It’s Purim next weekend, and everything is nuts. During the weeks leading up to it, the students write out a list of demands that the teachers must follow, all of which are utterly ridiculous without exception. Some of the rules include: no homework or tests, teachers may not ask children questions, anyone who comes late must tell a joke. There are Purim markets at every school, where children can buy and sell things, which are represented by these mysterious tiny slips of paper appearing in all of my students hands. They have all turned into tiny businesspeople, shouting FALAFAL FALAFAL GET YER FALAFAL HERE ONLY ONE SHEKEL as I walk by. Some of the schools have gotten into the spirit of the holiday with tree decorations made by stapling empty candy wrappers to the trunks. No learning seems possible.   

           

My list of volunteer activities is expanding. My new evening adult ESL class started last week, and my students are amazing. Unlike my first group, which focused on fluency and grammar, this class is about the basics, which is a whole different challenge. It’s a lot of fun so far. The students are really motivated, and I am convinced that soon they will overtake the fourth graders who have been studying all year. One of my students is a music teacher from the Ukraine, who speaks Ukrainian, Russian, German and Hebrew. I conduct the class in Hebrew, and we are learning English, but she takes notes in Russian! It amazes me.

I have also started volunteering at the garden build for the Ethiopian cultural center. We are currently tearing up all the grass and laying down compost. The guys who come are mostly older Ethiopian who tease each other and smile easily. As the only girl and much slower at the manual labor, I feel shy about sticking out, but everyone is kind. The guy heading the build, Yuval, is a very spiritual man who takes breaks to pray and knows a lot about plants. He brought all these sugar canes, and showed us where the roots will grow from the plant to create new canes when we put them in the ground.

And finally, I have gotten involved in a project to fix up an apartment building in Shicon Dalet, the worst neighborhood in town. Sometimes I go out in search of volunteer projects to get involved in, but other times I get a text from Roi with all these pictures of a dilapidated building and a note that says “look at how terrible this place is. I cried just looking at it. We have to do something. Becca you like social justice right? You will do it”. Darn my big mouth.

So anyway Abe and I went last week to see the place. We met a man, Pinsky, who grew up there and now commits all of his free time to volunteering to make better the lives of those who still live there. He is very passionate and has a lot of big ideas. It sounds like we are going to be responsible for fixing up the outside of the building, which is crumbling and has exposed wires in places, and planting fruit trees. We took a tour of the apartment of one woman in particular, a mother of 8 kids, one of whom has special needs. Her husband took the money with him when he left. Their tiny apartment is piled from floor to ceiling with dirty laundry and smells really terrible. It was very uncomfortable to take a tour through a person’s private home for the purpose of seeing how “bad” it was, but it is clear that Pinsky has worked hard to build trust by showing he is committed to doing good. It is heartwarming to know Beit Sheanians feel such responsibility to take care of each other.

Last night I went to a hina (pronounced cheena), or Moroccan ceremonial henna-decorating before a wedding. I had been to one before in Morocco and thought I knew what to expect, but this one was 10 million times more lavish. The never ending food was served on the most beautiful plates and the cups overflowed with alcohol. The glass chandeliers appeared to drip from the ceiling, and the walls had windows painted with bucolic scenes of a sunny day in Italy, so that time would slip by unnoticed (they only reason we knew the party was over was because of the mops that came to join the dancing throngs). The women wore their fanciest heels and gowns and got lipstick all over everyone’s cheeks, and the men wore t-shirts and jeans and rolled cigarettes that they smoked indoors and then casually tossed to the marbled floor (a sight that will never cease to shock me). The men lifted everyone they could convince to sit in a chair (there was lots of nail biting on my part as the chair-lifters got progressively drunker), and the women ululated at them all. The young men danced with the grandmothers, the young women danced with the grandfathers, and the mother of the bride danced with everyone. Upon prompting, one man dramatically cast his cane aside to show off his moves. Everyone painted the palms of their hands with henna and then high fived each other and threatened to get it all over everyone else’s faces. It was so fun.

I walked home with some of the cousins (everyone seems to be related in Beit Shean), and they began to laugh about the music. It’s unfamiliar to us you know, one girl told me. When I asked her why, she confessed that her family was Tunisian, not Moroccan. Surely the groom’s family must be, I wondered out loud, but she corrected me- he was Russian. It turns out there were zero Moroccans in that room- they just wanted to have the hina because they wanted to throw a big party!

So here’s to old and new traditions alike. Shabbat shalom everyone!