It has come to my attention that I have left this blog to
fall to the side. Which is kind of the story of my life because who even knows
how many blogs I have floating in the universe that have one or two posts on
them and then I either forgot to post, forgot the password, or just started a
new one for the hell of it (my mom can attest that this happens with real
journals as well – I think she counted seven earlier this year?).
To sum up what you’ve all (and by all, I mean some of my
friends and my family) missed:
Mom, Dad, and Meghan came to visit and we had an amazing time going around Israel and seeing all the sights!
We (the four Bernsteins) rang in the New Year at Disney Paris which was so cool! First of all, the roller coasters are way better there – almost every one had a loop-d-loop, which is, of course, the official term, and they were fast and exciting. 10/10 would recommend.
I spent two days in Paris wandering the city and wondering if it was possible for me to stay there forever.
I worked. I got tonsillitis. I worked. I watched Netflix. You know, the usual.
Some of my friends and I went to Tel Aviv to take in some good old Vitamin D and – hello, it’s me – tacos!
Now, not to make any excuses, but the reason I haven’t
posted is that every time I think about posting, it’s all to do about adulthood
and if you scroll down a little, you’ll see that I already ranted about
that, so there’s no reason for you all to read about that again!
I suppose I don’t really have anything of substance to say
all things considered. And, while I know not all blog posts have to be deep and
full of fancy language, I honestly don’t have much to report. (Want to hear
about something in particular? Leave a comment below!!)
Please enjoy the slideshow of photos (which are horrendously out of order – thanks WordPress update) below, which are all from the bullet points above.
My lack of updates on my life here has not been for lack of something to share, nor has it been because of laziness. Actually, it has just been due to how busy it’s all been and the fact that, about a month ago now, I started my internship!
The work we do at my office is quite incredible. For a multitude of reasons, I can’t say too much about it. The main reason being that I’ll just babble about it because I get very excited about it and all the work we do.
I spent most of my days researching and writing, which, if you know me at all, is right up my alley. The people in my office are very nice and, because some of them don’t speak English, I’m working on my Hebrew skills (hopefully).
It’s strange to have already turned to November (metaphorically, of course, as I don’t have a calendar here other than my planner which I technically turn every week). It’s odd to have been here two months already and still feel like I’m leaving in a week. However, the little town of Jerusalem has officially started to feel like home. It’s a home without access to nachos, but it’s a home nonetheless.
A very exciting thing happened last week, which was that Dad came to visit! Dad jaunted over to Israel after being in Europe and spent the weekend with me. I was very excited to see him, but more excited to see all the stuff he brought me – some shoes I forgot, my kindle, and, to my surprise, an Aaron Rodgers jersey! I was shocked and excited to the point of speechlessness (although I’m kind of embarrassed to wear it now – the Packers are really disappointing me this season). This might seem like an inconsequential detail to you but it was an important detail to me and so you must hear about it.
We had Shabbat, ate tacos (because of course I found tacos here – don’t doubt my powers), walked through the Old City, went to a yummy brunch, visited the Kotel on Saturday… Just regular my-dad-is-visiting-me-in-Israel things.
Then, we said goodbye, but Dad will be back, along with Mom and Meghan (but no Norman I have been assured which is disappointing but I supposed seeing Mom and Meghan will have to do 😉 ) in December! Hooray! It’ll be here before I know it.
Anyway, I just wanted to say hello, and that, no, I have not abandoned my blogging. Just been busy.
Well, after another holiday (a whole week this time! Thanks, Sukkot!), some of the fellows and I decided we would go to Jordan for a few days to see Petra and Wadi Rum.
So Jenna, Ines, Will, Jake, and I packed up and shipped off to Jordan.
We started off in Jerash, a city known for its beautifully maintained Roman ruins. Our guide, Mahdi, says that they are the best maintained ruins in the Middle East, “and maybe even the world!” (I’m not so sure I side with Mahdi on that one, but the hyperbole worked in the moment. These ruins are so well-maintained because of an earthquake from a long long time ago that buried them in sand. They were only rediscovered in 1806, and have been carefully rebuilt and restored over the past 200 years (see photos below for highlights from Jerash).
