Through another series of visa mishaps and miscalculations, I’ve managed to turn the short cross-border jaunt from Jerusalem to Amman into a long afternoon of overpriced taxis across miles of blistering earth. Really, I’m turning into a regular Lawrence of Arabia. Back in charmless Amman, my stomach fattened on a few last rounds of hummus, my backpack stuffed with bootleg DVDs, I say my sad goodbye to five months in the Middle East - a heartfelt massalamu that’s only slightly dampened by the grinning, mustachioed cab driver who tries to rip me off on my way to [View Full Entry]

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After days of torpor in the heat of a Jerusalem summer, I’ve managed to make the most of my last few days in Israel. I spend an afternoon in the Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim and a morning watching the sun rise over the ramparts of the Old City. I head to the shouk to watch the shopkeepers pushing buckets of soapy water over the sidewalk and stacking crates of produce. The fish are getting laid out on beds of ice, their mouths agape. Two Arab deliverymen are having a smoke in the back of their truck, crouching beside rows [View Full Entry]

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After a week’s worth of doctor’s visits and more than $1,000 worth of supplies, I’ve finally managed to book my flight to Nairobi. It’s an emotional moment, less for the unparalleled possibilities of six months in Africa than the irrefutable fact that my bank account has dwindled down to just a couple of hundred bucks. How I’ve reached this point is worth no small degree of speculation; how I can high-tail it in the other direction is, of course, of somewhat more pressing import. I’ve shared the good news of my impending departure with friends in Jerusalem, [View Full Entry]

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The build-up to Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade has been gaining momentum for weeks, covering the full emotional spectrum from condemnation to outrage to cold, blind fury. A full 70% of the local population has come out (so to speak) against the march - their point being, perhaps, that Jerusalem wants its gays the way the rest of us want our cole slaw (on the side, and preferably out of sight). Orthodox Jews and Muslims alike have howled their opposition, causing one friend to quip that it’s about the only thing the two sides can agree on. In Mea Shearim - [View Full Entry]

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It’s a magical time of year for Jerusalem, when the city opens its doors to thousands of American college kids visiting on taglit. Described by one website as “first time, peer group, educational trips” to the Holy Land, it’s become quickly clear that “balls-out, drink-till-you-drop fuckfests” might be slightly more appropriate. While the cultural benefits of a birthright trip are surely abundant - prayers at the Western Wall, trips to Masada, bagels with Likkud on the floor of the Knesset [View Full Entry]

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A few local CouchSurfers have organized a barbeque on the outskirts of the city, on a gentle, pine-studded hill that feels a world removed from Jerusalem’s solemn ramparts, from the clamor of the shouk and the crowded lanes of the Old City. There are a few dozen of us gathered - Israelis and globe-trotters and globe-trotting Israelis - and we go through the motions familiar to these sorts of gatherings: routes taken and planned, couches surfed, border officials duped and dodgy trains ridden. There’s comfort in these o [View Full Entry]

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After even the tamest of weeks in Tel Aviv, you expect your feet to be scorched by the pavement in the holiest city on the planet. But my entrance into Jerusalem is a bit of an anti-climax, greeted by neither thunderbolts on the one hand nor palm fronds on the other. The haredim bustle about in their black hats and heavy coats, trailing a gaggle of kids behind; the soldiers patrol the bus station and rifle through my backpack - business as usual in this high-strung city. In fact, I’ll quickly learn that to be an American - and even [View Full Entry]

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These days in Tel Aviv - a hedonistic Sodom-by-the-sea, if ever there was one - aren’t entirely going according to plan. Somehow I’d imagined myself thrust full-on into the pageantry of pleasure and vice from day one: an orgy of sex, drugs and potato kugel that seemed to ignore my aversion to drugs and my ambivalence toward kugel. While I’d planned long days on the beaches and longer nights in the clubs, it’s only now that I’ve come to terms with the reality of my time in Tel Aviv: I look fat in my swimsuit, I don’t like clubs, and [View Full Entry]

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There’s a cheerless soldier keeping vigil at the entrance to the Haifa train station. He has broad, muscular shoulders and gray-green eyes and a jaw that looks like it was hacked from a quarry in Kohav Ha Shahar. I give him a bright, bushy “Shalom!” and he fingers the revolver on his belt. He wants me to unpack my bags. I grudgingly rifle through the wrinkled t-shirts and balled-up socks while he snuffs over my shoulder, the sort of banal baggage check that, I suspect, will become routine in the weeks ahead. As I’m repacking my things he waves a [View Full Entry]

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If it was the sense of the exotic that tugged at my heartstrings through all these months in the Arab world - the crowded souqs, the pungent spices, the men kissing and holding hands and carrying on like a trailer for Spartacus - it’s the utterly familiar that gets me off to a good start here in Israel. There are young mothers in yoga pants and Crocs and men wearing baseball caps with Daytona Beach stitched across the front. There are kids debating the National League East standings on a park bench. There’s even a middle-aged dad tossing around the [View Full Entry]

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