At least that’s how it seems after a week in Singapore. Where else can you eat a meal for one dollar? access the internet (to find a bus stop, a restaurant, or a better price) for free on most street-corners? walk past buddhas, mosques, hindu temples, a variety of churches and a still-in-use 19th century synagogue in a 10-minute amble?

Singapore is an curious mix of cultures from across southern Asia, with a Western sense of security and East Asian technology thrown in. Quite a pretty city too, if you like the geometry of modern architecture and Singapore’s multi-colour take on it.

Though young as an independent country — it celebrated its 44th birthday on the day I departed — Singapore certainly has enough to be proud of.

The conference was also very good, and left me with many ideas, very few of which actually had to do with the direction I thought I was heading for a PhD, but still, nice to have some inspiration. Good to see again those people I had met at EACL; to meet others for the first time who I’d cited, who I’d seen cited, and who I’ll be likely to cite in the future.

Other highlights included (more-or-less chronological):

• The wonderful Jewish community there and their hospitality for the shabbat that opened my trip;
• Having at least one token vegetarian stall in most food courts / hawker stalls (at least four in the one near our hostel), and elsewhere on the streets;
• The entertaining restauranteur at Ci Yan on “Chinatown Food Street”, who had been recommended to us along with the food;
• The Night Safari (much better than Chiang Mai’s, and probably less cruel to the animals), its shows, and Nicky wearing a boa constrictor;
• Musical entertainment, unicycling polyglots and an academic dance-off at the ACL banquet;
• Riding bikes (and teaching Matt how to do so) around Palau Ubin;
• Running around Sim Lim Square looking for the few retailers with DDR3 RAM for my computer (ended up with 4GB at AU$125, which I think is a pretty good buy);
• Ordering one of the most expensive menu items (a paper masala dosa) for dinner, and still paying only SG$2.50 (AU$2.10);
• Some of the yummy Indian sweets from Chella’s, even if they each cost as much as a meal;
• Being woken by the call of the Sultan Mosque muezzin too early on Friday morning;
• Watching papers with my name on them being presented very well, but not having to present myself;
• Awesome fake meats in the herbal mutton soup at Eight Immortals in Koufu food court (the closest to the conference centre with a vegetarian restaurant, and yet somehow I managed to avoid it till the last day of conferring);
• Terrible cover-band music under the misnomer of “Gypsy” as a free National Day performance at the Esplanade;
• Playing around with Yefeng’s tripod on the last night (to my fortune, his camera ran out of space);
• Lots of green-bean, red-bean, sesame, and other Asian delights…

Somehow, food features quite prominently — even without chilli crab — doesn’t it?

And no, Sydney isn’t so bad. But there’s nothing like taking a holiday and intellectual inspiration at the same time.

On that scale, perhaps it’s not as terrible as Athens in April (it’s a shorter flight — the shortest I’ve made out from Australia — for a slightly longer stay), but it is another quick-and-dirty conference trip. I’m out of Sydney for 10 days, for the Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics. (The astute will note this is similar to the last conference title, but lacking “European Chapter of the”.)

While slightly up on the flight efficiency, there is less reason for me to attend, as I’m not presenting any papers, just supporting my co-authors who are. I have my name on two papers in the ACL Workshop on Collaboratively Constructed Semantic Resources, which, for the jargon-uninitiated, basically means “research using wikis to help computers understand language”.

But I do hope to see and taste a bit of the city too. Singapore’s taste sensation is sorely limited by my choice of diet. Fortunately, there are many vegetarian restaurants which should suffice, and a Jewish community centre not far from my hostel or the conference site. At 42km long by 23km deep, about half of which is built up, most places I might want to go aren’t exceedingly far (thanks to Fisher Library‘s Lonely Planet collection for providing geography tidbits).

Sadly, I’ve booked my return flight for the morning of the 9th of August, not realising it is Singapore National Day, one of the highlights of the calendar. If only I’d arranged to stay a few more hours… (and maybe it still can be arranged? is it worth it?)

