Down to Size
What with the Pope taking over the city's roads, and time winding down, I thought I'd put my experiences into perspective. Mini Israel in an excellent jumping off point for people coming to visit Israel. It's filled with miniature models of ancient sites, mountains, factories, museums, building, and anything else significant to Israel. There are holy sites, an airport, even a coca-cola factory, and in some cases, the structures come to life. The Western Wall site has little people that move back and forth in prayer. The Mosques amplify the Adhan, the shuks shout out bargains, and the trucks and planes move around. What struck me as most interesting though was the Masada exhibit. It appeared to be the only site that was rebuilt to reflect its ancient appearance. That is to say, at the bottom of the plateau, there was a camera crew filming the movie, but at the top, all the houses remained, and on the side, Herod's palace was completely intact. I think it was the only site not true to its modern representation.
There was a trivia game where we had to answer questions about sites by finding them and taking pictures. I certainly did not know all of them, such as where Jethro's tomb was, or where Cham Weizman was buried, but each group needed to have an Israeli, so I worked with Matan, and together we hauled in first prize, a soundtrack CD from Halahaka, The Band, from the army.
Thursday I was delighted to find an invitation in my mailbox to my sister's graduation. This is the reason I'm leaving Israel, so it's obviously pretty important. However, even though the addresses looked authentic, I had to check the invite to make sure it wasn't a fake. How do you check? Search for a mistake. This year, there are two commencement ceremonies planned on the same day at the same time, depending on your preferred language. On the English side, it's number 58, but on the Hebrew side, it's 59. At least I knew I was invited to the right ceremony.
That night, I met up with a family from my summer camp, and while I called them last minute and they were busy heading out for a birthday celebration, it was very nice catching up with them and reminiscing about past summers. From there, I went to the movie theater once again (last time it was Wolverine). In honor of it being the eve of the Pope's departure from the Holy Land, and therefore another few hours of house arrest for me, I saw Angel's and Demons, starring an Israeli actress, and with a screenplay written by Akiva Goldsman. I remember buying the book and looking it up online to find that the movie was set for release exactly a year from then, so I guess I read the book a year ago. I think that day also coincided with something involving wisdom teeth. Either way, the story takes place in a great location, Rome, and had a lot of fun recalling the Churches and other places I had just been too. In honor of the occasion, here's a clip I took of St. Peter's Basilica, a site used in a few scenes in the movie. The movie itself was so so, and I felt like Da Vinci Code was lacking as well. They're just not memorable movies, but they make good thrillers.
Friday I had to drop off the Dr. Seuss books from my Hebrew presentation at the other Hebrew University library, the national one, in Givat Ram. But first I stopped off at a public school in the city where I've been tutoring an Ethiopian-Israeli in English for the past two weeks, as an easier alternative to traveling all over for the blog I started for the Ethiopian National Project. Now, Givat Ram is the government district of Israel, so I went to visit the Smithsonian equivalent, known as the Israel Museum. The United States houses the Declaration in a building so secure it can sustain a nuclear attack. Israel does something similar, in the Shrine of the Book, but they're not as concerned about their declaration. They choose to protect the oldest known biblical and Hebrew textual records. These include the Dead Sea scrolls, some of which were purchased by Israel from an ad in the Wall Street Journal in 1947 for $250,000. Also included is the Aleppo Codex, what is believed to be the oldest known record of the Hebrew Bible used today, complete with grammatical markings. The codex was written in Tiberias, but spent most of its time in an Aleppo Synagogue. In 1947, right after the UN resolution was passed, the Synagogue was attacked, and the Codex smuggled out, only to be smuggled into Israel on a secret mission. The third and fourth most important artifacts are two metal amulets from the 1st Temple period which include the Biblical Priestly Blessing. This is the oldest Biblical inscription found.
I then explored a very cool art exhibit called "Bizarre Perfection." I can't explain what it was, but the exhibit is online, and you can see some of the pieces here. There was a glass floor held up by thousands of action figures, some of the most realistic looking dolls I've ever seen, and micro-calligraphy. There was also an exhibit on masks, and you can check that exhibit out here as well. If you click on masks from the exhibit, at the top, the last one is what they believe is the oldest mask found in the world. I think that's a pretty bold claim, but be careful, the mask looks like it would fit Anthony Hopkins well...
I would have stayed longer, but the museum was closing, so I quickly found the famous Love Statue and took off for some Shabbat shopping at the Shuk.
Friday night Jason and I took Damascus Gate to the Western Wall for services, and dinner took place at some random guy's family home in the Old City. I was once again disappointed by the orthodox opinion on public affairs, and felt a little weirded out walking through the shut-down shuk with Jason at a quarter to twelve, on our way to the Damascus Gate. All the doors were closed, and only the puddles and cats were still awake.
Lastly, I took this lazy weekend and procrastinated to the degree of catching up on video montages! Yay! So far we have:
and introducing...
the 3rd month,
and Italy...
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