Enforced Relaxation

Perhaps one of the strangest things about being in a country of jews is that the weekend is pushed forward one day. On thursday afternoon, people wrap up work and say "see you sunday". I dont think I have ever said that before now. Sunday comes and sure enough everything is back to normal. The tenacity with which the sabbath is observed reminds me of sunday in bavaria. NOTHING is open. Buses dont run from friday 5ish to saturday 6ish. Telephones arent used. Streets are empty. Restaurants and cafes closed. Most christians who live in israel go to church services on saturday since this is the day of rest.

This seemingly fundamentalist aprouch has its advantages: my girlfriend is always telling me how one day a week people should be forced to relax. How in the west the "rat-race" mentality to life, career, family, etc. is feuled by the lack of value placed on being forced to rest your mind from your daily grind. Certainly the lack of activity has this effect. However some of us like to relax with a sunday paper and a coffee: with all stores closed it aint easy to buy these necesarry tools.

Jerusalem is definitely a strange place. Arabs speak hebrew to eachother. Greek Orthodox priests with long gray beards and black robes listen to ipods. Russian is heard almost as much as hebrew (imagine: Israel was a country of 5 million in 1994. Now it is 6.5 million. All of this growth is attruibuted to new immagrants from the former USSR). Black "fallusha" ethiopian jews listen to israeli hip hop and dress like ganstas from compton. At least 80% of men wear some form of head covering (usually this is like a religious ID: the orthodox wear fedora's the chasidm shorter hats. Conservatives small, usually, colourful skull caps. Yeminites wear large ones, arabs wear white ones, etc.). Learnging what the distinction between all these different groups is will surely take some time.