efkaristo -- thank you

As we have delved deeper in different Jewish cultures and history in the context of global cultures and history, Frederic Brenner's Diaspora and his discovery of the worldwide web of Jewish history and the Jewish experience has increasingly resonated with me. We learn bit by bit the stories that create a whole. Each shul and the influence of its surrounding culture and each Holocaust history help me visualize my own narrative. Moreover, these small communities, ones that haven't received recognition in all of the Jewish programming and curriculum I've experienced in the last ten years, are vibrant and whole. Their Jewish experience and identity are not lesser than our North American one simply because of size. 

 

The Salonika Jewish experience is, in my opinion, an underrated and under-told one. Why would this unusual story of such an integrated and cohesive community lack such recognition? The Salonika Jewish community consisting of Ashkenaz, Sephardi, and Romaniote Jews lived together for 600 years under Ottoman rule; Salonika was at least 50% Jewish, yet the Jews integrated into Greek society. Salonika maintained approximately 60 shuls throughout the city and even the port of Salonika closed on Shabbos. How does a community with such life, one that claimed 23 Ladino circulating newspapers, stay in the dark so long in my Jewish education? The 50,000 Jews of Salonika were then deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in spring of 1943; we visited the Holocaust museum and the deportation memorial next to the Aegean Sea.

In addition, we visited two shuls in Salonika. The first not only reflected the Sephardi decor we had observed before, with colorful stain glass and carved wooden doors, but also overwhelmingly Greek culture. Simplicity and clean lines characterized the shul; the bima stood on a marble floor and white Corinthian columns framed the Aron. Speaking of the present Salonika Jewish community, Israeli immigrant Rav Aharon described to us the small but growing Jewish population. With 1000 members of the Jewish community, a day school of about 60 kids exists. The fact that Rav Aharon lacks Greek roots or a connection intrigued me; what he did possess was commitment to sustaining Diaspora communities with deep Jewish histories. He therefore moved to Salonika with his wife and children and became associate rabbi of the shul we visited for Shabbos.

 

Visiting the shul Yad Lezikaron for Kabbalat Shabbat and Saturday morning, we constituted the majority of the shul's congregants. The service was also unlike Sephardi ones I have attended in France and the US. Not only did the trop of the Torah reading differ, but also some of the tefillot and songs included Ladino. Moreover, there was no silent davening; the chazan and the congregants chanted all of the tefillot out loud. 

Following Salonika, we visited the archeological site in Vergina of Philip II's tombs. We toured for two hours with the guide. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to connect to the lecture and the history. One major realization I've had, however, is that with the overwhelming amount of information, history, and culture to absorb, I can't and won't connect to everything. Rather, I should focus on what proves significant or meaningful to me. 

We then travelled to Ioannina, an exclusively Romaniote Jewish community. This community directly descends from the Greek Jews who lived in the Byzantine Empire. Leading us around what used to be the Jewish Quarter, our tour guide described to us the nearly 2000 Jews who lived there right before World War II. In 1944, 1860 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Fewer than 100 Jews live in Ioannina now. We visited their shul dating from at least the fourteenth century, preserved in the Bynzantine style. Revealing a large, rusted key, our tour guide unlocked the Aron to expose 360-year-old sifrei Torah written on deer parchment. 

Moreover, our tour guide led us to the deportation memorial in Ioannina, instituted by the Ioannina municipality. She emphasized her appreciation that "the memorial had not yet been vandalized," as apparently anti-Semitic (as well as general graffiti) vandalism appears commonplace in Greece. I found her gratitude ironic as she had expressed overall the good nature of the relationship between the Greeks and the  Jews beforehand. She even mentioned how Jews and Christians in Ioannina annually visited each other's places of worship as guests and friends. 

The monoliths and monasteries of Meteroa, Delphi, and Athens are still to come. 

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

adio, adio

The Balkan Peninsula is unlike any other part of Europe I've been to. I've been constantly and consistently amazed by its layers in history and my total lack of previous knowledge concerning this part of the world. Our last day in Sofia, we visited the Central Sofia Synagogue, which is remarkably beautiful and so so Sephardi in design and art. The walls are covered in colorful, graphic paint, and the ceiling in a blue with stars to resemble the heavens; their chandelier dominates as the largest in Bulgaria. Seating about 1300 congregants, the shul is barely used. Simply speaking, the Sofian or even Bulgarian Jewish community does not have the capacity or interest to support an active religious minyan. We then visited the Jewish museum there as well, attached to the shul. 

