Lazy Sukkot

I'm sitting in the West Bank. That awful place the media screams about when the word Israel is mentioned.

It's a lazy holiday afternoon. I've tried reading academic articles about washback - the academic term applied for the affects testing has on the education system. I've failed reading two pages due to the laziness that sits on top of this arid air. I've made Hebrew flashcards to try and get my Hebrew up to par. I've not been able to get myself motivated there either.

Last night, after dinner, a group of children came and performed a Biblical story inside of my girlfriend's family's Sukkah. We constructed it yesterday afternoon. We had dinner outside. Her family was nice enough to prepare some dishes for me without meat. Prayers were recited. Wine passed around. Bread torn and dipped into salt. Even then, the anticipation and sitting around was heavy and dry. Today it has grown more comfortable, and yet, I still find myself feeling oppressed by the lazy heat that hangs in everything.

I hear the call to prayer from the mosques in the nieghboring Arab villages from time to time. The full moon was bright and radiant last night. We're wedged in between the oppressive heat of summer and the wet, windy winter that awaits us. I, too, feel wedged between critical observer and active participant in the events unfolding around me. To grow up feeling so disconnected from the word Jew, and now to be totally acepted and embraced because of this word. The contrast is unsettling for me....even after more than a year of being here.

Things with my girlfriend are amazing. The only thing we can't discuss is politics. And really....why would we want to? Our love is joyous and grows with every day. Why let the games of man interfere with our feelings for one another? However, it's moments like these, as I lay around in the desert air, I do realize there is a certain level of reality that surrounds our fantasy love. It doesn't bother tossing it around, but I do see how it could. I enjoy it here, and also see the delicate, fragile case it is surrounded in.

These are the thoughts of this lazy, arid ramble between lunch and dinner on the Sukkot holiday. Hag Samayach (Happy Holidays) everyone.