liam getreu

With the soccer World Cup next year in Germany, and Israel hoping to grab a spot in it for the first time in a number of years, there was a lot of vibe around Israel’s chances this time. We’re in a group with France, Switzerland, Ireland, Cyprus and the Faroe Islands, so it’s a tough group, but until this recent batch of qualifiers, we’ve been right up there.

Nothing much changed. Israel, first against Ireland, and then against second-best-soccer-team-in-the-world France, played some pretty shitty soccer for the first half, and then rallied in the second.

On Saturday night, against Ireland, the crowd was intense. A sold-out crowd at Ramat-Gan Stadium, just outside of Tel Aviv, saw a very pumped up Ireland score within the first four minutes. Never in my life have I heard a crowd go so quiet so quickly. Usually at an Aussie Rules match, even if the away team scores unexpectedly really early, there a pockets of the crowd that are still screaming loudly, and you can hear them. Not this time. It was a deafening silence. Like nothing I’ve ever heard before.

And after that the game was pretty bloody shit. Much like I always imagined a live game of soccer to be. The only highlight was seeing some very questionable tactics from the Israelis, really going after the Irish stars in Robbie and Roy Keane. That is, until in the 88th minute, Israel scored. Absolute jubilation ensued with everyone going insane, jumping on their seats and hugging each other. That was also, like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard before.

The whole match was pretty much similar against France.

This entry isn’t finished, but I couldn’t really be bothered finishing it, and it’s been sitting as a draft for a few months now, so I thought I’d just post it…

The moment that all of the English-Speaking Machon has been waiting for finally arrived today, literally. All of the Spanish speaking Machon, mostly from Brazil and Uruguay, but a couple from Italy, Spain and a few other miscellaneous countries invaded Ma’aleh Hachamisha.

It was exciting to meet all of the new foreigners, as opposed to the Poms and South Africans and Swiss who are just old by now. We know them too well! But we did know some of them — the night before we had met the Habo South America at the pro-Disengagement rally that we attended.

It was actually a shock. They’re all nice at heart, sure, but very brash, rude, and well, different, on the outside. I guess it’s a culture shock, and we’re going to have to get used to them. Because they’re here for all of the time we are, plus longer. And they’re also frustrating because they’re taking our food from us!

Previously we’ve been able to eat in peace, but they come and mess up our cheder ochel (dining room) , and ruin my meal times! I used to eat a one-hour breakfast. I’d come down at 7:30am every morning, read the IHT and Ha’aretz, eat my cereal and bread and toast and cottage cheese, and plonk myself down for an hour. Now I can’t get there until 8am! Sooo angry!

Anyway, I guess even though they’re going to take some getting used to, the South Americans are pretty sweet. And I’m sure over time we’ll get close to them. At least they do know one thing: how to party!

Tonight I decided to attend a pro-disengagement rally in Tel Aviv. Well, to be precise, it was more of a march than a rally: from Kikar Rabin (called so because it was where Israeli PM Yitzchak Rabin was assasinated in 1995) to Kikar Dizengoff (named after the first mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff). For those who don’t know, disengagement is the name given to the removal of Jewish settlements in Gaza and also some settlements in the West Bank in Israel. It’s quite a controversial issue in Israel — if not the most controversial.

And it was interesting experience. And to think it was supposed to be better! They were expecting 100,000 people to the rally, which is quite a large number for an Israeli political rally, but at the same time, it wouldn’t be overly unusual. It had been built up for weeks. We were originally told it was on the first weekend that we were in Israel, and then the week after, and then we forgot about it for a while, before rumours starting circulating of Ariel Sharon speaking at the rally, which got everyone pumped!

But it was a bit of a disappointment in the end: only 10,000 people turned up, and the rally was just a whole lot of Habo people from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Americans, Brits, and some South Americans that we met for the first time. We had lots of ruach, and there were lots of photos being taken of us by lots of different photographers, and we hoped to get our photo in the IHT or the Jerusalem Post or something. But it wasn’t to be. Instead we were featured on the front page of Ha’aretz! Here’s a snippet from the article:

Among the marchers were a large number of young people, including representatives of Habonim youth movement from Australia.

Wow! How cool is that?!Also, if you dig out the Newsweek edition from this week, you’ll see a really nice photo of me, along with about six or seven other people from my program. So basically that was the highlight of the evening. That and discovering a sweet burger place next to Kikar Rabin called ‘Magic Burger’. But I guess the experience was pretty cool nonetheless.

