Unpacked: A Walker Returns Home

Hi everyone,

As many of you know, it was a hard weekend for us in Israel. A gunman, named Ala Abu Dhaim, entered a Yeshiva- a Jewish house of study, and killed 8 boys while they were learning Torah.

I just wanted to share a story that was sent to me by my friend Sharon:

Every morning I take the 35 bus to work. It’s a quick ride and usually takes no more than 12 minutes. The third stop after I get on is directly in front of Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav (where the shooting took place). This morning I found myself a bit anxious, unsure of what I was going to see as we passed by.

As I looked around, I saw death notices pasted all over the street and flowers that had been brought lined the entrance to the Yeshiva. When the bus pulled up to the stop, the driver shut off the engine and stood.

With tears in his eyes he told everyone sitting on the bus that one of the boys killed on Thursday night was his nephew. He asked if everyone on the bus would mind if he spoke for a few minutes in memory of his nephew and the other boys that were killed. After seeing heads nod all over the bus he began to speak.

With a clear and proud voice, he spoke beautifully about his nephew and said that he was a person who was constantly on the lookout for how to help out anyone in need. He was always searching for a way to make things better. He loved learning, and had a passion for working out the intricacies of the Talmud. He was excited to join the army in a few years, and wanted to eventually work in informal education.

As he continued to speak, I noticed that the elderly woman sitting next to me was crying. I looked into my bag, reached for a tissue and passed it to her. She looked at me and told me that she too had lost someone she knew in the attack. Her neighbor’s child was another one of the boys killed. As she held my hand tightly, she stood up and asked if she too could say a few words in memory of her neighbor.

She spoke of a young man filled with a zest for life. Every Friday he would visit her with a few flowers for Shabbat and a short word of Torah that he had learned that week in Yeshiva.”
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…Just some notes from a country where we’re all family.

May listening merit us peace.

Yannai

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As I finish up the next post on Unpacked, I just wanted to draw your attention to something pretty wild.

This here video has been circulating around the internet for a little while now, but just in case you haven’t seen it, I suggest you give a watch. It sure pushes my sense of understanding the rules of how things work around here…

The video (maybe a minute long), was sent to me by Chana’s cousin and my friend, Shelby: A very smart, very insightful young lady in the sixth grade from Dayton, Ohio. Thanks Shelby!

The classic example for newsworthy, is “Not Dog bites Man, but Man Bites Dog.” So newsworthy probably is not Man Hugs Lion, but rather…

I won’t ruin the surprise: Click Here to have a see.

Enjoy!

Yannai

Just a follow up on yesterday’s post, Best Actor- The Guy in the Street. Best Film- Us.

Immediately after posting, I left for work.

My walk to work cuts through downtown Jerusalem. One feature of my walk, is passing a shekel and a half store- where everything is sold for a shekel (the Israeli currency) and a half.

This particular merchant has opted not to suffice with a standard shop awning that displays the store name, or even with the customary form of network marketing in this great country of mine- someone yelling that things are for sale.

No, Shekel VaChetzi, as it is ingeniously called, meaning “Shekel and a Half” promotes itself with a continuously playing and replaying rap song. The words to the song, which I imagine to be named Shekel VaChetzi, are “Shekel Vachetzi Shekel Vachetzi, Kol Pareet B’Shekel Vachetzi“- “A shekel and a half, a shekel and a half- every item for a shekel and a half.”

I’ve always marveled at this song. I mean it is a rockin’ tune. Try saying it to yourself- it sings naturally. But I never realized the sheer promotional genius of the Shekel VaChetzi song until yesterday:

As I walked past the store, with Shekel VaChetzi reminding us that everything at the shekel and a half store costs a shekel and a half, I could hear another passerby, walking by himself- just like me, probably coming to or from his work- muttering to himself, together with the rhythm - “Shekel VaChetzi Shekel VaChetzi, Kol Parit B’Shekel Vachetzi.”

Ah, golden we are. I love it!

Music for this week: It ain’t Me Babe, sung by Johnny Cash and June Carter.

Chan and I recently saw the movie Walk the Line, about Johnny Cash. Besides enjoying the music, we were amazed that a true story about a musician could have such a happy ending! Click Here to listen. (It’s YouTube, so we’re on an honor system here: Listen to the music, but keep reading, too!)
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The following stories are true. They took place on a mini-trip I took last week, to a buddy’s wedding in California:

Story #1- I am on the airplane from New York to LA. An hour into the flight, a stewardess makes an announcement: “I’m sorry, but the in-flight movie system is broken. We will therefore not be showing a movie this flight. Our deepest apologies.”

Ok, so no movie.

