Jerusalem 2

Ok, so, I’m not exactly sure where I left off last time, and from my notes I’m not really sure where I am even! I know that at some point during the last two days we did the following: We went to Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. It was very well done, very very intense. The tour was great, but it had what our Prof calls a “very pointed narrative,” meaning there was lots of information there, but the tour covered really only the worst parts. There was next to no mention of the heroes, the people who fought back, only the stories of people killed, and the nations that turned away. And that’s legitimate. It did happen. But I think to basically ignore the positive things that happened in spite of, or because of, all the horrendous stuff is to forget humanity, in part. Anyway, that was my take on it. We also went to Hezekiah’s Tunnels, which is an underground aqueduct that insured a good supply of clean water to all of Jerusalem during times of siege. It was built from the ends, and joined in the middle, which I think is a miracle of engineering. It was half a kilometer underground in a tunnel that was about two feet wide, water up to at least our mid-calf, and ceilings that were occasionally five feet. I am really proud of myself for not freaking out, since claustrophobia runs in my family, but it was great. We sang show tunes the whole way down (Avenue Q!) We also talked to a lady about Jewish immigration and immigrants from Ethiopia, and then we went the Department of Foreign Ministry to hear about “nation branding” - essentially the process of deliberately creating the image of a country through various ways, mostly by promoting the best things in the country. It was very...interesting. It felt a lot like a sales pitch, because it was, but it is also a very interesting concept, with lots of examples, like Borat’s “branding” of Kazakistan, or the image of Brazil, compared to it’s realities. Really fascinating. We had dinner in a GREAT Armenian restaurant/pub (second time there) and stayed there for quite some time, then returned to the Sephardic center to find it fun of ununiformed, guntoting IDF soldiers who were there for a show drill thing for the Prime Minister of Romania the next day. We hung out with them for quite a while, which was really fun.

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Part of trip: Israel

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