As a perk on the side, I had not realised that I would also be travelling further west in Australia than I’ve ever been. On the flight, I happened to want to know the time, and turned on the only reliable channel on the barely-renovated 1980s inflight entertainment system of Singapore Air’s Boeing 737-400, which pinned its pixelated aeroplane icon at Uluru. This surprised me, as I’ve previously only travelled northward to Asia. So I’ve finally been to Central Australia (not that I could see it from row G). Next time I should make a stop-off.

On arrival in Athens last Monday, weary from 24 hours in travel, I was faced with a round of poker and lost. Don’t use EuroChange. I thought I was being careful, and even made calculations on my computer before approaching the counter. But they take advantage of the tired and naive. I bid low, they pushed me up to a higher bid, and I was sold a deal I didn’t need: too much money; too much commission (foolishly absent from my accounts); and a guarantee of the same rate and no charges to exchange up to 30% of it back, when there was no chance I’d spend 70%. So really I was just conned. And as I exited the airport to get a bus ticket, there was Piraeus Bank with a better rate. So said a recently-skimmed finance textbook: banks can always offer better rates; they exchange much larger quantities in one go. Again, don’t use EuroChange.

So I spent the week trying to spend money, but the opportunity didn’t arise. The hotel was pre-paid and fed me each morning. Lunches were provided at the conference (I survived on salads and bread). James shouted me dinner on the first night; the conference had a cocktail dinner on the second (identical to the lunches), and a banquet on the third (different chef, but similar salads); and Itamar, an Israeli student with British sponsorship wouldn’t suffer the indignity of me paying for my own dinner on Thursday night. (Note that the vegetarian situation isn’t as harsh as suggested by My Big Fat Greek Wedding: some Greeks avoid meat a couple of days a week for religious reasons, there are spinach pastries, etc. But there’s still a lack of all-vegetarian venues and even fresh fruit, despite the orange trees standing in public squares.)

Friday night and Saturday lunch with a Chabad couple were free meals, but I hoped to bring a 20 Euro donation to synagogue as shabbat was entering. Close to shabbat, I was ready to hop off the metro at Thission Station when the train drove right past it, seemingly closed off for some time already. I had to change trains and go back. The sun was on the verge of setting as I left Monastiraki Station, so I had to dump the cash according to shabbat rules. I hope it found its way into good hands.

Despite my loss, I enjoyed Shabbat, the Greek traditions, the company and the cooked food that it brought. And stunning weather, in which I walked around all afternoon wherever I could go without a ticket. I saved the ticketed places for Sunday.

And yet when I turned up to buy a ticket when the National Archaeological Museum opened at 8:30 on Sunday morning, they let me in for free, because it was the first Sunday in April. Even the ticket I’d already bought for the Acropolis was useless, as they would let me enter gratis. Not surprisingly, by the time I got back to EuroChange at the airport, I’d only spent 56% of my cash, and that was some effort.

The archaeology of Athens is wonderful, both its larger preserved monuments and ruined capitals, and the huge collections of smaller artefacts spanning thousands of years of art. While its ancient temples and chambers of democracy are something to behold, for tourists they are essentially the city’s beginning and its end, especially as almost everything worth visiting closes by 3pm out of peak season. It was the first city I’ve travelled in where I’ve been tempted to leave for the airport early, for lack of anything better to do.

Like all cities, it does have its secrets, those places just a little off the beaten track that are cheaper and just as rewarding as the traditional traps. In particular, I enjoyed the Philopappos Hill (or Hill of Muses), and the view it gave in all directions, to the sea and to the hills. Starting out before everyone else turns up is also key: the sites close early, but they tend to open at 8 or 8:30, at which time you don’t need to push people out of the way just to get some quiet time with a statute of Hermes for a photo.

So I’m glad I wasn’t hanging around in Athens for much longer than needed to see it, but next time I hit the Agaean Peninsula, I’ll hope to spend more time on islands, at Delphi, Olympia, Thessaloniki, etc. Maybe by then they’ll have caught up with the world in smoking bans, and perhaps by then I’ll be wiser with my finances.

Conferences are all about communication and learning, but I feel like the main thing I’m learning is how to attend conferences. My supervisor considers that having spent a lot of money to get here, we should make sure we see as much of the conference as possible. Other people seem to think, that having spent so much to get here, one should make sure to see as much of the city as possible. It’s a matter of learning to know which sessions to take off and get out to see the city. And I’m apparently a slow learner, and have seen almost nothing of it, which means I’ll be cramming it into the next three days.

