I spent 3 days putting together a photo essay Powerpoint slideshow of my time in Israel. I felt very wistful at first while selecting pictures and looking at the people I've met and places I've been to.
When it came to pick out songs- "Yerushalyim Shel Zahav" (Jerusalem of Gold) and listening to Ofra Haza's singing, I almost cried. The song went along so well with the Jerusalem portion. The song's just so beautiful- I don't know why I never listened to it before now. It just fits Jerusalem so well, especially how it's going along with the slides. When I hear the song, I think about the camera swooping down to different parts of the city and the streets, showing Jerusalem's beauty. I've come to appreciate Jerusalem over the last few months as a very special place that maintained its sparkle over all these centuries under different rules. It may have been conquered by the Americans, the black hats, and the Muslims in the past few years, but if you just take away all the conflicts and just close your eyes and imagine that Jerusalem is at your feet as I could do on Shabbats when I was in the center. Then it's possible to paint and to define Jerusalem as your own, however you'd like it to be. Somehow you just find a way to make it your own place, your Jerusalem.
For me, I saw so much of Jerusalem and I saw its history everyday and in everything that I did. For example, my bus rides and Shabbat isolation on Mount Scopus reminded me that Jerusalem was once divided and how the Jordanians took control of this part and that Hebrew University was isolated for years. When I walked down Emek Refaim, I looked at the bulletin boards and saw unusually more advertisements in English to remind me that this was an Anglo-Saxon area and many British and Americans settled here. The Knesset spoke of running public transportation on Shabbat but I know that it will never, ever happen in Jerusalem. The Old City had endless number of alleyways just waiting for people to draw the map of them in their heads. The mountainside to the north of Jerusalem, filled with trees and pine needles, demonstrates to the visitors that Jerusalem was only history, archeaology, and architecture. Despite hearing English on the streets, Jerusalemites showed patience in listening to my Hebrew. The promixity to the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall was enough to make me smile when I walk to the main campus at Hebrew University, how many people can truly claim to walk by it everyday? The only thing that Jerusalem could not do for me as well as the rest of Israel: Revealing the Israeli society in its true form.
I was just watching Desperate Housewives and Susan chose one man over another, figuring that she'd keep his promise to the one who proposed to her for marriage. When she came to him after hearing a voice message on her answering machine from the other guy, the fiance decided to leave her. He said to her that he loves her but cannot live with her when she has that faraway look because then he'll wonder if she's thinking about the other guy. He knew that she loved both of them but really thought that she loved the other guy just a bit more. He left her and called off the engagement. I understood right there that if someone's going to always have that distant look, that person isn't going to make it go away until she gets there. I didn't blame her at all.
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