brunette-haired 22-year-old girl from Westchester is not, nor does she plan to be, a professional photographer despite bringing three cameras with her. She said, “I want to be bad-ass no matter what I end up doing,” which likely will have something to do with women’s rights.

MTV, eat your hearts out.

Pick 10 Jewish strangers (even two Jews who went to the same college for four years and never met each other once), forced to live in a house for five months, film their lives, and see what happens. That’s not a premise for a reality show (like the small house from the Geico ads), but it is something real, and I’m part of it.

On my five-month stay in Israel, our lives will be documented just like the popular reality shows in the United States. My ultimate goal is to write a book or a single-spaced, 10-point-font story to send to all of my friends, The Idiot’s Bible: Israel Adventure (or IB: Real World Ramla).

Just like the MTV reality show, we have a luscious mansion (a five-bedroom “palace,” one of our girls said when she first toured it), have neighbors who all know who we are but have been slow in meeting us and talking with us, are filmed every day (by video cameras or just digital snapshots)and have done hardly anything but drink and sleep and talk.

In addition to my irregular updates (I have to write as many details as possible to explain a situation, thus never getting anything finished), two others are writing blogs, and the rest have some kind of personal journal. To view our updates, check out iscramla.com, or beninramla.blogspot.com.

For those who prefer non-linguistic means of representation, a local high school where we may work volunteered to film us throughout our stay; they plan to make a documentary and propaganda video for future programs. Unlike our Taglit birthright trips, which try to fit thousands of years of Israel history and 20 cities of culture into a 10-day tour, our program director knows that we’ve been here before (and don’t need the birthright history lesson), and he knows that we need to pace ourselves and explore our neighborhood and each other—after all, we will be spending five months living under the same roof. During our first week we had only one or two activities a day, including tours or the city, swimming at the community pool, salsa dancing and a get-together with Israelis our own age—and that’s just our formal schedule. We start Ulpan (intensive Hebrew language study) in our second week, and by the third week we should start planning our volunteer work.

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Alone and walking to the store to buy groceries, I got distracted. Just as comic book and the WB stores used to pull me in when I came within eyesight, when I see an Israeli who may give me an opportunity to learn a new Hebrew word, I’ve strayed from my path and gravitated toward that person like a Jew to Israel or a cockroach to our shower stall.

On my way to the store to buy salt and pepper, I saw children kicking around a soccer ball on a fenced-in basketball court. Even though I hadn’t played a game of soccer since I was six years old, I was eager to play any kind of physical activity as well as speak the language of Israel with 10-year-old kids.

I expected to play a game of soccer and to speak my just-learned Hebrew words (all written down haphazardly on a pad I carried with me everywhere). Instead, I was in for a surprise. About two dozen boys, smiles plastered on their faces, aged between six and 12, asked me as many questions as they could in rapid-fire succession. “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “Where do you live?” “What are you doing here?” They kept on trying to show off what they knew and what English words they could speak, pushing other boys so they could get closer to me.

One boy handed me a stack of post cards with an Israeli teenie-bopper star that looked like a member of N*Sync. When I refused to take the stack, they handed it back, yelling for me to do something that I didn’t understand. They tried different Hebrew words, but I couldn’t understand any of them, until I thought they might have been asking me to sign my autograph on the card. A line quickly formed. I asked for each child’s name and put that in print, wrote the one Hebrew word I knew without looking it up on my pad (“Toh-dah,” Thank you) and then added my John Hancock for their collections. The older boys asked to see my phone, and they programmed their names in.

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So today some of the group went looking for a place to play football, or as we call is, soccer. We ended up joining in on a group of Israelis’ in Ramla. Here is a video clip from one of the kids, probably around 10 years old.

As a fair warning, the video is not very focused, which may cause dizziness.