And then there’s the idea that once I’ve travelled halfway across the world, I should at least stay here for a little longer than a week. I was bound by two major concerts last week and Pesach (which I enjoy spending with my family in Sydney) next week, but I still feel guilty to be hopping back on a jet so soon.

And of course I could do with learning a little better how to present a paper. I gave my presentaton on Analysing Wikipedia and Gold-Standard Corpora for NER Training yesterday afternoon. Having gone over-time in my practice runs, I cut it down a little on stage. Apparently too much. The session chair didn’t need to hold up a single warning sign. Still, it left more time for questions, which showed people were interested, and I’ve had many compliments on an interesting presentation. I also need to work on fluency a little, but my supervisor tells me I’m much improved…

The learning curve’s a little steep. There are many PhD students here who seem to be becoming naturals at conference-going. Soon by me?

PS: I’m not really doing much on syntax myself; nor is the conference actually at Syntagma Square, the focal point of modern Athens…
PPS: Typed on my new MacBook.

At least I should have written about Tasmania, which I visited in the first ten days of December. Galina and I saw the sights of the island over the first week: Wineglass Bay, Bicheno’s Penguins, Cataract Gorge, the Spirit of Tasmania turning around in Devonport (?!), Cradle Mountain, Bruny Island, Salamanca Markets, Port Arthur and the Devil’s Kitchen. In sum, I drove 1300km over five days in a hired Lancer, before shabbat in Hobart and a day-tour to the Tasman Peninsula. Some other highlights:

• We met an Israeli couple on our first walk who were completely oblivious to the news (Mumbai, etc.), and who desperately needed CDs for the small car they were travelling and sleeping in, which I gave them (Mashina and Dudu Tasa).
• Having left our warm clothing in sunny Devonport, we turned up to ice and snow at Cradle Mountain. Our hike there was shorter than planned, and we dried off at Tasmazia, a hedge maze filled with strange quotations.
• A chocolate factory.
• The GPS system we hired took us on the least scenic route from north to south, featuring hydroelectric power plants and unsealed roads.
• It also sent us north into rush-hour traffic when trying to go south to catch the last ferry to Bruny Island. We made it, thanks to a little speeding, some generous ferry operators who lifted the closed boomgate for us, and a lot of luck.
• Bruny Island, and its every scene — while Tassie is stunning view after stunning view, this island off an island off an island exceeds.
• I gave thanks to our shabbat lunch hosts by recording tunes for them the following Tuesday.

But the real reason I was in Tasmania was for ALTW, the tribe-meet of Australia’s students and academics in language technology. While I enjoyed the conference, it was a little disappointing to be one of only about thirty attending, twenty of whom (myself included) made presentations. Since then, a paper of mine has been accepted to EACL, which should be big enough to give attendees options for each lecture session.

It seems I’m returning to USyd in March to take the PhD path, and despite this being my last real holiday from such stuff for the next three years, I’ve been doing lots of other computery stuff, such as attending the awesome National Computer Science School as a tutor (first time!); preparing material and puzzles for a talk on linguistics and language technology presented at the latter; making contributions to the Natural Language Toolkit; helping to edit their upcoming book; and playing around with a few other ideas.

There has also been a lot of music in my life lately, rehearsing regularly with Jenny and the gang, working towards a March concert (no date set yet) of Mediaeval, Renaissance and early Baroque music. At the other end of the spectrum, I’ve met once with a more jazz/pop-oriented a capella group, and might finally get around to arranging the Screaming Jets’ Helping Hand for them. I’ve even been looking back at an unsung piece I arranged in 2006, wondering what I need to do to make it more singable. Jenny and co. will be pushing me soon to find a voice teacher, and want me to use more of my alto falsetto range…

I guess the silence is also because, for whatever reasons, I’m writing (perhaps thinking?) less about Jewish and Classical Hebrew stuff, which had often been the topic of this blog. While I wrote a few posts on Rashi and Ibn Ezra last year, I’ve been reading Ramban over the last months, and he is simply not as witty; his long rants correspond with low comprehension, and his determined point of view leaves one with little to say, even while disagreeing. But I continue to read (although reading the Mishna Berura is falling behind), enjoying the interpretation and the language, even if I say nothing about it.

