An Inconvenient Truth

I recently saw An Inconvenient Truth, and I thought it was a good title for a blog post. Which means now whatever I write needs to be an inconvenient truth. Which in this country shouldn't be so difficult. Well there's the obvious inconvenient truth. Well, two different sides of the same inconvenient coin. Inconvenient truth for liberal Zionists: it seems that most Israelis prefer the status quo to painful concessions for peace. But that's old news. I was just reminded of it by the fact that a rally that only called for the two sides to talk to each other (!!!) was not even supported by a lot of Israelis. Wow. Of course, it's because Israelis are jaded by failed peace talks, but it's still depressing.
The other side of the inconvenient coin is that there seems to be no common ground for negotiations. Many Israelis are convinced that settlements like Ma'aleh Adumim, Ariel, and all of Gush Etzion will remain part of Israel. Beyond that, most people in favor of the existence of a Jewish state consider a right of return for Palestinians to be a red line (as opposed to a green line?). While I can't say for sure, I get the impression that Palestinians are less than willing to give up more land in the West Bank, or freedom of movement within their state, which might be the result of annexing far-off yet established cities like Ariel; and I get the even stronger impression that for many Palestinians, including both citizens of Israel, residents of the West Bank, and refugees abroad, the right of return is a prerequisite for a peace agreement.
Now, the lack of a settlement or agreement for a lot of people is a lot more than inconvenient. And to me, a newly-made Israeli by choice who has supported peace negotiations since before I was considered an adult even by Jewish law, well before I could vote in either this country or the US, it's depressing. But is the inconvenient truth just that I'm going to accept this region for what it is, and be happy making a home for myself here?
Yesterday, for the first time, I left a government office feeling good about the bureaucracy here. Sure, they gave me the run-around, and the only reason why I spent 3 hours there was because I was billed for no reason and had to fight the charge (all for social security- a system I support wholeheartedly). But at the end of the day (literally, in that office), somebody was willing to spend 20 minutes with me to make sure we worked out the whole situation. And the fine people at Nefesh B'Nefesh, whom I decided not make aliyah with, were happy to help me and give me all the advice, phone numbers, etc. that I needed.
So what is my inconvenient truth? Is it that I am happy to benefit from groups that I sometimes disagree with (the very name Nefesh B'Nefesh makes me uneasy); is that I watch a movie about Global Warming and still leave my computer on all day, unnecessarily eating up energy; is it that I talk about wanting a more just Israel, but I actively benefit from the situation as it is? And that's the inconvenient truth of this whole place: I will always struggle with my decision to move here, but I don't see any moral quandary changing my mind.

Time to Update this Thing

Major milestones in my life:
1) I got mono. I lost weight. Huzzah!
2) I went back to the United States for over a month and really enjoyed my time there. So what did I do? (see 3)
3) I made aliyah!
4) I got a job teaching at Muss. It's a real job. But I'm still reading Torah for the lovely people at Tiferet Shalom. As one told me, "you don't have a great voice, you have an American accent, but we enjoy it." I think she meant it only as a compliment.
5) I got a mac. It is beautiful.
In other notes, my ADD is still slightly unchecked. Which reminds me that I should probably put my groceries in the fridge.
6) Oh yeah, I got a fridge. Life is good.

A Major Milestone

Last night something huge happened to me. I went to see DJ Cut Chemist, of Jurassic 5, at Cafe Barzilay, my favorite club in Israel. It was a pretty major hip hop event, and I expected to see anybody who was anybody there at the show. What I did not expect was to spend much time with friends who enjoy hip hop. Every time I try to bring friends out to things like this, they come up with some excuse, and I'm on my own. But not this time. I actually found friends there, and brought a few others. For the first time, I spent more time with people I was hanging out with than with rappers to whomI would introduce myself. Sure, I saw some rappers, and even talked to a few of them. But of those even, some are genuinely my friends. I think it's fair to say I've come a long way since the beginning of the year.
And I'm realizing, slowly, that my interest in being the Israeli hip hop expert is in many ways because I want to be a part of the "hip hop community." But I don't really know what kind of community that is, and I'm not becoming fast friends with rappers and DJs across the board. Instead, I'm leading a semi-normal life. And as hard as it tries, my job with Ramah Seminar isn't ruining that. Sure, I have tons of sixteen and seventeen year-old friends again, but they're not my only social life. To say that I've gone from having no social life to more than one is huge. And one of them may even still be around when I come back after my summer break.
So I'm glad that something somewhat normal is turning up in my life. Because those who know, know that that other aspect of social lives was anything but normal for me lately! But at least it was there!