Monday, August 7…

So I am almost done with my blog for today and just realized something. This one is also really long. So I am back at the beginning and here is what I am going to say. I realized today that I am doing this blog for me more than anyone else. When I get home, I am going to print and bind this entire thing. I am going to read it and sit back and go wow, that was pretty much the most amazing thing I have ever done. I am going to read it to my kids, to my grandkids, and let anyone I ever meet who wants to read it do it. I also need to say that the way I type is pretty much free flowing thoughts. I could go off on tangents and sit here typing for hours and hours just talking about stuff, obviously related to this program and what’s going on, but still. So I will just say this. I know that very important and close people to me are reading this (hopefully!). Everyone from my parents to sibling, from my rabbis to relatives and friends. If you really care about what I am doing and what is happening to me over here then PLEASE read. I want you ALL to read these, but I know that it might take too long or whatever. I promise it won’t take more than 5 or so minutes to read any blog, no matter how long they look. I know for a fact my family will read them all (I love you mom, dad, jake, and rachel!), and to be honest, that is good enough. If you are a really good friend of mine and are reading these all too, then I love you too! Maybe even more since you are reading this cuz you are interested. Thanks to everyone who is reading this and who will continue to read these as much as they can. Your love and support means a lot to me over here. Anyways, back to #6 down below…

I was right. When I was making my decision on whether to come to Israel, I told myself that no matter what choice I made was going to be the right choice. Now obviously since I am here now, I will never really know what it would have been like to have made the decision to not come, but I have to say right now, that this was the right choice. I know this for many reasons, but one will always stick out in my head until the day I die.

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Today started out at a nice pace. We took a walking tour of Ramla. It helped us learn the neighborhood and navigate by foot. Our first destination was the White Mosque. With ancient history, the White Mosque has been a landmark in Ramla for many years. After the earthquake that stuck Ramla, the city moved inland, causing the White Mosque to actually sit just outside city lines. What currently stands today of the White Mosque is just a recreation, as the original did not survive.

To complete the tour, we visited an old cistern, which we were allowed to go down into the cistern and take some boats out and row. It was kind of corny, but cool at the same time. We ended our tour at the shuk. The Ramla shuk is known as the largest in Israel, has everything imaginable, really cheap. On Wednesdays, they set up a second shuk with vendors from around the country.

Shuk: a flea market of sorts, primarily fresh food and household goods.

10 ½ hours after leaving JFK, we arrive at Ben Gurion Airport to be greeted by Momo, president of Oranim Educational Initiatives. After we get our bear hugs and welcome hats, we’re off to the Café for Momo’s favorite iced coffee and [middle-eastern style] danishes. We meet Erez and Chavva [our mother] at the arrival area in the terminal. At this point, the two girls from our group join us at the airport [since they were both already in Israel] and we meet three people from the high school: Elana [the principal] and Shlomi and Ushrit [the students making our documentary].

After quick introductions, we’re off to the bus for a quick drive over to our palace house. They found us a sweet house in probably the nicest part of Ramla. All of our neighbors are rich – fenced in yards with keypad gates and alarms on the houses. Many have marble floors inside, and even outside on their stairs and patios. Back to our house. Large living room, complete with one couch, two chairs, and a TV. Wait – the TV does not work and YES (satellite) isn’t hooked up yet. Off to the kitchen, a table to seat eight (but our group is ten) and some common kitchen stuff: microwave, toaster oven, and hot pot. They got us dishes and glasses, but clearly not enough. There is only one setting which won’t work with some of the roommates keeping kosher. The rest of the house is pretty standard… two showers, three toilets, and five bed rooms. Only four of the five have air condition, and one of those four the air condition doesn’t even work. The last room, well, they’ll get a fan. Only thing I didn’t mention about the house was the attic which is huge, and the bunker (bomb shelter) that is completely full of stuff from the owner. Don’t worry, my bedroom is completely made of concrete – we’ll use that if we really need to.

Later on this evening (Monday August 7^th) we walk over to Kadima. Kadima could best be described as a Big Brothers Big Sisters or a Y. Its a place where the youth go to after school for help with homework and activities to keep them busy. Since Ramla is a large immigrant community, Kadima was set up to support the youth of the city. We’ll probably be volunteering here, helping the kids with their English. Click here to see a clip of the show we sat in on.

The evening concluded with a Momo talk. In true Oranim tradition, Momo gave us his thoughts about the program, about our return to Israel, and most importantly, the current situation in the north. We went over safety and security, as well as what he expects of us.

Overall, this was a long first day.

Our trip began at JFK International Airport at 11:30am on Sunday August 6^th. The eight guys from the group met at the airport to fly together on Israir thanks to the free airfare from Momo. Let me make it clear, Israir sucks. The planes are old and falling apart, and the seats are crammed tighter then any other plane I’ve ever been on. There was only one thing I could think of good about the Israir flight: very cute stewardesses and their uniforms are just polo shirts and jeans or skirts.