First of all, you should know that I had a very good reason for being so delinquent. For a good three or four days, I was out sick (though out from what, I’m not sure) with a nasty little bug. I was having breakfast with my friend Alicia of CSUN Hillel fame, and suddenly on my walk home, I just didn’t feel good. When I got back to the apartment, I lay down and pretty much passed out for a good two hours. When Julia woke me up that afternoon, she suggested we take my temperature, and it was all downhill from there. I think I spiked somewhere around 102.3 (Fahrenheit, for those who are concerned), but thankfully by the next morning, I was down to a much more reasonable 99-100 degrees.

I tell this story not so much for the sympathy that I’m nonetheless hoping to receiving, but because being ill in Israel led to all sorts of interesting new experiences. This, for example, was the first time that Julia has seen me truly sick. And while I think she handled me and whining like a trooper, she claims that she was scared out of her mind that night as I was tossing around in my fevered state. Eventually, this little bout of illness also led us to our first encounter with the Israeli medical system. While I’m happy if that serves as our last encounter as well, I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by the efficiency and caring with which I was handled.

Despite the fever and all the other unhappiness associated with it, I managed to pull myself together for my first “gig” here in Israel. I was asked to prepare and run some Shabbat programming for a group of 8 Israelis and 7 Americans who had spent two weeks in the states doing service projects in the Knoxville, TN area, and were now doing the same thing here in Israel. Before describing the actual weekend, a word on the Israeli version of advance notice: we’ll call you Friday to tell you that we have a job for you the following Friday, but we can’t meet with you until Monday to give you details, and don’t worry that you’re sick as a dog Tuesday and Wednesday, because the fact that you’re calling me Thursday is very cool (sababa, as Israelis say it), because I figured we’d just talk about it when you got there Friday afternoon. Suddenly, years of training on how to “wing it” came together in the space of 24 hours. Working with the students was fine, if you ignore the fact that they were a group of over-tired, jet-lagged, hormone-crazed 9th graders getting their first dose of free time in over two weeks. Somewhere in the middle of who-kissed-who, and who-liked-who, and why I don’t really want to be a part of this program even though I signed up for it, it dawned on me why they had brought in a relief pitcher, even if only for two days.

In truth, the weekend was great for us. My programs, with the exception of one, went well, and because I was only with the group for a very short time, I was able to ignore most of the drama and let the program’s real staff deal with it. Plus, the perks of the job were fantastic: they rented a car for us to get to the conference center, which proved to be very useful later, and they put Julia and me up in a very nice room with air conditioning and satellite TV. While something tells me the ancient Hebrews did not spend Shabbat watching Lance Armstrong clinch the Tour de France, it was certainly restful for us.

That is, until we had to drive home. Now, driving in this country is generally considered a contact sport, and this is no more apparent than here in Jerusalem. The streets here make about as much sense as they do in Boston, with the obvious exception that in Boston, the signs are in a language I understand. Before setting out for the conference center on Friday, we took a quick trip over to our friend’s place to borrow a shirt for me. He suggested it would take me 20-25 minutes to walk each way. By car, it took almost a complete hour.

At the very least, I was comfortable with the stick shift, having driven one for the last five years in the states (this comment being made after recalling tales of my father’s ill-fated attempt at navigating Israel by car after one too few lessons on a stick). In size and stature, our little Fiat was vaguely reminiscent of my best friend Mike’s first car, whose nickname is unfortunately not suitable for print on the web, but at least this one had five gears. The little car served us well on Friday, getting us safely to the conference center without a hitch. However, on Saturday, as I turned on the headlights, I discovered that they only shone about 10 feet in front of the car. While on the nicely lit freeways of Los Angeles, this would not pose a problem, in a country where you’re just as likely to be dodging camels on your drive as you are potholes, I spent most of the ride hunched over the steering wheel as if sitting six inches closer to the hood might make it easier to see further down the road. This method worked fairly well, until we started the climb back into Jerusalem. (For those who are not familiar with it, Jerusalem is approximately 800 meters/2625 feet above sea level) About 20 minutes outside the city, I was somehow coaxing our little Fiat up a hill at about the speed limit when, in standard Israeli fashion, the person behind me decided that about 10 km/h over the limit was probably a better speed to be going. Uncharacteristically, he politely pulled into the left hand lane to pass, thus bypassing the typical Israeli signal for “get outta my way:” flashing your bright lights and tailgating as if attempting to attach oneself to the slower car’s rear bumper. Unfortunately, all this politeness angered the driver who was approaching us from behind in the left hand lane at somewhere around double the posted limited. So what’s a pissed off Israeli driver on a narrow two-lane road to do? Go right in between the two lanes in an attempt to get ahead. Needless to say, I swerved off onto the shoulder, quickly applied the portable defibrillator to Julia (okay, thankfully not), and continued driving with a significantly accelerated pulse rate.

The next morning, with the car still in my possession, I decided I still hadn’t had enough of good old Israeli-style driving. So I called up my little posse of S.O.’s, and the four of us jumped into the car to make a little pilgrimage to a place of great significance to most Jewish families: Ikea. Ikea in Israel is located just outside the town of Netanya, on the coast about 20 minutes north of Tel Aviv, and about an hour and a half from Jerusalem. Not since the discovery of Target within a 30 minute drive of college in Boston have I been so excited to see a particular retail outlet. With my companions, all young husbands who do roughly the same thing I do all day, I spent close to three hours enjoying the sights, sounds, and even the tastes of Ikea in Israel. In the end, the damage was not so bad. I spent somewhere in the ballpark of $100 USD on various items that Julia and I had discussed were necessary for our lives here in Israel, including such treasures as cutting boards, laundry hampers, and a duvet cover with comforter. Granted, we probably could have found these items somewhere in Jerusalem, and yes we did discover afterwards that I got entirely the wrong size duvet and comforter, but those two hours we huge in making me feel like maybe Israel isn’t such a backwards country afterwards.

To illustrate this final point, I leave you with a final observation made recently over a hot chocolate at Aroma Café, Israel’s answer to Starbucks. While sitting in this decidedly Israeli adaptation of an American icon, we decided that Israel is often like a third-world country with first-world infrastructure. For example, we do not have a clothes dryer and are blessed to have a washer, but our high speed internet was set up within days of moving in. Driving through the dessert, one can see Bedouin herders tending their flocks, while chatting busily on their cell phones. These are but examples of the contrasts that exist here in Israel, and I’m sure that I will continue to explore them in future (shorter) postings on this site. Goodnight for now…