Sigd and Tottenham and Phylacteries

So now that I'm very accustomed to living in Jerusalem and I know my way around I find myself very very busy. I go to all different types of events and have little time to publish them in an internet blog. Nevertheless, I feel I have a commitment to the fans of this blog to update as regularly as I can afford to.
I went to a city called Rosh Ayin with my History of Zionism class. Rosh Ayin is a primarily Yemenite city that absorbed tens of thousands of Yemenites during their mass immigration to Israel. Called Operation Magic Carpet, Israel removed the entire Jewish population in Yemen in the 1950's and brought them here using airplanes. It was a humongous immigration that was hard to accommodate when they first arrived. Also the Yeminites are neither Sephardic nor Ashkenazi and they didn't really fit into Israeli culture. So at Rosh Ayin are all these Yeminites and we met a few and talked to some about their migration. After we went to a dance studio and learned some Yemenite dancing.

I'm doing a program called Shevet which is a part of Young Judaea Year Course that leaning towards being religious without being completely observant. Through Shevet I get to do a lot of amazing things that I wouldn't do otherwise. We tied our own tzitzit last week and were given the option of using tekhelet, a special blue die that comes from snails, that is supposed to be part of tzitzit. So as I'm writing this I'm wearing my new, freshly-tied tzitzit with a thread of tekhelet in them. My program had a workshop where we learned how to do it and were given the strings and everything.

We visited a yeshiva, basically Rabbi school, and were given a chance to study and speak with the yeshiva students. I learned with a guy who actually went to and worked at Camp Airy. It was a good experience to find out more what it's like to be part of a yeshiva.

My mother visited me and took me to Eilat, the southern-most city in Israel that is on top of the Red Sea. While there we toured the immediate area of the city and saw some of the southern parts of the Negev Desert, including the Timna Pass and the Red Canyon. I also scuba dived. One one of our days we left Eilat and went into Jordan and then to Petra. Petra is this 2,000 year old city that is famous for an ancient temple carved 10 meters into the face of a mountain. Here is a picture.

My mother bought me my first set of Tefilin, phylacteries.










Yesterday I went to Sigd, an Ethiopian celebration of their return to Jerusalem. They used to celebrate it in Ethiopia and it was a fast day for mourning their exile, but now they it is more of a festival. I saw this cool Ethiopian dance circle and this interesting fish rod-looking instrument. It was incredible to see the thousands of Ethiopians that showed up in this one park. Celebrating with them was also really cool. Picture.














Last night I went to a soccer game; Hapoel Tel Aviv vs. the Tottenham Hotspurs. Tottenham, for those who aren't into football, is an English soccer club whose fan base calls itself the Yid Army because it is primarily Jewish. My roommate is a crazy Tottenham fan, his bed sheets are Tottenham, so he bought a bunch of tickets and a bunch of us went to the game. Tottenham won 2-0 and I learned that Israeli soccer is not impressive. Tottenham played half-decently, but Hapoel Tel-Aviv was awful. I went to my first European football game in Israel. Here is a picture of that as well.