After that, we toured around Amman – the capital of Jordan – on the bus. I would say it’s a cool city, but I didn’t see much of it due to my very uncomfortable bus nap, but the crew told me I didn’t miss much. What I did see reminded me of what Jerusalem might have looked at 30 years ago.
We headed from Amman straight to our Bedouin “camp.” I put “camp” in quotes because it was not a camp. It was a glampground. There were insulated tents, with actual beds, a huge firepit where they walked around serving us the sweetest tea I’ve ever tasted, hot meals, running water… You get the picture. It was nice.
The next morning, we headed to Petra. All I have to say about Petra is:
WOW.
Petra is one of the seven wonders of the world. And now that I’ve been there, I totally see why. We had just over 8 hours there, and I still feel like I didn’t have enough time to see everything I could have (again, photos below).
Details to note about Petra:
• People were actually living there until the 1980s when the Jordanian government asked them to move so that they could declare it as a UNESCO Heritage Site.
• It’s probably been inhabited since 9,000 BC.
• After it was abandoned by people in the early Byzantine Era, it remained unlived in until it was rediscovered in 1812.
• Probably the most famous line every written about it is: “A rose-red city half as old as time” (John William Burgon).
Also: it’s really freaking cool.
You start with a walk through the canyon, with enough ruins and wall carvings to show you a lot about the Nabateans, who inhabited Petra (many eons ago). Then, you emerge on, possibly the most famous ruin in Petra, the Treasury. Although you cannot go in, the outside is majestic enough. Although it’s called a treasury, historians and archeologists have actually discovered that it’s a burial ground, and you can actually see the tombs below the building. It’s all very historical, which might, at face value, sound boring. I assure you, it’s not.
You continue walking and you see the Royal Tombs, the theatre, the old temple… It’s all so incredible, and much of it is not pictured below only because I felt my photos to be inadequate to just how cool Petra was.
Now, you may be thinking: Emily, calm down with the praise of Petra. You might be overdoing it. And if you are thinking that, you probably haven’t been to Petra.
Anyway, after lunch, we climbed to the top of Petra – up 800 steps (in about 39 degree celsius weather) – to the Monastery. And just… wow. The fact that people were living in Petra up until the 1980s is pretty incredible just due to the fact that, while at the Monastery, I was looking around thinking, imagine if this was your morning coffee view.
After Petra, we spent a little bit of the next day in Wadi Rum on a jeep tour. You might recognize Wadi Rum from movies like “The Martian,” or “Lawrence of Arabia,” or “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusader,” or even “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” So yeah, it’s picturesque.
The sand is endless in Wadi Rum. (But Emily, of course the sand is endless. It’s a desert!) I don’t mean that I wasn’t expecting to be surrounded by sand in the desert because, hello, that seems obvious. I just mean that, at one point, standing atop a sand dune, the sand around us literally looked like it went on forever. It’s actually both breathtakingly beautiful and also slightly ominous at the same time.
All in all, the trip was great (or couldn’t you tell?), and I’m so grateful and glad that I got the privilege to go.
The entrance to Jerash.
Jake, a fellow Fellow.
Ines, roommate and a fellow Fellow.
Jenna, roommate and a fellow Fellow.
Mahdi, our guide.
The columns in Jerash rock, and the spoon shows the rocking.
Will, a fellow Fellow.
Artemis’s altar.
We might’ve sacrificed Jake to Artemis…
They were, in fact, playing Scotland the Brave.
The theatre in the Roman city.
The first ruin we saw in Petra!
Morning coffee.
They still have to guard the city… Pesky tourists.
These rocks used to be one rock – pre-earthquake.
Elephant rock!!
Treasury.
The Monastery.
“Look, Jenna… Everything the light touches is yours.”
Thanks, Will, for the really awesome pic!
