So everyone keeps telling me to update my blog or at least, as my mother has put it, “finish it off”. I thought it had been established that I had kind of failed at the whole blog thing- apparently not. The thing is, it’s kind of difficult to update or finish it off when so much has been left out. There’s no way I can go back and summarize things efficiently enough to continue on, and I’ve been onto the next adventure already so how can I end things when people are wondering about my current happenings in Paris?
Here’s what I’ve decided to do: pour myself a glass of wine, turn on some Devendra Banhart, and hope that these will result in a successful blog post.
Ready. Set. Go.
Last time I wrote on the blog I had given a summary of my group’s travel through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and had mentioned maybe a little about Israel/Palestine.
Can I just say that Jerusalem is one of the most interesting cities I have ever been to? It’s modern—go figure—yet it has so much Biblical/ancient history. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Europe has history; I know. But Europe’s history is not this ancient and it’s not as religiously meaningful to so many religious groups: Jews, Muslims, Christians, Mormons…
Jews living in Jerusalem are diverse. You’ve got the Ashkanzi (originally from outside of Israel/Palestine region) Jews and the Hasidic (from Israel/Palestine) Jews. With Ashkanazi Jews you’ve got people from all over the world. A family would walk by in their Jewish orthodox style of clothing and the children would be pale, freckled, and red-headed. I’d turn my head slightly and see another Jewish family walking by who were black. I was mesmerized by the differences. I wonder if that’s how some people feel when they come to cities within the States and see the diversity.
I wasn’t expecting such physiological diversity within the Jewish population in Jerusalem. Actually, I’m not sure if “physiological” is the right word but I’m not sure whether “ethnic” would technically work either because isn’t “Jewish” technically an ethnicity? What the hell does being Jewish mean? Does it simply mean someone who is practicing the religion of Judaism? Is it an ethnicity? Is it just a bundle of cultural traditions? What is Jewish? I still don’t know because as I learned, there are lots of different divisions/labels within being Jewish. There are Secular Jews, Traditional, Orthodox, Ultra-Orthodox, Messianic, Christian Jews, and the list could go on…
My favorite thing to observe while in Jerusalem, were the styles of clothing. You had the tourists from all over the world wearing their garb- South Americans, Africans, Europeans, Australians, North Americans…and then you had the Jewish locals/tourists who were wearing modern styles of clothing, those with modern clothes but wearing the Yarmulke and tassles, those wearing their black dress clothes with their top hat and tassles, and then some of the Russian Ultra’s wearing their robes and furry hats that look like tires on top of their head.