And there’s a social life to be had, and time to be spent with a girlfriend. And if I get around to it this holidays, I might teach myself some Russian so I can understand her grandmother. So far I’ve changed my Facebook interface to Russian, but it hasn’t helped much yet.

Amid all this, I should also think about Thailand where I’ll be spending a fortnight from the end of the month for a wedding of Galina’s friend Raquel. It’s very exciting, but right now I feel like there’s enough to do in my life without another holiday… my inherited workoholism shining through.

I hope the coughing ceases, and maybe I’ll even try push out a few posts amid all the other madness…

The last two to three weeks have been pretty trying for Israel. But I happen to want to talk about the two weeks before then, just to give a few highlights (fairly extensive highlights?) from my trip to Israel for my brother’s wedding.

Sunday 10th Feb: the family in Sydney airport, and Dad thought he had an e-ticket. It seems he missed the notice from the travel agent (who we were failing to call) telling him to pick up the paper ticket. So he bought a new return ticket, and he and his partner flew separately to the rest of us.

A day passes, and the calendar doesn’t seem to notice, since we arrive in the morning on

Monday 11th Feb: Simon heads to Jerusalem for the day, and the rest of my immediate family moves into Tel Aviv’s Mercure, shoots off an email to the travel agent, and heads out to wander through the shuk, and then onto a cheap open-air tour bus to get some of the day’s beautiful sun.

In the evening, Dad finally got to meet Shimrit’s parents when they came down from the north to take us out for a Derby Bar experience, full of expensive fish meals (this was before they decided that the Kinneret’s fish were poisoned), featuring sushi and mediterranean hors d’oeuvres.

That was to set a pattern for much of the trip (at least the first week): lots of expensive, yummy (but often too salty) food.

Tuesday 12th Feb: Jeremy spent some good time in the morning practicing the song we were to sing two days later at the chuppah (which we had been arranging for the fortnight before), but our third singer, Shimrit’s brother (Roee) was up north. We also still needed a lot of work. We did eventually get out and do some more wandering around the city, catching a bite on Shenkin.

Evening plans with Yael and Sonia who I first met 8 years ago; on my way out I avoided the lift and took the stairs down. After some squeaky squelchy sounds, I realised the stairs had just been painted. The stairs had even been barricaded off: from the bottom, but not from the top! I returned upstairs (leaving cream footprints in carpet), changed shoes, and decided to take a taxi rather than walk to dinner.

I think my friends thought Thai dinner exotic. But the decor more seemed pan-Asian: the wall had calligraphed Japanese characters; the table had chopsticks and a fork; and the menu was headed “Thai and food” (!). Admittedly, their tom kha gai wasn’t bad (they did have a SE-Asian-looking chef), although covered with a layer of red oil, and lacking some subtlety of flavours, and of course too salty. Most of my company didn’t dare for exotic Thai meals and chose menu items with labels like “Chicken Noodles” (pronounced the same in Hebrew)…

Wednesday 13th Feb, Jeremy and I headed north and dined (at Broadway Bagel) with Roee before finally practising our chuppah tune. Jeremy and Roee then switched parts and we started getting somewhere. We moved into our more expensive Carmel hotel, and while we could sample hot cider for free, WiFi internet was a few $US for half an hour.

Another large and expensive dinner: a banquet for 13 at a restaurant called “Chinese Restaurant” to meet with a few of Dad’s cousins who live in Haifa. The dinner was a lot of fun, with a couple of second and third cousins joining us for the free food, and Dad’s cousin Yossi pulling out a pile of entertaining photos from the 1970s.