The crew (plus some other guy on our tour).
Wadi Rum!
See! The sand is endless.
#girlgang
(If you would like any full size photos of the ones you see above, please let me know, and I will email them to you.)
Yom Kippur has just passed, which is the holiday where we, as Jews, finish out the period of atonement between the new year and now. This is the day where we spend 25 hours fasting and sitting (or standing) in synagogue apologizing and asking to be written down in the book of life. These days always make me introspective – or at least more introspective than usual – and out of that, came this post.
I find myself, around this time of year, wondering if I have done enough in the past year to deserve the amazing things that have happened to me. I graduated university – something which, if you had asked me four years ago, I never thought I would achieve. I had an amazing job – learning, reading, working in a law firm and gaining invaluable experience for my future.
And, finally, I had the incredible opportunity to move to Israel, a move I never thought I’d make, but one I’m forever grateful for, and one that still feels surreal when I think about it.
It is very difficult for me to put into words how I truly feel about this time of year. I feel repentant, apologetic to all those who I have wronged (and although it might seem trivial or cowardly to say this on a blog, but I truly am sorry to anyone who I’ve offended, wronged, or been mean to. I know that an apology via a blog, and a parenthetical to boot, can’t seem like much, but I truly mean it), accepting of my fate, but most of all, I feel a sort of closure. Closure on the year past. Closure on anything I might have felt like I had done wrong. Closure on wrongs done to me.
And it’s not necessarily that I feel like these things will never come up again. It’s not like I feel like the wrongs of the past year have been erased. It’s not as though I think everything that I’ve done, or that others have done, have just automatically been excused because I went to synagogue and prayed and repented.
But there is definitely a certain level of cleansing I feel, no matter how real, or just how personal and individualistic, that cleansing may be.
However, there is no way for me to take on the wrongs of the world, of everyone else, no matter how much I’d like to. And this is something I’ve struggled with for some time now. How can I, a simple woman fresh out of college, stand here in Jerusalem with the goal of changing the world?
My friend, Will, would say it’s easy – that changing one or two lives is enough to really have an effect on the rest of the world. And, to a certain extent, I agree with him. Perhaps this year will teach me that affecting just a few people will help the world as a whole.
But if you know me at all, you know that I can say that as much as I want, but I’ll still feel an obligation to change the whole world. It’s idealistic, and I know that, but this is a burden I carry.
Below is a poem I composed for my senior capstone this past year that I feel encompasses this responsibility I feel to the world. That there is something bigger than me here – something I am aching to be worthy of. Enjoy it, or don’t, but hopefully it reveals some sort of point that I’m reaching for in this blog post.
Yad Vashem
Smaller at the middle than at either end,
the building seems to rock and
the words I have painted on my skin countless times
echo – lo lishkoach, lo lishkoach, lo lishkoach. We snake through the photos and newspapers
and old bedframes and learn
more about ourselves than anything else. We turn
again and again and become part
of the families that have grieved for people
we have never known, and are nothing but
faded numbers now.
In a room curved around itself, my voice
rings. Claustrophobic, I sink in the center,
and look up through half-shut eyes to see
blank shelves and blank faces and
black water shifting with sighs.
Soul after soul of the unforgotten swirls
around me and I ask for answers
they can’t give – how to heal, how to hope,
how to move on.
They rustle in a language I learned but have
never truly understood and I am
brought to my feet by an existence much
more immense than my own.
They are made of prayers – ken yehi ratzon – swathed in those whispers that stretch over years
of promises that never came to anything
other than leftover remembrances.
I emerge into the sunlight, the stale oxygen
in my body turning crisp,
a vast view of the city that glints into the day.
I have never known what it is
to hurt until now. I have never
known happiness until now.
I have never known my own story until now.
Still, I etch my skin so that I
never forget – lo lishkoach.
I hope you all had an incredible fast – or just week, in general, if you’re not Jewish and have stuck through this whole blog post – and that you have an incredible rest of your week, month, and year.
