In honor of America's Independence Day

Despite the many wonderful adventures I'd like to recount on this, my last night in Israel, I feel it appropriate to share something I wrote privately prior to Israel's Independence Day:

At home the 4th of July takes on a pluralistic atmosphere, insomuch as it appeals to the patriotic, the capitalistic, and those who may only be celebrating a day off work.  On that day and the weeks preceeding it, a zealous patriotic pride grips the country, wraps it up in an American flag and instills in everyone a sudden, urgent desire to consume hot dogs and apple pie.  At night, fireworks light up the sky and sparklers illuminate children's smiling faces while their proud, patriotic parents crack open a beer.

Now, I love the 4th as much as anyone -- I love the fireworks, cotton candy, barbeques and flags.  I love the family, the community, the ease of it all.  But until now I've never stopped to think about what we're actually celebrating.  In the 250-plus years since Thomas Jefferson and his cohorts signed their names, we have forgotten that Great Britain had anything to do with it.  Certainly we hold no grudge against them, as well it should be.  So I doubt most of us have any real throughts of "independence" while we munch on Lay's Potato Chips, and when the word "freedom" indubitably flows through our consciousness, I don't think anyone is considering the question "Freedom from what?"

How lucky we are to live in a country where we need not fear another country's controlling use of force or power over us.  It is far more likely for another country to worry about their freedom from us than vice versa.  But with the privelage of long-held freedom comes the responsibility of not taking it for granted.  After all, what good is freedom if you cannot appreciate it?  What's more, what good is it if you don't even know what it means?

I think we have reached a point in our country's history where we have forgotten what freedom actually means, leading us to throw the word around with careless abandon.  I believe we need to re-examine our freedom and, perhaps, redefine it in this generation so that we might truly have something to celebrate not only for one day in July, but always.

With this in mind, I still hope everyone in the U.S. can celebrate a wonderful Independence Day complete with the three staples of any holiday: family, friends, and food.  Love your freedom, live it up, and enjoy the fireworks!

Oh the strangers you'll meet!

Last night was "Layla Lavan" - the White Night festival in Tel Aviv and Yafo which celebrates its UNESCO-given title as the "White City" with live music on open stages throughout the cities, along with art exhibits and a plethora of events.  The timing couldn't have been more perfect for those of us on the Ulpan who took our final exam yesterday and felt unquestionably deserving of a night of frivolous, careless abandon in Israel's party central.

Despite the fact that I am not the frivolous, careless abandon kind of person I succumbed to the peer pressure and joined my classmates on the bus we ordered to take all 25 of us to Tel Aviv.  To be entirely honest, I didn't enjoy the celebration all that much, but the following story deserves special recognition:

Having gotten separated from the few friends I had been sticking to, I found an unassuming spot on the edge of the beach and sat, half hoping my friends would come find me, half hoping to be invisible to the drunk and overconfident Israeli bachurim.  I started talking to someone when another guy about my age noticed I was speaking English and asked me where I was from.  He and his black friend (that is significant) were from New Jersey and had recently arrived in Israel with the tentative plans of volunteering on a kibbutz for the summer.  So we got to talking and I was enjoying the company of these two kind strangers when suddenly the black guy asked if I liked Disney movies.  When I said "of course!" he broke into song with a number from Aladdin and, without request or hesitation his friend and I joined in.  After a rousing rendition of "A Whole New World" we switched to "Part of your world" from The Little Mermaid, the black guy and I doing a fabulous impromptu duet.  Now, I emphasize his ethnicity because I found it rather humorous that I was sitting on a beach in Tel Aviv at 4:00 in the morning, singing Disney songs with a stranger from New Jersey who was half rapping some of the lyrics.  I'm sure Walt would've been thrilled!

His friend was feeling a little left out so for his sake we started singing "American Pie," which we and the people immediately surrounding us were thoroughly enjoying, until we got to the line "And moss grows fat on a rolling stone," after which we stopped, completely unaware of what followed.  None of us could figure it out.  We tried desperately and managed to muddle through a couple other lines here and there before succumbing to our bad memories, singing the chorus once more, and calling it a night.  We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, never to meet again.

That single moment was, without a doubt, the most amazing and fun part of my whole evening in Tel Aviv, and I couldn't possibly let it go unrecorded. 

A Last of epic proportions

As promised I am reporting on many of my significant Last Moments, and yesterday I had yet another Last Moment of the most bittersweet sort: my last rehearsal with The Band and our first and last live performance as a group.

Since my second week in Israel I have been playing regularly with a group of four guys known to me as "The Band," for lack of a more interesting name (though we have kicked around a few ideas to amuse ourselves).  My involvement with them began in a moment of pure serendipity, and what started as a lead guitarist's enthusiastic snap decision became the basis of a family that reunited once every week to jam and bring Leonard Cohen, Jefferson Airplane, and Stealers Wheel to life in Israel.  (For the beginning of the saga, read here.)  

Every week (barring holidays or scheduling conflicts) we get together for about three hours to practice our repertoire and have some fun.  It's funny to say we're "practicing" because to me that suggests that we're practicing for something.  Yet in the time I was with these guys we never performed gigs, so our "rehearsals" were more like structured jam sessions that, without admitting it, allowed everyone to forget about anything that was going on in their week and just enjoy themselves with some good friends, good music, and a bottle of wine.