Roughly half an hour later, she comes back: “I’ve got good news and bad news, folks: The good news is that I fixed the movie system. The bad news is that we won’t show the movie we had planned to show. But that movie wasn’t good anyway, so don’t worry.”

The stewardess finished her announcement with, “When I pass you by in the aisle, you can feel free to tell me how good I am.”

Story #2- I get to LA and make my way to Pico Blvd., where my friend Elie is picking me up. With some time to spare, I make myself comfortable on a street corner and begin to read a just-purchased issue of Backpacker magazine.

All of a sudden, I hear a voice behind me: “Well, you’re wearing a Yarmulke (skullcap/Kippah). How about that!”

I turn around and find an elderly man who is very excited to see a fellow Jew. After shaking my hand, he tells me about his Jewish worship, why he doesn’t wear a Yarmulke, why he thinks it’s great that some people do, where he likes to pray, where he lives, where I should go while I’m in LA and so on. He tells me his Hebrew name is Aryeh.

Aryeh then tells me that he’s a writer. “I also love to write,” I say. He then does the obvious thing for one to do in such situations: He pulls out a giant wad of rubber bands, and says, “Well, hey! Have a rubber band! A writer can never have too many rubber bands, you know.” Fearing the dreadful things that might happen to me due to my lack of rubber bands, I say, “Well I better have one, then,” and take a rubber band.

After giving me a few more rubber bands for safe measure, Aryeh bids me goodbye and we part ways.

Story #3- I am flying back from LA to New York. As breakfast is being served, I remember that I did not order a Kosher meal, and resolve to feasting on the candy bar or two that I have in my backpack.

As the stewardess passes by with her cart, she looks at me, recognizes the same head-covering seen by Aryeh, and with sadness in her eyes says, “It’s an egg and cheese sandwich- do you want it?” (meaning “I know you can’t eat this”). I say “No thank you,” appreciative of her sympathy.

But without my asking, she continues: “I think I might have a Kosher meal somewhere on the plane. Give me a few minutes and I’ll find it for you.”

A few minutes later she returns with a tray of hot, tasty, Kosher airline delicacies, and my breakfast is served.

Story #4- That same flight arrives in NY eight minutes early. Before landing, a steward makes a heartfelt request: that passengers without connecting flights sit and wait till those with connecting flights make their way off the plane, so that they have ample time to make their flights.
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My point in all of these stories, is not that people are good, even though they are. It is also not that writers need rubber bands, though apparently, they do.

My point is that we are interesting. Interesting and thoughtful. And not satisfied with sticking to rules and expectations.

I think we do a good job at trying to be boring- suits and ties, etiquette and all. But I’ll tell you what: The stewardess with the movie-system: she was British! Thousands of years of etiquette and she couldn’t suppress being fun.

Chana and I once took refuge from an Ireland rain in a golf country club cafe. Manning the counter was a subdued, proper individual. Polite, but very somber.

But after a few minutes, he started to sing opera at the top of his lungs, right in the middle of the cafe. It felt like a scene from an Adam Sandler movie. But the greatest thing was that is wasn’t! This was a regular guy, at his job, stealing a moment of quiet to sing an Aria.

We, human beings, are just great. So much fun! Who needs any other form of entertainment, when we have each other?

I think laughing at ourselves is a super healthy practice. Did you encounter any interestingness or thoughtfulness of late? I know you did. How could you not? But if not, keep your eyes open- Let us know what you see!

So I unpack this week with our being interesting and thoughtful. Enjoy the week! Enjoy yourself! Enjoy us!

Why should I shop till I drop?

A better question: Why would I shop till I drop?

An even better question: Why would a store want me to drop?

Perhaps I am dropping to the basement, where there is a special sale? A nutrition stand where I will be given an infusion to give me a second shopping wind?

Because otherwise, how does my dropping benefit the store? Why does not the store realize that if I drop, I will not be able to come back tomorrow?

And I wonder- who was the first to tell potential costumers to drop?

The honest truth is that sometimes after going shopping, I do feel like I want to drop. But I’ve never been like “Wow! I haven’t dropped today- but I’m almost there! Maybe I’ll go shopping tomorrow and see if I can actually drop this time!” Usually, it’s more like “I don’t care if I have to sew together bedsheets in order to make a shirt. I am never going shopping again.”

I do enjoy shopping sometimes- for example, put me in a backpacking gear store and I’m in heaven. Book stores are great, too. And music stores? Ask my wife how hard it is to convince me not to buy the whole store. But these are the few shopping opportunities in which I do not wish to drop.

Ikea in Oslo actually took shop till you drop to a new level, and in order to facilitate easy dropping, provides beds for customers who are tired in the middle of their shopping day.