In Between Days

Today's the big day. In only a few hours, I return to university. It's been a long break. Today's June 5. I was last in class on March 27. That's a long time. 70 days to be exact. 10 weeks. The omer and then some. Longer than the amount of time until I will next be in the US. Wow.
Ok, you get the idea. So now I'm back in school. And I'm taking an astounding one class. And maybe I'll officially sign up for a second one. Unclear. I guess my plan to not have work and school conflict didn't work out so well. Because now I feel like I have nothing to do with myself.
I could immerse myself in independent study. Or spend my times at the chava, doing tefilla prep until I've covered every possible scenario on Seminar that could possibly arise. Or I could do what I did yesterday. Watch crappy movies and TV shows for 12 hours. Break for crossword puzzles.
But enough about me. Lately the only things on my mind have been job opportunities and women. But my blog always talks about those things. So here's a new topic.
40 years of occupation. We are in the midst of the 40th anniversary in the Gregorian calendar of the Six-Day War. And no topic really raises greater questions about my own Zionism than this. Last week I attended an event called "Ad She'Tifkach et Eineha," which called on Israelis to open their eyes to the problems of the occupation. This followed two days I spent in the Golan, one of my favorite places in this country, despite my political discomfort there. Then, two days ago, I went to Har Herzl, spoke to my students about Mike Levin, and then proceeded to the Tayelet to view the incredible view that is Occupation.
Let's just say it was pretty whirlwind, and it raised a lot of questions. I love the Golan. I support a two-state solution. I wish to see a unified (and I don't mean Israel-occupied; I mean unified) Jerusalem. You know, one where people from the East and West interact as equals. Where religious and secular, English, French, Arabic and Hebrew speakers recognize that they are compatriots. Something very different from what Jerusalem is now. And I go to Har Herzl and I'm filled with the mixed emotion of pride for what my friend and so many others have done and the pain of loss, the desire to see the wars end. Some people go to Har Herzl and swear that these soldiers fought for the Israel we have now, and we'd be disrespecting their memory by giving any of it. I obviously don't feel that way. But I don't feel the opposite either. I really believe that everyone buried at Har Herzl died because they believed they were protecting Eretz Yisrael and Am Yisrael, not out of a desire to oppress Palestinians. But did they perhaps accomplish that as well? Probably.
So what does that leave me? I do not believe that every implication of the Six-Day War has been a bad one. So where do we go? As a commenter in the previous post wrote, I am a typical liberal. Maybe, maybe not. I'd like to think I'm not such a typical liberal. But I'll tell you one thing I do know. Everybody's right. And everybody's wrong.

Out of Focus

Lately, I've had much more trouble focusing than in general. Sure, I could make this whole blog post about...let's go ride bicycles. But really, it's more than that. I think I'm actually becoming self-destructive. For instance, last night, I got so bored waiting for my bus, that I took another bus coming (thanks free bus!) just to move a little bit. Turns out that the other bus wasn't on it's usual track, so I ended up missing my own bus altogether, and getting home 40 minutes later. Needless to say, I was a tornado.
At home, my apartment is a mess. I have tons of dry-cleaning I need to do, but I haven't managed to get to the dry-cleaner in the last 2 weeks. I've only barely started my independent study for school, still, and I'm getting worried that I'm wasting my advisor's time. And I'm not really sure how to fix this situation.
See, those who know me well enough know that I have an easy solution. And those who don't know me well enough shouldn't worry about it. But I'm genuinely concerned. My classes have been fairly successful, and I'm afraid to mess with a good thing by getting back in to the old routine. So now what?
Here are my choices:
1) Stop wearing dress clothes and walk more.
2) Read Driven to Distraction again. If I can get through it.
3) Back to the old routine. Anxiety be damned.
4) Try to eliminate distractions around me. But even when I'm bored by all of those (no one on AIM or messenger, nothing on TV, already finished the crossword puzzle), sometimes I found that I feel like I have nothing to do. Nothing to do? I could start with grading papers, preparing lessons, or, chas v'shalom, doing my independent research! But instead I just check something stupid on Facebook for the 80th time.
As always, suggestions welcome.
On another note, I think I discovered my complicated thought-process in a nutshell. The Tuesday NYT crossword puzzle is easier for me than the Monday one. Why? Because I over-analyze the easy Monday clues. Go figure.