Not only did the guys open me up to a genre of music I've never really listened to all that much, but it opened me to a musical world I've only ever gazed at from afar.  I have always been involved in music - orchestras, concert bands, marching band, musical pit ensembles, quartets - but I've never been in a band.  I've never jammed with drums and bass, never really improvised, and certainly never sang into a microphone that wasn't connected to a monitor with scrolling words.  Nope, for all my musical involvement, I had never had the quintessential rock band experience until coming here.

But like I mentioned, The Band never did gigs, so maybe I was getting an incomplete rock band experience.  Well, we couldn't have that, now could we?  In the week prior to our last practice we suddenly all got an e-mail from our bassist saying that in honor of my last time with them, we were going to put on a short performance for friends and family.  Nothing too special, just something to celebrate and commemorate our hard work and to wish me farewell.

I should have assumed that nothing would go smoothly that night.  We got there late, started setting up, and when the guitarist asked me to tune for him first the top E string broke, then after quickly changing it and retuning it, the low E broke.  Go figure!  But with luck like that we were sure to have a good show.  And we did :)

More people than I expected showed up; we probably had around 20 audience members in the room, including about six from the Ulpan plus our director.  The show went great and the audience even called for two encores which had us playing for nearly 50 minutes, which is a lot for a short concert on a kibbutz at 10:00 at night.  

It was exhilarating.  I'm no stranger to performance, but like I said I've never performed vocally in front of a microphone (karaoke notwithstanding) and y'know what?  I like it!  I'm still not confident that my voice is anything worth applauding over, but boy was it fun!  And because I wasn't looking at sheet music I could actually connect with the audience in a much more personal way.  I didn't care if it wasn't perfect, didn't care if it was a little out of tune or if maybe we weren't perfectly together.  And when I played piano and messed up on one of the chords, big deal!  This kind of truly carefree attitude is something I have been missing from my classical training in which it's easy to lose the feeling amidst the perfection.  Oh, and I even got to improvise a bit.  (Wow, doesn't take much to excite a trained musician, does it?)

Parting from them at 1:00 in the morning was where the "bitter" of the "bittersweet" really came into play.  In the past five months I have not only played piano and sung with the guys, but I have become part of their group, accepted and loved, let in on the jokes, respected for my musical input, and, in short, become their friend.  I even wrote a song for them that unfortunately we didn't have time to play, so we pledged to hold onto it until the day when I come back to Israel.  Someday, somehow, I will find myself back in this country and when I do, I'll come back to Kibbutz Na'an on a Tuesday evening around 9:00 and probably find them playing the same songs we played last night.  And when I come back, even if it's only for that one night, we will jam together again.

Sand through an hour glass and other over-used metaphors

With only seven-and-a-half days left in this country things are rapidly winding down and all the Last Moments are waiting there turn to be noticed and commemorated.  Last Saturday marked my Last Shabbat on the Kibbutz and my Last Opportunity to Go to the Club (which I had every intention of doing but ended up missing completely), last night was [probably] my Last Time Shopping in Rehovot, today marked the important and emotional Last Class with Our Teacher, and there are many more Last Moments ahead of me.  Each one will get their moment in the spotlight where it is potentially overly-cherished, celebrated, and wished farewell.

Saying goodbye to our teacher today was a fairly significant one of the Lasts.  Though we have a few more hours of class before our exam on Thursday our teacher will not be with us for them as she is flying to the U.S. with her son for a couple months of site-seeing and frivolity, so today we celebrated.  We bought her a hilarious thank you/parting gift, I wrote her a special card of my own, and she baked us a cake.  We took pictures, some girls shed a few tears, and we said our goodbyes.  It truly was one of those moments that renewed my faith and desire to be a teacher.

Thursday will be my last full day on the kibbutz and Friday I plan on leaving to travel a bit more before I leave.  Yet despite the fact that the next few days will be filled with packing, organizing, arranging, then traveling, hiking, hanging out, and more traveling, I have surprisingly few things on my mental list of Things I Want to Do Before I Leave Israel.  I suppose that's a good sign indicating that I have, in fact, experienced a lot while here and I'll be ready to go home without feeling as if I missed out on too much.  With the exception of eating at another hummussia and visiting the Banias before I leave, I don't feel there's a lot I absolutely have to do before I leave.  All in all, I'm feeling very fulfilled.

Additionally, one reason I don't feel the urge to do more here may have to do with the incredibly strong force that is homesickness.  Even now it's hard for me to believe that I picked up and flew away from my family and friends for so long, and the allure of seeing them again so soon is almost too much to bear.  Generally speaking I didn't suffer from great bouts of homesickness.  With the exception of the holidays and my birthday I usually kept busy and enjoyed myself enough to justify being so removed from normal life, but when I allow myself to stop and think about it the distance is almost too much to bear, especially when it comes to my friends.  Sure, I've made friends here, but nobody compares to my amazing group at home.  Ya hear that, girls and guy (you know who you are)?  We're only a week away from the most epic reunion we've had yet!

I know this is a short post (Who just exasperatedly said "finally"?), but rest assured there will be more posts coming in the following days.  After all, I have to give each of those Last Moments their well-earned minutes of fame, right?