Chiba Part I: Over the land and under the firmament we go to Grandma's (and everyone's) house

The Israel experience. Presented to you by TRS. Without pictures, because I'm too lazy to find good ones that match the text. You'll live.

Let's go back to where it all started, beautiful Terminal 4 in JFK, waiting to board our Israir flight. So, um, right, yeah, I guess, ok-we boarded. Joy. My seat was in the very last center row, 41, smack dab (what does that mean anyway?) in the smack dab (and did that make any sense?) of an Airbus A330-300. A rather horrible seat assignment if you ask me. Anyway, I survived. We only took off one and a half hours late, and soon Davened Mincha, followed quickly by Maariv, which itself preceded Shacharis by only a couple of hours. That's one of the joys of flying East, you get to pray at accelerated intervals. Since very few people slept on the flight I had ample time to get to know everyone, which I didn't do. Almost the whole plane was Birthright types, which was pretty cool. Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein, of Northwestern University and father of my friend Avremi, was leading a group, but unfortunately he didn't Farbreng. My sources tell me that he was sleeping in business class along with Sholom Mendelson and his wee wifie, who were leading our group.
Once we landed it was Passport Control, which was quickly followed by baggage retrieval and cell phone collection. As in, we collected our cell phones from the cell phone company.

You know, I was scared of this happening. "Scared of writing about cell phones?" you quite naturally wonder, "what's scary about that?" Actually, I was scared of writing in this fashion, the "I did this, and then this, and then this, and then this...". It just strikes me as being morally wrong. Still, it's hard to avoid it when you're trying to narrate a series of events. I guess it's just the price you'll have to pay for reading my travel memoirs.

We then met the travel guide, a perfectly innocent guy named Rabbi Aharon Wexler. Do me a favor, and if you ever take a trip to Israel, use him as your tour guide, and in this way I'll receive slight penance for our group's collective sins. No, we didn't pillage his village or anything like that; we simply managed to come late to virtually every single activity, which caused him to age considerably faster than is the generally accepted practice in this universe we all share. Not to sound self-righteous or anything (I never do that, right?), but I came on time most every time coming on time was required, but of course we're all responsible for our brethren, and...
Onto the tour bus we merrily went, and settled in for the ride up to Tzfas (Safed), one of the four holy cities of the land and a place that's desperately in need of money, so make sure you send some. It was funny, driving on the highway, with everyone asking Aharon "What's this" or "What's that" while he tried to explain that we were in fact passing nothing of interest. Later of course, some of us (remember that I'm a goodie-goodie from time immemorial when you read this) wouldn't listen when there was in fact something of importance to relate, but that's just the way the angel food cake with seven minute frosting crumbles, isn't it. The question just occurred to me: does angel food cake with seven minute frosting crumble?

Moving right along, as we were doing on the highway, we came upon Mount Tabor, made famous by my Bar-Mitzva Haftora, which is of course all about Dvora and her exploits against Sisera and his army. Her song is, by the by, the Torah source for aliens, but that is (also) of course a topic for another time.
Israel's highway system, like many, is not too scintillatingly exciting. Once we arrived in Tzfas it was time for lunch, which I enjoyed in some little Falafel shack on the side of the main road. It was the best falafel I've ever heard. Now would be as good a time as any to explain the food situation in Israel. Basically, there's Kosher food, certified by the local Rabbinic authorities, and then there's OCD food, certified by the local OCD authorities. As Lubavitchers, we only ate the OCD shtuff, which is called "Mehadrin", "Eida Hachareidis", or "Badatz" by the locals. As befits any OCD, there are many different Hechsherim under the Mehadrin umbrella. All in all, it's quite fun trying to find something to eat.
To add another wrinkle, this is a Shmita year, which means that's there's three different types of produce available to consumers: Regular, Heter Mechira, and Yevul Nachri. "Regular" is the shtuff people cultivate on their farms, and the sell; due to the laws set forth by G-d at Sinai, and every day since, this produce is forbidden to Jews of all stripes, though a significant portion of the population ignores this precept, which is why this food is available for sale in Israel. Heter Mechira is produce grown on land which was sold to non-Jews but worked by Jews, a legal fiction which is accepted by lots of observant Jews, but not by us OCD-types, who are forced to rely on Yevul Nachri, basically Palestinian produce. Yummy. Point is, every time you want to eat something you have to find out A. what the Hechsher is, and B. what kind of produce is included. A bit of a pain, but that's the kind of hassle masochists enjoy putting themselves through. If you didn't understand the Halachic controversy, which is perfectly understandable, as I completely failed in my duty to record it here, then great, because I also failed to understand it. I just followed orders, which were to eat Palestinian cucumbers and other veggies. Aharon, our tour guide, is an ardent religious type, and an ardent Zionist (he made the distinction), and he refused to eat Yevul Nachri, which made it rather difficult at communal meals, because whether we ate the veggies or he did, there was always someone who wasn't happy.
Yeah, that falafel was really good. As we hadn't heard the Torah reading yet (it was a Monday), we made our way to the headquarters of "Team Yellow" and chapped a Kriah. It was pretty funny, because a Minyan for Shacharis began soon after; it was about 3:00 PM. Not that I've never Davened Shacharis that late, but I've never done it with a Minyan.
Aharon the tour guide then gave us a short tour (how convenient) of the city, covering the Ashkenazic Ari Shul, Rabbi Yosef Cairo's Shul, and part of the old quarter. Unfortunately we didn't have time for more, which was the mantra of this, and every, Birthright trip. It's truly impossible to see even a small part of the land in ten days, which I suppose is a good thing, because it means that I have to go back. The Ari Shul was built on the site of the Ari's Friday night prayer meetings, and features a Bimah that's raised six or seven feet off the ground.
We switched buses before departing, getting a nice Mercedes vehicle. We were supposed to hike the Arbel, home of Natai Haarbaley, mentioned in Pirkei Avos, but we couldn't because of time constraints, which is really unfortunate. We did Daven Mincha there, and there was even a Chassan present on the mountain, which meant no Tachanun. Joy!
That night was spent at some Galilean hotel, which was, to put it bluntly, not the greatest place in the history of hotelkind. We survived. And that, my friends, was days 1 and 2 in Israel.

So how did it feel to be in the Holy Land? As in, did I feel particularly holy? One of the negatives things about being cynical, and there are many, is that it's tough to feel. So yeah, for the first while I did, but not so much afterwards. See, the secularists would have you believe that it's a land like any other, and while intellectually I know that this isn't the case, it's tough translating that for the heart, especially when everyone around you doesn't think so. Being around a huge concentration of Jews, is pretty wild, but it's not so great when those very same Jews could care less about their Judaism. Obviously there's a vast difference between the state that has Hatikva as its national anthem and the land that G-d has made his own, but it's impossible not to confuse the two.
Anyway, I'll try to deal with this subject a little later, when I have more patience for deep intellectual endeavors.