Upon finishing another classic Kivupicnic lunch, we left for Skopje, Macedonia. The predicted three to four hour bus ride totaled about six hours. By the time we arrived to Skopje for dinner, it was one hour behind and still about 9:30pm. The following morning, we visited the Holocaust Museum of Skopje and met with Roza Kamhi, an elderly Macedonian Jewish woman who joined the partisans and evaded deportation. Roza's story can be found on Centropa, which we watched in Civilizations and Society a few weeks ago:

http://centropastudent.org/?typ=subtitel&fLang=ENG&movID=46&nID=78&q=m

Centropa, which Beth Tfiloh introduced to my Jewish history class junior year, describes themselves as an "interactive database of Jewish memory." They collect oral histories and testimonies of elderly Jews from Central and Eastern Europe; their mission inspired my own junior year Jewish history class project of interviewing my paternal grandmother, Sylvia Berue (Abramowitz) Abbott, and her own experiences as a second-generation American born to Russian Jewish immigrants. 

Meeting and speaking with Roza constituted one of my favorite Balkan experiences thus far. Her testimony helped me recreate and visualize the Macedonian Jewish history class I had had previously and even her own Centropa video. Moreover, we sang Adio Querida, an old Ladino song, that she gleefully sang with us. The Sephardi Bulgarian elders of Sofia, too, knew Adio Querida.

A high point of the museum for me constituted a sculpture of 7144 beaded strands representative of the 7144 Macedonians deported to Treblinka. Each strand distinctive to each individual victim, "they form a tapestry, joining together as one image of struggle and survival" and creating an optical illusion of a flickering burning bush. Moreover, the theme of the memorial, the burning bush "burns intensely yet is not consumed."

Last night, we arrived in Thessaloniki or Salonika, Greece. I'll continue a Greek post tomorrow.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

blagodariya -- thank you

Uninformed and uneducated on Bulgaria with the exception of its Qudditch team and star Seeker Viktor Krum (and its Holocaust  history I just wrote a paper on), I had no expectations for traveling and touring Bulgaria. After spending all of Sunday flying to Istanbul, having a five-hour layover, having my tampons searched and scrutinized by Turkish security, and having a two-hour delay to our connecting flight, we finally arrived to Sofia, Bulgaria. My first impressions consisted of associations with other European countries. The historic, government buildings seemed French, and everything else seemed very Russian, Soviet-era. The atmosphere reminded me of Poland, but considerably less gloomy and more populated. 

Our days here are intense, but new and explorative and interesting. Yesterday, we first traveled to an unusual Bulgarian school: public, but also privately funded by American billionaire and philanthropist Ronald Lauder (who is known for funding Jewish and Hebrew charter schools across Europe). Though Jewish students only constitute 30% of the student body, the school teaches Hebrew and Jewish culture classes. When asked how and why non-Jewish students relate to this curious curriculum, the principal of the school (through a translator) spoke about the prestige of and competition to enroll in the school. Simply speaking, the school is well-organized and possesses substantial resources. Moreover, she articulated about the good nature of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in Sofia; the idea of isolating the Jewish community is not present. When the question of anti-Semitism towards the school or the student body arose, the principal spoke of only a few isolated incidents, nothing recent. In addition, in response to a question about religious Jews, she mentioned that there are none in Bulgaria. The small, Sephardi Jewish community of Sofia is vibrant and culturally based rather than religiously based.

I found it hilarious to step into a second grade class learning Hebrew - with kids' names like "Petar," "Alexander," and "Stefan" - and watch them say "ANACHNU OCHLIM CHALLAH BASHABBAT." Their walls resembled BT's own with maps of Israel, Hebrew question words, shorashim, and more. Their colorful, graphic Hebrew workbooks far outshone our Neta books. How many of them were Jewish out of a class of twenty? Five? Fewer?