I thought that I’d write a bit about all my Machon classes, and how they’re going, a couple of weeks into Machon. So here goes:

Kehilla class: I have a great teacher named Steve Israel in a class looking at leaders and leadership throughout Jewish history. And when I say history, I mean history. We started looking at Avraham and went through to the Kings, and have been following chronologically down to where we are now — the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, which is fascinating. Great class.
Zionism class: This class, taught by South African emigrant Muki, is also really interesting. We’re looking at Israel’s place in the Middle East in modern time, but also a bit through biblical eyes. For example, now we’re going through the major conflicts that Israel has participated in: 1948 (Independence), 1956 (Sinai), 1967 (Six Day War), 1973 (Yom Kippur War), 1982 (Lebanon), 1988 (First Intifada), 1991 (First Gulf War), 2000 (Second Intifada).
Judaism: Our classes in this faculty are divided into three areas: To Do, To Be, To Read, all with roughly one hour classes on a Monday morning. My To Do class involves looking at different types of Shabbat, and basically we get different people from different streams like secular, Reform, Orthodox, Conservative/Misorti, to come and talk to us about how they practice Shabbat; To Be looks at pluralism, and it’s a class I don’t particularly like, but it’s okay, I guess; and To Read is my favourite, I’m learning about different stories in the first book of Torah and looking at the different midrashim (made up stories to help explain the Torah) relating to it. I really enjoy my Judaism morning.
Hebrew: I’m in the third class for Hebrew, which is the middle class, which is nice, and it’s a good level for me, and I seem to be learning quite a bit, and improving my Hebrew quite significantly.
Hadracha: Our hadracha component, which is basically teaching us skills for becoming leaders back in our home movement is good, but a bit dry. And it’s supposed to be very specific to our home country, so it would make sense that they give us a South African teacher. Yeah! That makes sense! But other than that, there seems to be a lot of repetition on stuff that I already know, and learnt ‘on the job’ in year 11, so it seems a bit pointless, but good nonetheless.
Inter-disciplinary track: The idea of this course is to look at Zionism and Israel like you normally wouldn’t. So one course involves Israel photography, and another Israeli art, but mine is all about Israel advocacy, or ‘hasbarah’. To some people it might seem a little propaganda-like that we have a class on advocating Israel’s stance, but it’s not anything like what the Palestinians are taught, trust me. We basically learn how, if someone attacks us, to defend Israel in a debate. So most of it is facts, public speaking techniques, and different things that most people who are anti-Israel, antisemitic and anti-Zionist. It’s amazing fun, with an absolutely amazing teacher, Neil Lazarus, an oleh (immigrant) from England. My favourite class by far!

WHAT AN intersting weekend I had: a joint weekend on the first kibbutz in Israel, Kibbutz Deganya with everyone from Habonim Dror on a program in Israel at the moment. So that meant everyone on my program, Machon (Aussies and South Africans), the other Aussie program, Chalutz, that also has New Zealanders on it, and all of the northern hemisphere chanichim from North America (Canada and the USA), the UK and Holland.

The seminar was short, more of a meet-and-greet-and-get-out kind of thing. We left Ma’aleh at 9am, and got prepared for a long bus ride up north: three hours. And on the way we did the most Habo/socialist thing we could think of, stopped for McDonald’s. If one of my old madrichim (who’s actually the madrich for the Chalutz group) was with us, she would have had a hissy fit and started convulsing then and there. That would have been funny. But I loved it, it was a bit of capitalism on an otherwise entirely socialist weekend, and I also got ‘Supersized’ for the first time! Amazing!

THEN ARRIVING at Deganya only to discover no Chalutz people, and not-too-friendly non-Aussies was a shame. We tried to make friends with them, we really did, but failed miserably. With the exception of the Dutch guys, and as many American and British guys that I could count on one hand, everyone else was just not very nice, quite unopen, and downright unfriendly. Oh well, at least missing one of the peulot (programs) at night gave me a good opportunity to catch up on some sleep by getting a ten-hour sleep! Oh my, that was so good!

Saturday was then not so much of a sleep-in, which was dissapointing, but not as bad as it could have been if I’d have had a late night. We didn’t have many programs, because the madrichim seemed a bit on and off, and the ones we did have weren’t that good: mainly we discussed the different structures of HDNA, HDOZ, HDUK, HDNZ, HDSA, and HDNL, and the different responsibilites of madrichim in their respective countries. I guess that was interesting, but some people didn’t seem to have any interest to begin with, so discussion was minimal.

THEN CAME lunch, and finding out that Carlton had won the Wizard Cup (ohh, no!) , another quite pointless program, some frisbee, and the long trip back to Ma’aleh.

All in all quite an un-fruitful weekend, although I guess it put us out of our misery to meet all of the internationales.

THE AFTERMATH was humourour, however: it turned out that, because of their sub-standard treatment on their program, Chalutz had stolen lots and lots of stuff from Deganya. Some small stuff like towels (well, comparitively small), and some much bigger stuff like mattresses and even kettles. Don’t get the impression that it was only Chalutz, though. It was definitely also us on Machon, and also Habo UK and US. But somehow, the Aussies and South Africans got most if not all of the blame.

Whoever stole the stuff though, ended up having to pay for all of the goods, because supposedly it was replaced straight away. Yeah. Right. So Machon ended up having a bill of around 450NIS, while Chalutz got about three times that, because they figured out who-stole-what depending on which room people were in. Well, Machon didn’t steal that much. Supposedly we stole two kettles, only one was in real life. Towels were also taken, fine. Except now Habo/Deganya expect us to pay for stuff we didn’t steal.

Bastards.