Monday, April 13, 2009
Purim
After our last day of work and the out-brief, we had the afternoon off before having to get ready to fly home the next day. One of the individuals I had been working with is one of the vice president of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, a private, non-profit college near Tel Aviv. Jonathan took Jeff and me on a tour of the campus, then later that evening invited us to join him and his wife for the campus Purim celebration. The college was founded in 1994 at a former anti-artillery base, and was the first private college in Israel. Jonathan told us what this building was before being converted into an auditorium, but I’ve since forgotten (something related to it being on an anti-artillery base).
Jonathan treated us to a wonderful, delicious lunch. He peppered us with amazing statistics about the school and its students while we ate, and made us feel like visiting royalty. As we finished up our lunch, he pointed to a group of six students and said, “I bet at least two-thirds of those students are from elite military units” (military service is compulsory in Israel). Sure enough, when we walked up to them and started talking to them, we discovered that one was a C-130 pilot, one was an F-16 pilot, one was a Black Hawk pilot, two were navy SEALS and one was a medic. Jonathan takes a special interest in the elite military (he was one once -- more to come on this in a later post), and pointed out that they receive special dispensation at the college -- including that they don’t have to take their equivalent of the SATs in order to be admitted. Instead, they’re admitted simply because they’re in the elite military, and have already proven themselves more than capable of meeting rigorous standards. After lunch, Jonathan took us back to his office for a glass of Scotch. Whew! Fortunately, he poured me only a tiny bit! He also took us on a tour of the campus. We saw David Ben-Gurion’s grandson teaching a class (Ben-Gurion was the first Israeli Prime Minister). This professor is also related to the individual who is responsible for reviving Hebrew as a modern language. Jonathan also took us through the very modern communication department (for professional communicators, this was a hit!).
Purim is the most festive of Jewish holidays -- a time of prizes, noisemakers, costumes and treats. The Festival of Purim commemorates a major victory over oppression and is recounted in the Megillah, the scroll of the story of Esther (or the Book of Esther in the Old Testament). Try to imagine the frivolity of Carnival, the youthful excitement of Halloween and the bravado of a war victory -- all rolled into one day. Now you have Purim.
During the celebration, men sit on one side of the room, and women on the other. I sat with Jonathan’s wife Iris (love the name -- one of my favorite aunts was named Iris), and she was very gracious in explaining the different aspects of the celebration to me. Here, she’s using a Purim gragger, or “ra’ashan” (noisemaker) when Haman’s name was mentioned during the reading of the Megillah. Tradition dictates that you’re to make as much noise as possible when you hear Haman’s name, to blot out the name of evil.
Two rabbis read the story of Esther. Fortunately, Iris brought a book written in English for me to follow along. Unfortunately, they read the story so quickly that I couldn’t keep up -- I only made it halfway through. Fortunately, I have the story in my Bible.
You can see the men starting to get rowdy here. Jonathan’s in the blue and white striped shirt wearing Jeff’s BDU hat, and Jeff is sitting next to him. Jeff and I didn’t have costumes since we had just found out about the celebration earlier that day. Fortunately, we weren’t the only people without costumes, so we didn’t stand out too much.
After the Purim celebration, Jonathan and Iris took us to dinner at a little restaurant near a marina in Tel Aviv. What a site to see all the boats lined up in the water!This was a wonderful way to bring our trip to Israel to a close. Don’t worry though, I still have another post or two before I’m done with my Israel trip. Keep checking back!