Following our visit to the Lauder School, we bought food from a local supermarket for a picnic in the park. Though we knew the Bulgarian economy is weak, we were surprised to discover how cheap everything else. Water bottles for less than the equivalent of an American dollar, fruit for forty people for approximately fifteen American dollars. We then gathered at the JCC to split into groups for a scavenger hunt to explore the city. We found the bank, the library, the Museum of Natural History, the theater, churches, and so forth. The layers of Sofia intrigued me the most: those left from Ottoman rule, the bombing of World War II, the rebuilding, Soviet occupation. 

Stopping at some sort of Bulgarian hybrid of a shuk and a yard sale, I was reminded of the tomato festival I attended in Cape May this past summer. Basically, it served as an opportunity for locals to rid themselves of their tchotchkes under the appealing alias of a festival. Similarly, the Bulgarian market was advertised as such a festival. However, the tchotchkes were not Cape May's beaten Vera Bradley purses: old cameras, films, and "war relics." This how an elderly Bulgarian man described to me a knife, Swiss army knife, pocket watch, and ring all inscribed with swastikas. I cannot imagine the tomato festival selling war relics (aka Nazi apparel) back in Cape May; however, I suppose you can compare it to selling Confederate uniforms and flags and kitchenware in the South. Still, whether Confederate or Nazi, the "war relics" confuse me to who would buy or collect something like that, especially in a country that struggled for so long to resist the Nazi influence and occupation.

This morning, we took the two and a half hour bus ride to Plovdiv, where the second largest Jewish community in Bulgaria lives. Visiting a 120-year Sephardi shul there, we also met with leaders of the Jewish community. They described to us the Bulgarian Holocaust story once again: a relatively unknown story in which all 48,000 Jews of Bulgaria survived (later there was a mass immigration to Israel to escape the communism). Bulgarian society, specifically Vice President of Parliament Dimiter Peshev and local Archbishops Kiril and Stefan, spoke out in protest of the Law of the Defense of the Nation, the Nuremberg-like laws enacted, and the plans for deportation. In addition, we lit a yarhzeit candle at the memorial thanking the Plovdiv community for saving the Jewish community, the only memorial of its kind in Europe.

During lunch, we walked to the JCC of Plovdiv to meet with the elders of the community. We communicated through a medley of Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Russian; few only knew Bulgarian. I had to remind myself that that despite their age and experience through the war, these were not Holocaust survivors depicting their journey to and at Auschwitz. Instead, they expressed to us how the Plovdiv community halted their deportation, after they had already been rounded up in the Jewish school's courtyard. One woman remembered Bishop Kiril leaning over the fence of the courtyard, referring to the Jews as "brothers and sisters" and promising that he would "lie in front of the train tracks before the Jews were deported."

Finally, we completed the mountainous journey to pay our respects at the graves of the archbishops at Bachkovo Monastery. These were two men who Yad Vashem recognized as Hasidei Umot Haolam, or Righteous Gentiles of the Earth. I have never said Kaddish for a non-Jew before, especially not in a monastery in the mountains of Bulgaria.

Today, we will continue to explore Jewish Sofia, and, later, drive to Skopje, Macedonia.

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

salvation at last

Today marks the fifth day of November and the fact that I have been in Israel for a month. Yet Kivunim packs in so much programming, I feel like I've been here several months to a year eating the same cucumber-red pepper-rice-soy milk-hard boiled egg meal variations. This weekend, I managed to escape the Beit Shmuel bubble (affectionately referred to as "Shmu") and its monotonous food for Ashkelon. Alhamdulilah (see post below) I was able to go in spite of the recent rocket attacks. I even managed to figure out the Egged bus system without finding myself in Syria or Egypt.

Sundays on Kivunim are an "experiential learning" kind of day, a sort of field trip where we explore Israel. Our first Sunday, we visited the ancient city known as Beit Shean in the Tanach, or Scythopolis in Roman and Byzantine times. Serving as a prelude to our Greece trip, Beit Shean exemplified the beliefs and lifestyles of our Jewish ancestors' non-Jewish neighbors. A core value in Kivunim, this idea emphasizes exploring others' cultures and histories, in order to better understand our own. Negative interactions, positive interactions, the development of any relations at all with non-Jewish neighbors: these relationships provide a better understanding of Jewish history within the context of larger communities and the world itself.

This is an idea that Kivunim introduced me too. Freshman year, I had a comparative religion semester in Jewish history; in addition, we did learn Jewish history in the context of world history. Maybe I didn't realize it, I wasn't aware, or I just wasn't paying attention, but I did not realize the effects and relationships and influences of Jewish communities within Christian and Muslim majority communities.

