Have had some "challenges" with internet connectivity these last few days, hence the delay in writing about a very interesting Monday night. Readers of this blog may remember that Sarah and I were invited to join my sister-in-law, Laurie in participating in an "iftar." This is the meal (dinner) that signifies the end of each day's fasting during the Moslem holiday of Ramadan (which lasts for a month). This particular iftar was hosted by the Negev Coalition Forum for Civil Equality -- a group of Jews and Arabs (mostly Bedouins) who have come together to work toward attaining full civil rights for all, regardless of religion or ethnicity.
It turns out that the city of Be'er Sheva (and, I am told, many other municipalities in Israel) will allocate use of a bomb shelter to a specific group which then uses it as a "home base" (kind of a club house) from which to operate. I didn't specifically ask this, but I assume that should the need arise for it to function as a bomb shelter that would obviously take precedence. The coalition has such a facility and this is where the iftar was held. I had never been inside an Israeli (or any other) bomb shelter. Above ground all you see is a small reinforced concrete building (which actually looks like nothing more than a hut.). The shelter itself is located two flights down and consists of several rooms made out of reinforced concrete. The rooms are air conditioned and the coalition has furnished them sparsely with a few couches and plastic chairs. The largest room was the one used for the iftar and all of the furniture was removed and replaced by colorful rugs and a few pillows, as the dinner is eaten "Bedouin-style" (i.e., sitting on the floor). There were a few chairs provided for those of us who are not too comfortable sitting on the floor for several hours. [There was no shortage of people willing to take advantage of these more comfortable accommodations!]
All of the food was set out in advance but no one ate until the Sheik (and he really looked just like what you would expect a sheik to look like!) of one of the Bedouin communities signaled that it was the proper time to break that day's fast (around 7:30 PM). There were huge trays of chicken and rice (which was yellow as the result of some sort of seasoning -- perhaps turmeric?), hummus with olive oil and satar (a middle eastern seasoning mix), tahini, these huge (perhaps a meter in diameter) pieces of soft, flat bread (like a very thin tortilla) which you just tore a piece off of and passed to the next person, several different types of olives and pickles, dates, and a scrumptious couscous-based salad with onions, other spices and craisins! By contrast, dessert was watermelon and pastries (which included brownies and ruggelach!). Everything was delicious and I actually ate a bit too much (something which those of you who know me know I am usually very careful not to do).
As we were beginning to eat, it dawned on me that although the room was full, there were no Arab women present. There were quite a few Caucasian women (and, of course, Sarah) and there didn't seem to be any "separation" of the men from the women present. We were seated, intermixed, with the men. It turns out, however, that Bedouin women do not eat with the men and so they were actually in the next room. It did feel a bit strange -- although I think it would have felt stranger to be asked to sit in the other room. After dinner, there were a number of "speeches" given largely by the Arab participants, but a few of the Jewish members of the group spoke as well. It intrigued me that although there were far more Arabs in the room than Jews, all of the speeches were given in Hebrew. One of the longest, and most animated, was given by the sheik and I must confess it struck me as quite amusing to see this guy in full Arab dress (including kaffiyeh = headpiece) speaking in perfectly accented Hebrew! It was clear that it was understood that all present (with a couple of notable exceptions -- namely, Sarah and me) could understand Hebrew, but Arabic would have been understood only by the Arabs and a handful of the Jews.
Overall it was a fascinating experience and certainly not one which could be described as your average tourist activity! The whole thing wrapped up at around 10'ish and Sarah and I returned to my niece Shlomit's home in Be'er Sheva for the evening. We were sitting around schmoozing when, at around 11:30 PM, a siren went off that could have woken the dead! It was clearly NOT a fire siren or an ambulance. I looked at Shlomit, she ran inside and grabbed the baby (who was asleep -- and who, BTW, slept through the whole thing -- I have NO idea of how!) and brought her back into the living room. She then explained -- quite calmly -- that that was a siren that indicated that Be'er Sheva was being fired on (almost certainly from Gaza). Sarah looked like she was going to faint and I asked, "So what do we do?" She said, and I quote, "We stay here in the living room where there are no windows and then we wait for 20 seconds after the alarms stop and see if we hear anything." This is the approximate amount of time that it takes the rockets to travel from Gaza to Be'er Sheva (or pretty much anywhere else in the Negev) so there really isn't much else you CAN do. Sure enough, about 15 seconds after the alarms quit we heard three booms. They seemed pretty distant and Shlomit confirmed that she thought that they were. She immediately turned on the radio and within about 10 minutes it informed us that, indeed, Be'er Sheva had been targeted by rockets from Gaza and that they had fallen in the outskirts of the city and there were no injuries. Shlomit told us that this was the first time this has happened since March. The next day we read that Israel had responded by targeting four Hamas installations in Gaza which resulted in killing one "gunman" and wounding several others.
Luckily, I suppose, I have never been subjected to an experience like that here in Israel (or anywhere else, for that matter) before. For some reason, I wasn't as shaken up by it as Sarah was. Perhaps it's because I know that in all of the shelling of Be'er Sheva over the last few years there have been no fatalities and only a few injuries. The rockets that have been used up until now are pretty unsophisticated and very difficult to aim (they're not like the ones used by the US, or Israel for that matter, which can target a specific location with great accuracy). The statistician in me viewed it as a Poisson distribution. [This is the type of distribution that describes a very, very unlikely event. It's sort of like if you drop a golf ball out of a helicopter onto a football field it is going to land somewhere, but the likelihood of it's landing in any one particular spot is infinitesimally small. Sort of like the proverbial drop in the ocean.] Nevertheless, it did bring home the potential danger under which many Israelis exist day in and day out. These are things that we simply don't worry about in Honeoye Falls, NY!!
Well, a couple of days ago we returned to the center of the country and have been spending time with my cousin who lives in Modi'in Illit (also known as Kiryat Sefer = Town or City of the Book; guess which "book" we're talking about). My cousin Janice is a ba'alat teshuvah and her husband Steve is a ba'al teshuvah (loosely translated this means "master/mistress of return", and is the term used to describe Jews who have been raised either in more liberal traditions or are completely secular and who then choose to adopt an ultra-religious lifestyle) often abbreviated as "BT's". Suffice it to say that my cousin Janice and my sister-in-law could not represent more divergent aspects of Israeli culture if they tried! Will write more about Sarah's and my reactions to being immersed in (and indeed, living in) this Haredi atmoshpere. For now, suffice it to say that we feel much like fish out of water!! Sarah is spending the upcoming weekend with some of her friends from JFI in Modi'in and I am returning to Be'er Sheva to spend additional time with my niece (and her adorable 3 year-old daughter who very patiently allows me to practice my Hebrew with her). For my fellow Hebrew students, you will appreciate that I am getting a lot of experience using feminine forms since those with whom I have been speaking Hebrew are almost all women. I will take a minute to brag here and tell you that my cousin Steve, the BT, asked me to pick of a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate for him and I actually conducted the entire conversation with the clerk in Office Depot (yup, they have those here in Israel) in Hebrew! The only box I could find on the shelves was for the most basic version and I actually asked the clerk if they had either of the more advanced versions. It turned out that they had NONE of the versions of Windows in stock, however, the guy never switched to English while having this discussion with me! This either reflects the fact that I did a fairly good job with the Hebrew, or -- as is more likely -- he stinks at English and was stuck conversing with me in Hebrew even though my Hebrew is rudimentary at best! In any case, it was the first time that I had done anything like that so it felt pretty cool!!
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