And it was evening, and it was morning,

The Wedding Day 14th Feb: after a late and large buffet breakfast, I ironed shirts. The day’s weather was far from ideal: in the afternoon we (three brothers) were taken to some fancy mall that seems to be popular for rainy-day wedding snaps. There were maybe six couples there. Since these photos precede the wedding, Simon and Shimrit were taken separately, and me and Jeremy only made our way into two shots. A little strange…

At the wedding hall, we rehearsed our song till it was almost perfect. And then there was the reception buffet. Wow. In Sydney, we don’t usually have food before the chuppah, but here they have it all: a fantastic array of soups and meats and fish and caviar and pasta and roast vegetables and stir fries (better than two nights of Asian restaurants), and all of it tasting fantastic. Suddenly it was interrupted by the commotion that was Simon entering to enveil the bride—the show was beginning, and so I found my microphone by the chuppah. Things were noisier than I expected, but we sang and made a whole pile of mistakes that most people didn’t notice. That was over, and everyone was standing so close to the chuppah that it was only possible for the cameramen to see the action inside it. A few berachot later, it was all done and the couple ran off to a little room upstairs for some quiet time.

The rest of us met our waiters for the first seated course—I chose a very nice serving of baked salmon on curls of pasta, although attending to people’s greetings meant I didn’t have much opportunity to eat it. My waiter insisted that I sit and eat and stop running around. Just a little bit of Israeli chutzpah. And then when I was ready to sit and eat, Sim and Shim came out for the first long round of dancing. The band was great: very very versatile and enjoyable, and they had me working up a quick sweat. I returned to the table often, though, for another mouthful of salmon, or glass of water, or to say hi to Ilana who watched the dancing from her seat because of a debilitating stomach ache.

The main course was of course as fantastic as the ones that came before it, and though we had a video from Shimrit and a short speech from Simon (both with subtitles), dessert came too soon, and I managed to miss it. I’m used to it coming after another dance, or even after birkat hamazon, but it seems that in Israel it’s normal for the caterers to want to pack up as soon as possible. So when the second long (mixed) dance set came around, the caterers began already to clear and remove tables, which was alright because people began to disappear the moment dessert was over. Those of us that stayed had a great time dancing, though!

And when the end of the wonderful night finally arrived, those of us returning to the hotel hopped into a bus and found our way towards bed, making for another late-ish morning…

Friday 15th Feb: the poppy-seed pastry at breakfast wasn’t as mindblowingly good as the day before, which was a pity. But my brother attended breakfast with his wife, which was a new concept altogether. People split off that morning to do different things. Anna and I descended the Carmel to wander about Arab markets before ascending it again for lunch.

Soon after lunch, Shimrit’s family and friends checked in to their rooms for shabbat. We were to have a day of celebrating the bride and groom, with plenty of food and plenty of singing. I had the opportunity to lead some of the Friday night services, while the women were busy being upset about the makeshift mechitza working much too effectively… And yes we did have much food (yet another buffet or three), and once the singing started, it didn’t stop. Those who think I am a jukebox should see Shimrit’s father. He starts on one niggun and could pass through another 15 in as many minutes before even considering a pause to breathe. It was altogether an exciting opportunity to get to know Shimrit’s family (even as Dad was sick in bed all day), with great ruach.

It more or less was the same for Saturday 16th Feb. We led our own services at the hotel, did our own Torah readings, and had our own private meals full of simcha.

In the evening I joined Simon and Shimrit at a dinner / sheva berachot at Broadway Bagel with a bunch of her friends. In fact, that was the first sheva berachot opportunity that I sang none of them. Oh, and of course, it was another meal.

Sunday 17th Feb, after another big breakfast, I had intended to go visit Haifa’s Google office for lunch (like I’d almost tried in Tel Aviv a few days before), until my family changed my plans by saying we were going to Caesarea. There we paid our fee to see the archaeological sites, and although they were interesting, we still spent most of our time in a restaurant having lunch. Very nice lunch, I might add (Shimrit had a great sweet potato gnocchi with mushroom sauce… yummm). And when those of us that follow the meal with birkat hamazon did so, Dad excused himself to go to the toilet, but instead went to the counter to pay… It seems there was a bit of competition to get this on his bill and not Shimrit’s dad’s.

Although I hear that the next sheva berachot back in Kiryat Ata was an awesome song and dance, I was all sung and partied out. And I wanted to get to Jerusalem before it snowed. Of course, after I arrived that evening (on a bus with Jacqui by coincidence), I was told the snow was delayed by a day. Staying at Ilana’s, being in Jerusalem was a good opportunity to see all sorts of people. (It seemed though that there was more new to do elsewhere in the country.)

