Why I'm going to hell... but at least not as a hippie.

The latter can be answered simply as my parents forced me to get a haircut ("but visiting American students in Israel never get haircuts", I tried to reason. Nope, didn't work.) My front hair went beyond my nostrils and my back hair to my shoulders (both when uncurled... when I was a baby I had blonde curly hair, which then became brown, back to blonde, and back to brown and straight... however, I've realized that on the times that I have allowed my hair to grow out (ie: college), it has grown curly. My locks have a natural curl that I have had since birth. Now my hair doesn't even go past my eyes. Sigh. Funny thing with the barber:

"אני לא דתי אבל לא חילוני":Me
Barber: "אה, אתה מסוֹרתי!"
Me: Yeah, that's the one.

Wasted on you non-hebrew speakers...

Ok, so as I have established, my parents are in town. I should first mention the places I took them to. First the 15₪ Shwarma place next to Ben Yehuda, which they thought was the best place ever, had dairy breakfast at a glatt kosher dining room (which disturbed me a little (glatt kosher dairy?! -- the maître d said they had two kitchens and served meat for lunch and dinner...) then for lunch today took them to the brand new Yemenite restaurant on Emek Refaim, מרבד קסמים, ("Magic Carpet") (I got a Yemenite Meat Soup) and for dinner to Shnitzi. I ran into some friends from school walking down Emek and I told them about this and they noticed the pattern of us working our way up the block. I replied that this was planned tomorrow morning we would eat stir fry at Joy Express for breakfast, but leave room for eating sunglasses at the store next to it for lunch! Ha... you had to be there, I guess. Well, they all laughed... I hate you...


Ok, so why I'm going to hell. Well, today I kinda forced them to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the place where Jesus is buried on Palm Sunday (which by the way I don't understand. There was no occasion 7 days before Passover or 5 where people carry palm branches and say "Hosanna!". There IS a seven day festival called Sukkot (which begins 5 days after Yom Kippur on the 15th day of Tishrei, on the exact opposite side of the YEAR) where we carry palm fronds in processions and say "Hoshannah!". Well, maybe this was a mix-up, and something was lost in translation, because our holiday is 6 months, not 6 days, beforehand. It was interesting, but different than what the Jews did way back then. So we went to the church while stuff was going on. There were priests singing and there was thick scents of incense in the air. I was honestly nauseated by the strong scent. There was one guy wearing a crown. That was cool. There is the basillica in which Jesus is supposedly buried and in another section on an upper floor, the rock of Golgotha where Jesus was crucified. I had to make pennance for going in there because some of the stuff that went on in there was, and I apologize if I offend anyone with this but I must be blunt, avoda zara (at least according to the opinion of Maimonides). I decided I needed to go to the Kotel to maybe cancel out what I just did (Jews aren't even supposed to go into churches when services aren't going on. I went to the holiest site in Christendom and also have contracted Tumat HaMet, the most impure form of impurity, for being in the same room as a dead Jew (ie: Jesus). So yeah, Kotel. This is where a chabad guy convinced my dad to put on tfillin... after which the guy began to bad-mouth Conservative Judaism.

We also went today to Mea Shearim (after looking forever for parking spaces and one way streets that were going in the correct direction). I forced my mom to bring a skirt with her, lest they throw stones at her. I got to show off some of my Yiddish skillz and we found some beautiful presents, including an antique yad for a good family friend's Bar Mitzvah (we've had a tradition with this family to give the Bar Mitzvah yad to each of the 3 children in each of our families). I also found 192 Proof alcohol in a makolet in Mea Shearim. That's right 96% alcohol kosher for passover!!! (That's 1% and 2 proof more than Everclear!). That, and people with giant pots for the use of dunking your pots in to kasher them.

I was going to go with my parents to Petra, but it looks like that's not gonna happen.

My parents think that any girl I'm talking to in Hebrew (or Yiddish) I'm flirting with. Maybe I am.

And I did in fact go to hell, in order to get to Ghost Valley (Emek Refaim) both times today, we had to go toward the Hinnom Valley, known in Hebrew as GeHinnom... גיהינום = גיא הינוםHell...

Sorry, since I began to write this wikipedia servers went down. I hope this wikipedia stuff is useful for your parsing my blog droppings.

I lost 10 pounds today... when I got a haircut... That's it for now.