Further heeding this idea, we also visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. I cannot imagine visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with Young Judaea, with Diller, or with Beth Tfiloh. Not that any of the three sought to evade Christian culture or isolate us, but, to me, this simply communicates to me that interacting with world cultures is not a priority for Jewish-Israel education for high school students.

While the question of exploring Jewish communities in Christian communities will recur throughout the year, the question of a Christian minority within the divided city of Jerusalem within the Jewish majority of Israel is an unusual one. Though familiar with the fact that this place serves as a pilgrimage destination (Christians believe it to be the site of Jesus' crucifixion and burial), I was unprepared for the procession of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theopolis III, who is the head bishop of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem.

Again, Kivunim focused on investigating Jewish identity when encountering Christianity in the Christian Quarter. Upon meeting and hearing the Greek Orthodox Patriarch (His Beatitude) speak on Friday, the relevance of Judaism to Christianity present-day became clearer. He spoke of how Judaism and its values and canon build the fundamentals of Christianity; in addition, he articulated the Church's role within the Arab-Israeli conflict and its relationship with the Jewish and Muslim communities. He bestowed to us small gifts (posters, books, keychains) depicting the Church to give to our Greek Orthodox friends. Unfortunately, I have no Greek Orthodox friends. (This doesn't mean I can't enjoy a large poster of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and His Beatitude above my bed, though).

In six days, we leave for Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Greece. Check back for an update on the status of the Greek euro, the best grape leaves, and if the fumes of the Oracle at Delphi have any effect...

- Rebecca

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org)

alhamdulilah -- baruch hashem

After two weeks of living in Beit Shmuel in Jerusalem, I finally feel settled, that living here is longterm. The last couple days of orientation proved both interesting and exhausting. Touring with Professsor Clinton Bailey (on the far right, right), an expert on Bedouin culture, we visited a Bedouin school in addition to sleeping at an unrecognized Bedouin tent. Professor Bailey is unique in that he closely observed Bedouin culture for 44 years. In our lecture, he emphasized to us that part of his motivation and interest stemmed from what traditional Bedouin culture and history could teach us about our own biblical heritage. Professor Bailey also accompanied us to Ben Gurion's house in Sde Boker, where he shared stories of when he knew Ben Gurion and his wife Paula, and her excellent pancakes.

Following sleeping in the Bedouin tent, we hiked Masada's Snake Path at the heat of the day, and, according to our assignment, ethnographically explored Masada in the spirit of John Stilgoe. Sweaty and irritable, we finally began our ride to Jerusalem. Once unpacked in our rooms, we began to acclimate to Beit Shmuel over the next few days. We are fortunate in amenities and location: we have a communal fridge, balconies facing the Old City, and are a five-minute walk from Mamila and the YMCA. The irony of the transfer from the JCC to the YMCA upon moving to Israel has not been lost on me; yet the zumba and pilates classes have proven better here anyway, so no complaints. Last Friday marked my first pilates class taught in a combination of Hebrew, English, and French. Beth Tfiloh has well prepared me for such situations.

Our weekly schedule is basically as follows: Monday through Thursday we have classes. In the morning, we have Hebrew and Arabic. Arabic has proved much more complex than I anticipated, between the short vowels and long vowels and vowels that act as letters and letters that act as vowels and letters that all sound the same. For instance, sabah alkhair does not mean good morning; rather, it's sabaHHH alkhair. Miss the all important "HHahh" sound and Johnny at the YMCA will fail to understand your bid good morning; I have learned my lesson. At the same time, Arabic is such an interesting language and does share certain traits and functions with Hebrew. In the afternoon, we have Civilization & Society or Perspectives on the Middle East lectures. Civ consists basically of the history and culture of the countries we'll be visiting before our international trips (right now we're in the midst of ancient Greece). In PME, we start from modern Jewish history and Jewish nationalism to contemporary Middle Eastern affairs. A word about our teachers - they're all extremely knowledgable and experienced in their respective fields (our PME teacher was a former vice president deputy advisor to Ariel Sharon).

Tuesday afternoons, we have social responsibility. I'm working with a second-hand clothing shop and section in the bazaar that supports a battered women's shelter. 

