Tales from Israel, Part 1

Not long ago, I went on a 10-day trip to Israel. Apparently, if you’re Jewish, Israel is automatically an optional homeland, and you can visit it for free. (Yes, I’m serious.) There is a catch, though. The trip is a giant advertisement to convince you to move there. Sort of a Zionist timeshare. They put you in a huge group, give you new Jewish friends, and have you share “meaningful experiences.” It’s hard to complain too much though; after all, it was a free trip.

Because I’m a self-serving jackass, I’m sure I’ll eventually advertise this blog post on Facebook. Moreover, because I’m Facebook friends with nearly everyone who went on the trip with me, I should probably explain why I waited almost two months to write this entry. Basically, it comes down to sensory overload. Here is a normal day for me in Baltimore:

• Work.
• Get home from work.
• Make super brilliant awesome plans.
• Ditch plans so I can play video games and watch reruns of That’s So Raven.
• Sleep.

Here was a day in Israel:

• Wake up ungodly early.
• Do stuff.
• Do more stuff.
• Be social.
• Do even more stuff.
• Sleep for like 8 minutes before having to repeat.

buddytv.com

Normally, all that needs to happen for me to have another idiotic, rambling blog post is dinner with a friend. “Wow, okay, everyone, you’re never going to believe this. Jill called me, and we ate chicken together. Chicken! I wonder if it was free range.” Thus, after spending 10 days with 40 people in a foreign country and actually doing something every day, just trying to reduce everything to a single blog post was too much for my brain to handle.

Realistically, unless I feel like writing a 76-part blog post (this post will have two), recounting everything that happened is too ambitious of an endeavor. Not to mention, reading your toothpaste ingredients would probably bore you less. However, it was beginning to feel too strange that I maintain a personal blog with nary a single mention of the trip. So it’s about time I recount a few stories from the trip, beginning with one from Ein Gedi, a spring not too far from Jerusalem. We may have climbed mountains, seen museums, and toured landmarks from three major religions, but I received a wholly unexpected education while touring Ein Gedi. And it started out so innocently.

This dude was chilling on top of a car when we got to Ein Gedi.

My tour group had walked through a maze of outcrops, mosses, and streams, eventually winding up at a thin, steep waterfall, advertised as Ein Gedi’s highlight. There was a flurry of wholly predictable photographs taken all around us, and a lot of people gathered on the tops of nearby rocks for some harmless touristy shots. Meanwhile, I was busy announcing that the top of the waterfall looked remarkably like a portion of the Draenei’s starting zone in World of Warcraft. I could feel my coolness skyrocketing as I snapped a few dozen photos of the same crevice near the top of the falls.

There has to be SOMEONE else who sees it.

Eventually, I decided having friends is a good thing in life, so I stopped taking those pictures. At that point, three nearby people in the group—Sarah, Anait, and Ben—and I took our turn on top of a particularly well-placed rock so we could get our requisite waterfall-in-the-background shot. Unfortunately, the rock was not particularly wide, and it was slippery from the surrounding mist.

Anait lost her footing and began to slip forward. Being the chivalrous young man that I am, I reached out my arms and grabbed her torso to keep her from falling. Because I revel in heroic feats almost every moment of my life, I thought nothing of what I was doing. I did not even consider that the normal human reaction to my grip would be to use it to her leverage and position herself back on the rock. Instead she just lay there, frozen, and laughing.

In fact, as I was courageously risking my life to rescue her from a precipitous tumble, I noticed that she was not the only one laughing. Everyone at the bottom of the waterfall was laughing—the tour group, the guides, the nearby tourists of ambiguous Asian descent, everyone. It was at that point that I realized my right hand was positioned squarely on her right breast. Here I was, thinking I was Superman, unaware that Anait had two round pieces of Kryptonite secured under her bra.

Moments prior to disaster.

With my newly discovered heterosexual inclinations, I became thrown inside some Twilight Zone episode where the entire middle school ethos is reversed, and being called “straight” is an insult. (What I’d give to live in that world.) I had to endure this as everyone returned to our bus, and we began our 30-minute commute towards the Dead Sea. “So what was it like, Richard?” “Do you like girls now?” Fortunately, Anait laughed it off. I’m pretty sure though that she is still high off her brief stint with Richard-love.

By the time we reached the sea, I had not showered in well over 24 hours, my cleanliness further marred by my proximity to female glandular organs. Israel secures its beach locker rooms more than its customs secures borders. Once I got out of the bus, I had to pay for two vouchers to enter the gated locker room: one to enter and change and another to enter and dry off once I was finished. Luckily, the beach was completely empty. Sadly, this was because the temperature was 280 degrees below zero.

I don’t usually feel the “Well, this may be my only chance to do this” sentiment. Frankly, I think it’s dumb. If Alex Rodriguez went up to someone and asked to assault him with a baseball bat, the average person would not think, “Well, this may be my only chance to get beaten up by Alex Rodriguez.” I fail to see how “Well, this may be my only chance to swim half-naked in unbelievably salty water whose temperature is roughly what’s required to make molecules stop moving” is all that different. Anyway, I digress. Well, this was my only chance to swim in the Dead Sea. I changed into a swimsuit and strutted towards the water.

I now know that the Dead Sea’s beach is not like an ordinary beach. Instead of sand, there’s salt. Instead of shells, there’s salt. Instead of rocks, there’s salt—enormous, spiny salt formations, actually. By the time I finally made it to the water, I had lacerated every one of my toes and was hoping the spirit of the Holy Land was not a disease transferable through blood.

tripadvisor.com

The Dead Sea lived up to its reputation, and once I was sufficiently far from shore, the water rather forcefully kept me afloat. It was cool, I guess. If you like submerging yourself in freezing salt baths. I swam over to some other people in the group. One of them, a surly, blonde Army veteran named Danyul was lying in the water and kicked some of the water into the air. The water landed in my eye, and for a moment, I was certain there was no god. It was as if I had wandered into Denny’s at 2 in the morning, and the employees had converted the restaurant into a torture chamber. (Granted, finishing their Moons Over My Hammy already does that.) I was shackled to one of the dining room tables, and the waiters took turns, one-by-one, emptying entire salt shakers into my eyes. It was at that moment that I also became acutely aware that while my eyes were being doused with Hebrew salt, more salt was making its way into the cuts on my feet.

It did briefly cross my mind that by the time I could find a way out of the sea, I might be transformed into a quasi-Magneto, capable of extracting salt out of any substance with nothing but my mind. More noticeably though, I was flapping around like an epileptic 11-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert. Struggling and in immense pain, I reached the shore, which I had, until then, forgotten consisted of nothing but salt. I stumbled towards my towel and shirt, left a trail of blood and hate back to the dressing room, signaled for the attendant to accept my second changing room voucher, and took the most painful shower of my life.

To be fair though, there was much more to Israel than lessons in anatomy and abusive sea salt. In fact, some parts of Israel were simply amazing. For example, we had an Israeli accompanying us whose name was Ofir.

To be continued…

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