Monday 18th Feb I did (in horrible weather) see something new: the new Yad Vashem museum. It has a very original design, and the tunnel of natural light that features in its centre (among other things) distinguishes it from the dark, enclosed Holocaut Museum in Washington DC.

And after a moving time there, I could return to town to sip hot cider with Raf and discuss the world. And while I had thought that keeping away from my family would mean I wouldn’t be eating quite so many big and expensive meals, it turned out they had followed me to Jerusalem, and we were to meet for dinner at La Boca, a South American place that stuffs you with meat. I was more than happy with soup and leftovers…

And the snow finally came overnight…

Tuesday 19th Feb awoke to enough snow to grind the city to a halt, and to have Ilana work from home, although only really a small layer covered the plants and footpaths. The latter was fairly unpleasant, with the snow changing for rain on and off, creating horrible slush to walk through. I had a breakfast date with Tessa, so I did walk through it, to Bet Keneset HaGra, and on to a very quiet, mostly-closed Centre of Town. So Tessa and I went where everyone else seemed to be squishing into a Cafe Hillel (I wanted to introduce her to Tmol Shilshom, but it wasn’t open till later).

The morning ended and my socks had become wet and freezing, so I went to meet the heater at Ilana’s. About then, I got a call from Lior who had been my madrich on Shnat 2002. I don’t think we’d spoken since then, but still he invited me to his wedding in two days’ time! I wasn’t sure. It took some deciding, and some logistics: the wedding was not near Jerusalem where I’d intended to stay.

That afternoon, I (after pizza with Alex and Helena) moved my bags to Harry and Imbar’s place (where Sam was also staying, and where Jeremy was about to leave for the airport). Although they were producing some great-smelling meal (and I hadn’t eaten a single home-cooked meal since I’d arrived in the country), I had arranged to meat a handful of friends for dinner, which turned out very pleasantly.

Wednesday 20th Feb: I decided late the night before that I would join my cousins on a “safari” in Ramat Gan. The Safari is basically a park with a number of large enclosures with various grazing (and gazing) African animals. And the lions, separately. Basically you drive through it and get the thrill of being up close to various animals, even if you’re not meant to open your window or door to greet them properly. They also have a sizeable zoo there which we spent a while in before our return trip to Jerusalem at the end of the day.

And I had thought again that I might be having a meal at Harry’s, when suddenly I was invited to a late-planned Shushan Purim Katan seudah with Yosef and Yael on the other side of town. There I had a fun and interesting time, and an opportunity to catch up with Yosef, among a less familiar crowd than the few Australians I kept meeting up with. It was also my first home-cooked meal!

But on Thursday 21st Feb, I woke up with the lurgee that had been going around my family, and stayed in bed. This wasn’t to plan: I had finally got excited about Lior’s wedding, but was suddenly not feeling up to it. I meant to hit Mea Shearim to wander through bookstores; I did go replace a book that I had bought in July not knowing its pages were bound out of order, but I didn’t get to do much else. I also decided that I would go to the wedding despite being sick.

In fact, the groom was also afflicted by a cold, but he had less choice to stay in bed. Their chuppah was outdoors where I stood next to a man who, when I introduced myself as an Australian who’d come for his brother’s wedding to a girl from Kiryat Ata, turned to his neighbour and said, “He’s the brother of the Australian who married Levi Chibotaro’s (sic) daughter!” A smaller world than I thought.

Even if the food was nowhere near the standard of Simon and Shimrit’s wedding, Lior’s involved less running around: I was able to enjoy seeing people I hadn’t been around much for the prior five years (four other shnatties also attended); of course I danced; and, like the others, we left after dessert.

The trip up to the wedding near Kfar Saba actually became quite convenient. Moria gave me a lift there from Jerusalem, during which I received an SMS from my brother exclaiming that “Moria and Uria are engaged!” which made some sense because they’d returned from Rome the day before, but made no sense because I was sitting next to her, she didn’t mention it, and was wearing no ring. “Uhhhm, Moria… Simon sent me a message saying Shimrit was on the phone with Uria… Is there something you’re not telling me?” It turns out she’s against rings and had already had enough mazal tovs for a day.