Between managing homework, starting social responsibility, taking Shabbos explorations, discovering multiethnic cuisine, and generally getting lost in Jerusalem, Kivunim has kept me busy. On Friday, we had an introductory lecture to Christianity, and, to follow, we will be attending mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre today (Sunday). More on discovering salvation tonight.

Side note - we leave for Greece and Bulgaria in exactly two weeks. Mishegas.

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org)

(petra)fied of lice

Scarred since the tender age of eleven, I have sought to evade lice. The painful memories of louse-massacring chemicals and louse-smothering mayonaise and general hair yanking are motivation enough. Known for its lice infestation, Israel is not a place to play it safe in terms of hair hygiene. As Kivunim progresses, I am growing wary of these international hostels and hotels - you never know what could be hiding under your fourth pillow in the Amra Palace Hotel in Petra, Jordan.

Tonight we are back in Sde Boker. I can scarcely believe we took a simple two-day trip to Petra. About an hour and a half bus ride to the border crossing, we endured another hour and a half to walk across the border, passport control, and security. My first impression of Jordan consisted of a massive poster of  King Abdullah II's face, with a single line underneath: Welcome to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. We boarded our Jordanian bus to meet our tour guide, Mohammed, who briefed us on Jordanian history and government.

Stopping a "rest stop and bazaar!," we discovered certain Jordanian etiquette: no, do not place used toilet paper in the toilet and flush it; rather, place it in the basket besides the toilet - from, the management.

We toured the Nabatean ruins for the remainder of the afternoon. Mohammed mentioned that the Jordanians had only excavated 8% of the total ruins; therefore, we only saw a small part of the huge city. Well-trained salesmen in the form of small children harassed us to buy jewelry and postcards, while men rode past in donkeys and horses to appeal to the tired-out Petra tourist. Assuring us that a horse ride back remained free with our tickets, Mohammed convinced us we only needed to tip $3. When Cami and I recruited one of the carriages to bring us back, the driver demanded his $20 as we galloped down between the stone walls. We quickly jumped off the carriage, throwing the guy two bucks, who hollered that if I threw in my hat it would be a fair deal. We immediately learned our lessons with tourist traps.

Upon arriving at the hotel, the Amra Palace, we sat down for the best dinner we've had thus far (this could or could not be attributed to the fact we've been eating hostel food in Sde Boker for a week). Though unkosher, the hotel arranged for the dinner to be vegetarian. Radish salads with olive oil and oranges, beet salads, cucumbers and peppers, dried apricots, fruit, and various other salads comprised the first buffet table. There was fish, salmon and a white fish, as well as stuffed crisps of vegetables and fish, and pasta. Dessert proved similarly grandeur with an assortment of jell-o and other unknown Middle Eastern sweets, including a rice pudding-like dish. I could continue about the breakfast: fruits and yogurt, dates and apricots, breads and fig-filled pastries - but this might start turning into a food blog.

We returned to Israel this morning to learn that security, unsurprisingly, proved much stricter traveling back to Israel. We also observed the pictures of Israeli-Jordanian relations and peace treaties among the walls of passport control, in comparison to the constant head of King Abdullah II plastered on the other side. Spending the next few hours at the beach in Eilat, we then toured the Arava Agricultural Developing Center. Tonight, we had a two-hour lecture with Dr. Clinton Bailey about Bedouin history and culture in anticipation of our time with the Bedouins tomorrow.


Rebecca

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org)

shoutout to sam who laughed at mutton busting

Nearly a week since I left JFK to Ben Gurion, my concept of time has disintegrated. It feels like I've been here both a single month and a single day. The fact that we've been isolated to Sde Boker until this Shabbos with only cucumbers and various forms of burekas has not helped.

Sde Boker is exactly how I remember it. Dry air, dry sand, majestic views of the Negev, and Ben Gurion's tomb as the overwhelming monument of this small town. So far we have completed hikes and traveled places I've been to multiple times: Ein Avdat, Nahal Aqev. Yet the experiences have all proved so different, so significant just because I'm with a new, diverse group of people. I really like all of the Kivunim group and the differences of opinions and personalities.

Friday was our first full day of Kivunim. We hiked Ein Avdat, which is striking and picturesque (pictures to follow in further blog posts), and then toured the archeological Nabatean city of Avdat. Thereafter, we had the first of our many picnic lunches to come and, that night, we ate in the sukkah for the first time for Shabbos. Filled with breaks and discussion sessions about Zionism and Stilgoe's Outside Lies the Magic, Shabbos was a very relaxed day.