City-life sometimes encourages us to “shop lest we drop,” i.e., shop to stay happy, or to “shop when we drop,” i.e., shop to cheer us when we’re sad (with shopping representing the unlikely (absurd?) savior of a lagging self-confidence.

One might implicate consumerism in global climate change and the dwindling potential for human survival- and therefore argue that we have shopped and as a result, have dropped, or are dropping. I recently saw a sustainability-minded site asking the very question, “Why shop till you drop?”

But I’m venturing a guess when I say that the mall is not implicating us in global climate change when they tell us to shop till we drop.

And yet, shopping-dropping is still often employed to describe the consumer experience (”shop till you drop” lands 799,000 hits on Google). Fascinatingly enough, there is a shopuntilyoudrop.net, which pays people to shop and review purchases. I wonder if there is an insurance policy if I sign up and actually drop.

So I leave this post without having figured out the mystery of shop till you drop.

But as a pretty word-obsessed human, I am going to deposit these shop-drop thoughts into my bank of nutty phrases, ponder the fact that we describe shopping with such a sense of urgency and continue to try and be more accurate with my words.

I will take advantage of this momentary inspiration to commit once again: Besides not telling people to drop, I will be careful with the following: I will not say that I am starving when I had a meal three or six hours ago, I will not say “I’m dead” when I accidentally misplace a document from work, and I will not call myself retarded when I find a typo in one of these blog posts.

Words will be a theme I return to often in Unpacked- without trying, words come up, in and out of my mind uncontrollably. I have been like that for a long time, but even more so since our trek. So I’ll continue to share. Conscious words represent a conscious mind, and whether advertising, writing a letter or an email or speaking with friends, speech is a direct reflection of our measures of individual, national and global integrity.

So if you’ll excuse me, I think I will run to an advertising agency to present my new phrase, Shop till you’re done.

It might not have the punch of shop till you drop, but it makes no suggestion that we expire, and rhyming is overrated, anyway.

I know there are tons of ridiculous ways in which we describe things. Can you think of any more? The same way political correctness refines speech-patterns into thought-patterns into action-patterns, refining inaccurate or insensitive phrasing makes us better, too. Please share!

I read news headlines every morning. This is how I get informed on what goes on in the world.

In the post, Always Trust Strangers, I made the assertion that “It is ironic that I base my impressions of the world on the news, when newsworthy events are by definition out of the ordinary.”

So as a follow-up, I wanted to explore with you the question: How relevant, in fact, is the news to “what is going on in the world.” Read the rest of this entry »

Hi everyone,

First off, a soundtrack with which to accompany unpacking the week:

Click here, and you will open up a new window and the The Wailin Jennys My Space page, from where you can listen to music as lovely as any I’ve heard. If the Jennys are yet unknown to you, give ‘em a hear- if you are a sucker for pretty things like me, I dare say they will not disappoint.

In the previous post, Blogging: And Humanity Breathes a Sigh of Relief, I discussed my experiences in the blogosphere, the world of blogging.

Through a brief exchange with my aunt Judy, I realized I might have been assuming a lot about what people know of blogs. So the following is just some blogging background, what makes blogs unique, why they are different from regular websites, and how to search them out. Hope you find it useful! Read the rest of this entry »

Disclaimer: I am wary of writing this post. I fear that someone published a similar article in the 1440s, when the printing press was invented.

But as most of you were not around in the 15th century, and if you were around your memory probably left you 500 years ago, I’m going to write it anyway. So here goes:

I have never met a boring person.

In 26 years of earth, I have yet to encounter someone who was not in some way interesting.

For much of human history, individual interestingness was suppressed- limited media of communication, societal hierarchies and few profitable daily occupations left much human value confined- and unshared- in the walls of imagination.

Enter the blogosphere. Read the rest of this entry »

There is an in idol in the Jewish Temple.

I am not talking about Roman emperors or infiltrations or even forced idolatry. I am speaking of the golden statue of two children with wings, called Keruvim, that stand right on top of the Temple’s ark of the covenant. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not that we should trust people. It’s that we do.

I’ll explain.

While waiting for Saturday night’s concert to begin, the man sitting next to us placed his coat on his seat, and got up to buy a drink.

His wife passed her coat up from the aisle to us, through the hands of a dozen people and asked that we place it in her seat. The couple then went off to the bar, without any apparent worry that their seats or coats would be gone when they returned.

And it hit us: What a wild thing that this couple trusted a dozen strangers with their stuff!

We got to thinking: Functional society only works because we are trusting. I trust the weatherman, I trust the guy driving next to me, I trust the waitress that brings me coffee and I trust the little man carved into the door of the men’s room. Read the rest of this entry »