Anyway, going to the wedding fit quite neatly. It meant I could stay in Raanana with the Moddels, see Maya from McGill there in the morning, see Tamar in Tel Aviv for lunch, and make it back to Jerusalem again with Moria!

Friday 22nd Feb: Maya left for the gym right when I’d hoped to meet her, delaying things a little. But we did meet, and I knew we didn’t have much time before I would need to bus down to TA. Still, I felt like an Ice Aroma (my token one for the trip). But the queue at Aroma was too long, and it was the wrong side of the road if the bus were to come. We crossed to other side and considered buying some persimmons for a snack, but it turned out that that fruit shop line was too long too, when a bus came roaring down: I left the persimmons with Maya and ran to catch it. Things fell from my bag. I picked them up. Things fell from my bag. Someone else picked them up. I grabbed them and run. Things fell out of what I was carrying… I wasn’t too far off, but I certainly missed the bus. I phoned Maya: “How about that Ice Aroma?”

I still made it to TA with enough time, and spent a while in the markets there, some of it with Tamar (buying a sign for Sim and Shim’s door), before we walked off to the jazz festival where I’d hopefully find Moria and Uria. On stage was a band that I’d already seen perform in Jerusalem, but then as now a lot of fun.

Moria and Uria were hiding somewhere in the crowds, and their car was hiding somewhere in a nearby carpark. We returned to Jerusalem, and I to Harry and Imbar’s for my second home-cooked meal of the trip! Stupidly, we followed dinner by beginning a game of Risk that didn’t end till 3am.

Neither Harry nor I made it to shul the next morning (Saturday 23rd Feb). I did manage to get to lunch, at the apartment of Sarah who I had met in May (at a party of a friend of Ilana’s at that same apartment), which had an unfamiliar but interesting mix of people from various backgrounds.

My motzaei shabbat plans with McGillers fell through, and I met up with Shani (whose other name has confusingly changed) and her family. We went out for yet another hot cider.

And then it was almost over:

Sunday 24th Feb, I only really had time (other than a visit to the Old City and its surrounds, and lunch with Dani) to spend in bookstores, making sure I stocked up. More importantly, Alex had given me belated money for Sim and Shim’s wedding, to use on books, so Simon had me find some. I did discover, though, that while Manny’s stocks a good selection of all the normative, popular books, Lichtenstein on Strauss had a much more exciting and interesting and esoteric collection. It was there that I bought an English volume of Maimonides’ treatises on poisons, hemorrhoids and cohabitation! In addition, the shopkeeper expressed regret when I asked if he had Sa’adia Gaon’s translation of the bible into Judeo-Arabic. To contrast, at Manny’s they asked, “Why would you want that?”

I was late to return to Harry and Imbar’s: I wanted to shower, to eat, and to pack, in a short period that was shortened just as I stepped into the shower by the taxi driver calling to say he’d be early. I did shower (quickly), didn’t eat, and only packed in the sense that all my things were in bags when I left. Five bags, I think. I repacked at the airport and landed up with only two. There we had an amusing interrogation with two security guards, one training the other by detaining us for a while with silly questions to which we gave long responses about our family tree / history and everything else.

And then Shim, Sim, Mum and I farewelled Shimrit’s parents before spending another day in flight…

And of course, the trip was packed, but still too short.

But I think it is remarkable that of those 366 nights, I stayed in a hostel / motel / hotel only:

• 5 nights in San Francisco (July 19, 20, 23, 24, 25)
• 4 nights in New Orleans (July 26, 27, 30, 31)
• 1 night in Memphis (August 1)
• 2 nights in Niagara (March 23, 24)
• 1 night in London (April 30)
• 2 nights in Amsterdam (May 1, 2)
• 2 nights in Paris (May 7, 8)

That’s seventeen days in total!

I wanted to say an enormous thank you to everyone I’ve stayed with along the way, who have all been extraordinarily hospitable to me in finding somewhere for me to sleep, feeding me, taking me out occasionally, giving me their kids to play with…

After recognising the first letter, I realised that I could identify (with confirmation online) that this large text was actually the Tetragrammaton, in Judaism the ineffable and most sacred name of God, albeit that its letters were highly stylised. Altogether, we have the phrase “יראת ה’“, “fear of God”.