The Field School, where we we're staying, consists basically of a school and hostel within a small  town. There's a grocery store and a bar we've been visiting and little else, besides the abundance of overpopulated Israeli cats prowling about.

Similar to Friday, yesterday, we hiked for most of the day and arrived to the swimming hole at Nahal Aqev. After another discussion session on Diaspora Jewry, we prepared for Shemini Atzeret and went to the local Sephardi shul in Sde Boker. Tonight, we're preparing for first international trip tomorrow - Petra.

Side note: future posts will include more pictures and be less monotonous.

Until then,

Rebecca

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org)

deli meat & the unknown

As 48 hours have ebbed away, my belongings have somehow managed to cram themselves into two suitcases. Vacuuming the excess air out of Space Bags, my mom, my sister, and I watched gleefully as my parka and Snuggie shrank to resemble a gargantuan package of deli meat.

At this point, I'm trying to accept that I am a compulsive over-packer and, also, that I won't be home until mid-December. The idea isn't new to me; I've watched my friends leave for college this past summer, one by one. From them, I've learned no matter how much you anxiety-pack, no matter how many Luna bars or bottles of Purell you buy, you can't mentally prepare for the experience. It's just too big, too overwhelming, and too full of the unknown.

The unknown is not always a good thing. In kindergarden, a classmate of mine stapled his finger "to see what it felt like." Needless to say, he didn't like the result. Yet he faced the decision with straightforwardness and anticipation. I can only hope I regard the upcoming nine months with the same mindset and return without punctured fingers.

(Tomorrow I actually leave for Israel, so thereafter this blog will no longer focus on The Big Lebowski and packaged deli meat).

Rebecca Abbott


(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

"three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from moses to sandy koufax....." -- walter sobchak (the big lebowski)

Walter Sobchak may not roll on Shabbos, but you can be as sure as hell he has his sukkah up.

Tonight begins the holiday of Sukkot and thus the revival of the Abbott family sukkah. I can only hope that in these chilly autumnal nights with gusty winds, said sukkah does not reconvene to a neighboring forest.

Sukkot has remained one of my favorite holidays. What other holiday consists of sukkah-hopping and sukkah-partying and sukkah-sleeping? And who doesn't love a good 'trog? Moshe in the Israeli movie Ushpizin became so enamored with his etrog of choice he shelled out 1000 shekels.

In fewer than three days, I'll be in Israel, home of Moshe and his beloved etrog. The idea that I'll be there for a year still hasn't quite hit me yet. Maybe that's why I've only packed three sweatshirts and twenty pairs of socks so far. Or, maybe, the fact that I can't bring my entire wardrobe (forty-four plus shirts to college - I'm talking to you, Shayna Mont) hasn't quite hit me yet and therefore I have no idea how to pack.

I realize less is more in terms of packing; however, sometimes I can't help but think my notion of quantity is warped. My dad's idea of packing for a month is one pair of shoes, two pairs of underwear, and three bottles of Allegra.

I'm hoping within the next 48 hours I'll find the balance.

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

nine days

With nine days until departure from JFK to Ben Gurion, I consider what I left to do. Buy space bags. Buy a commercial-sized box of Luna bars. Somehow fit my life necessities into two fifty-pound bags. Visit the doctor for the last time to undergo my final shots and TB test (what even is that?!).

Upon visiting the travel clinic at Hopkins a month ago, the nurse handed me thirteen packets for thirteen different countries of thirteen sets of information about each country's public health and hygiene. She appeared satisfied that I would survive and/or elude the flu, typhoid fever, malaria, diarrhea, dehydration, polio, tetanus, meningitis, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and hay fever.

"Oh, one more thing," she said, pointing at a map of India. "You'll be at risk for rabies in every country, specifically India. We're recommending the rabies vaccine - for $795."

My mom looked at me.

"You'll be in India for only a few weeks," she said. "Stay away from the monkeys."

Whether I encounter rabid monkeys in the next eight months or not, I hope to continue and maintain this travel blog. Check back often to hear about struggles with packing, jet lag, learning Arabic - the whole mishegas.

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org)