Master of What?

Back to the usual identity crisis problems. Today's problem: why am I getting a masters?
To be honest, I think that I am mostly doing it to make friends. And I suppose that since I've made two of them, that's been a success.
But what about my love of the subject matter? Just when I got excited about hip hop again, I realized that I was on my own. If there's one thing I understand about my ADD, it's that I am quite bad at setting personal deadlines and following them. I am not returning my students' papers nearly as fast as I would like to, I put off learning my Torah reading to the last minute every week, and I haven't yet started work on my independent study. I'm supposed to be reading Bourdieu. I bought the book, and started it four weeks ago. I've read three pages. I sort of understood them. I downloaded the article by Regev (who should be my mentor at this point, and is technically my advisor). I haven't printed it or started to read it. Why? Because we haven't set a deadline. And I can always find something else to do with my time that does have a deadline. Or at least that I know I need to get done more eventually.
So what about my other class? I'm on strike. Why am I striking? I don't even agree with the demands of the students (lower tuition). I'm actually in favor of raising tuition and having a better financial aid system, since I don't believe one exists here at all. So I've accomplished almost nothing in this class. I don't follow the lectures because of the Hebrew. I did the reading, but they never corresponded to our discussions, as far as I could tell. I think that now, two months after the semester has started, we've covered two of thirteen topics. But I could be wrong. I have no idea.
On the plus side, I finally got into the masters program. I didn't even have high enough grades (which I think I can legitimately blame on the language issues, though it is an adjustment to be in a place without grade inflation), but they let me in anyway. Thanks guys! We'll see if I repay them by staying in the program at all.
The alternatives? Get a job that pays better than the three I currently have combined? Apply to a Rabbinical school with a dean who's so homophobic it's nauseating? Apply to a rabbinical school that's more open but is too left-wing even for me and might prevent me from getting the kind of jobs I want? Move back to America, be closer to my family and friends, but risk never making it back to Israel? Get a masters in something else? Music magazine? Full-time blogging?
Suggestions welcome.

What's in a name?

As anyone who knows me well knows, I have always been very proud of my last name. Hasit. Signifier of my Turkish heritage. No offense to my mom, but I've always been prouder to be half-Sephardi than to be half-Ashkenazi. True, my mom is much more responsible for my Jewish education (and I mean not only Hebrew school and Ramah, which she has always been involved with, but also many of the rituals we do at home, taking me to shul, etc.), but I like being unique, and being Sephardi in most Jewish worlds I've ever been a part of makes me unique. And Hasit surely caused it's share of problems. It sounds like hassit or has-it (like the words) and people would constantly mispronounce it. In fact, mispronunciations of my name may have had an even bigger impact on my identity, leading to the name Hackit. I think it's fair to say that my life is quite different because of that nickname. So I guess the mispronunciation was a good thing.
But as proud as I've been of the name Hasit (which has led to campaign slogans, Sephardi-mockeries and more), I've never really understood why it's spelled with a t instead of a d. The name is without question Hasid, as in a righteous person. My mailbox in the states is spelled that way. But in the US, our name is Hasit. And that's great for the US, but when coming to Israel, I figured it only made sense to go by the actual Hebrew name.
And that's exactly what I did when I moved here. My bank account is with a dalet. As are all of my bills, and my university registration. As I became an official resident two months ago, I figured that would be it. I would officially be Hasid, with a dalet. But of course, Israel is ridiculous in everything that it does. And the State of Israel, with Hebrew as its national language, insisted that I transliterate from my American passport. And spelled my name with a tet.
Mind you, my grandmother lived her for 20 years. And her name in this country is spelled with both a tet and a dalet. I don't know how she got away with it. But I do know that I want to spell my name how I want. And I'll be damned if I let the Israeli government get in the way.
Love always,
Hackid