Haifa Hike

Let me start with the end. The end of Ulpan. No longer will I be testing my alertness at 8:30 on a daily basis. No more five hours of high school Hebrew; only two and half. The last day of Ulpan all of the classes attended a special assembly with this very talented guitar player, who also introduced everyone to the Hang . This crazy instrument is made by two people in one factory in Switzerland, and there's a two year waiting list for it, but it was very cool watching and listening. We also sang some songs we had learned as a group. Later that day, I walked through an empty Rose Garden and found an awesome soup restaurant, and all of this during a terrible dust storm, where the sky was gold like the stones, the sun was a white mento in the, and every breath was dirty...



So how did I celebrate such a conclusion? By riding a bus for 2 hours to the third largest city in country (kinda like Allentown) known as Haifa. I went with two others from my program, and the only schedule we had was check-in and check-out at a hostel. We also knew the weather for the weekend...rain!

We got to the city fine, but we weren't exactly sure where to get off, so we chose a stop that was a half hour's walk from the hostel. We found a small hummus hut for lunch. Then came the first downpour. Rain, as we found in Haifa, came in bursts. It poured for maybe ten minutes, and then the skies cleared. Kinda like Back To The Future 2. We found the hostel, checked in and took off. This time we weren't walking. So we took the one and only subway in the country, which also turns out to be the smallest "subway system" in the world. It's called Carmelit , because it goes up Mount Carmel. However, the station was near empty and the train wa very small. It was a near joke, but it got us where we wanted to go...the Bahai Gardens!



Okay, so we didn't get in to see the terraces, because we missed the last tour and it rained on Saturday, but it was something to see, apparently it's the Eighth Wonder of the World. The center is a shrine where the Bab, the founder of Babism , and one of the central figures of the Bahai Faith , is buried. There's not much that I know except it brings in many Bahai pilgrims, and it was built entirely by their donations.

It was starting to get late, so walked down this mountain:

and were mildly surprised to find some other students from Rothberg in our dorm room. They told us they were heading to the Chabad for Shabbat services, and after walking five hours already, who were we to refuse a few more? I didn't really want to sit through hours of proselytizing, but I couldn't think of anywhere else to go. On the way there, a guy with a Kippa invited us to his synagogue. I asked him what kind of service? He said, "Mizrachi."

Mizrachi, meaning eastern. The Jews from Yemeni, Iraq, Iran, etc. The Ones who speak Hebrew like like it's Arabic. I knew we were in for an experience. We may have made their minyan which certainly got us Mizrachi points. I was interested to see how different the service was from home, especially Kabbalat Shabbat, because it's one of the most recent addition to the Jewish liturgical corpus. As it turned out, there wasn't much of a difference, just one additional psalm was included, and we even knew the Lecha Dodi melody. That said, the synagogue was a decorative hole in the wall, and the tradition of the Mizrachim is to recite everything aloud in one contiunal melody, and rather loudly too. The exceptions are the Shema, when each person recited it at his own (there were only guys there) pace, often enunciating the last syllable, and the V'ahavta which was chanted with Mizrachi Torah troupe. The rest of the service and the Kaddish had added words and different orders, so it was exciting to look for new surprises.

After the service, we spotted supper in the german colony, directly below the Bahai Gardens. I ordered some sort of fish, some call it Sea Bream, other's St. Denis. Whatever it was, the waiter delivered with an ENTIRE FISH. Complete with eyeballs. My appetite wavered, but I managed.

The next day we went to Akko, another port city just north of Haifa, but much much older. Napoleon's army was stationed there so we explored some of the remnants. Unfortunately, almost everything was closed, including the Turkish Bazaar. Shucks. So we made up for it by walking along the shore and getting rained on by the Mediterranean Sea instead of the sky, for a change.



When we got back to Haifa, I had my first Big Mac and through the window witnessed a five minute hail and thunderstorm. Yes, the weather is faster than the food I ate. We took the bus back at sunset, and while heading south, I watched Defiance on my laptop. Although I didn't finish it til later, I thought how cool it was to watch such a film of paranoia and persecution, and then to look up, back in the reality of a bus, filled with all kinds of Israelis...