Now because, for those who can read it, the graffiti includes the Name of God, does this mean it cannot be erased as would usually be the case with this four-letter name?

We know that God’s name written in another language (or the word “God”) has no prohibition against its destruction. We find in the Shach on Yoreh Deah 179:11 (and brought similarly in the Mishnah Berura 85:10):

השם בל’ הקדש הוא שם אבל בלשון חול אינו שם כלל והגע עצמך דהא מותר למחות שם שנכתב בלשון חול כגון גאט בלשון אשכנז או בו”ג בלשון פולי”ן ורוסי”א וכיוצא בזה

The Name in the Holy Language is a name, but in a non-holy language it is not a name at all, and behold it is permitted to erase a name that is written in a non-holy language like “Gott” in German or “Bog” in Polish or Russian, etc.

Clearly, there, the name in a non-holy language is not to be considered holy itself.

So is the text of this graffiti considered the Holy Hebrew language? Not if it is in fact Moabite: The stylising, especially of the vav (but also heh and resh) are less akin to Hebrew than the Moabite alphabet as found on the Mesha Stele (see alphabet charts 1, 2, 3; or possibly Phoenecian). The א used in יראת is not close to any ancient script I can quickly find, again pointing to merely a stylised font. And in the end, the words have obviously been written with the intent of Hebrew.

So is this font, albeit stylised, still Hebrew? Modern Hebrew print is also stylised, and still God’s name in such a font would usually be unerasable to my knowledge. Does this law apply to other common scripts like Israeli/Yiddish hand, or “Rashi” script?

On occasion, the Talmud actually tells us that the Ancient Hebrew script is without religious value. The mishnah in Megillah 8b states that while books may be in any language, tefillin and mezuzot must be written in the Assyrian Script. Further, the gemara adds:

כתב עברי אינו מטמא את הידים עד שיכתבנו בכתב אשורית על הספר ובדיו

Hebrew Script does not impurify the hands [signifying its holiness], until one writes it in Assyrian Script upon the [parchment] scroll and in ink.

This may well be our answer and clarify that a script that is not akin to the Assyrian script would not be considered holy. But the conclusion is far from certain.

Curiously, for instance, we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls a number of biblical documents where the entire text is Assyrian, with the Tetragrammaton alone in Hebrew Script (some Psalms examples; a form of diglossia?). Some have argued that this would make damage to the scroll less critical: having the Holy Name in the unholy Hebrew Script means that the scroll can be treated more loosely (and it may not impurify one’s hands). On the other hand, one can also argue that this change of writing illustrates some special sanctity attached to the Divine Name in that script. This is supported by fragments of early Greek translations of the bible that also include the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew!

Even if we are to take the Dead Sea Scrolls as evidence for the significance of God’s name in Ancient Hebrew script (something contemporary Rabbinic authorities would unlikely rely on), we may also note that the Efrat graffiti looks little like the Name as found in the scrolls mentioned.

Finally, we have two more criteria on the unerasability of God’s name. The first is permanence, and it is arguable that graffiti by it’s nature is not intended to be permanent, although paint on stone is a permanent medium. The second is that its purpose needs to be consecrated: that is, the one that wrote it was not merely putting four letters down that turned out to compose God’s name; nor was it written in malice or by a non-believer. The intentions of the graffiti artist are maybe too unclear.

The sources brought seem to allow us to remove the graffiti in Efrat, and even if it is not clear, they bring enough doubt into the sanctity of the text. Nonetheless, it is still a surprising and unexpected situation to be encountered with.

Tel Aviv might seem like the odd one out there, the others all being hotly disputed and potentially dangerous territory. Nonetheless, the Jewish tourists to Israel tend to be divided into those who love Tel Aviv and those who avoid it. Some might say it’s a matter of Tel Aviv vs Jerusalem, and it seems I’ve been pushed into the latter camp. Thanks to Shimrit, my sister-in-law-to-be, I finally had somewhere to stay, if but for a few nights, to sample a little more of the city than I had known.

Despite only 40 minutes’ drive between them, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are worlds apart in some ways. Both are considered by some to be Israel’s capital, but Jerusalem has an immense sense of history, spirituality, religion and nature, while Tel Aviv holds its pride in its modernness, in a sense its lack of ancient history, and largely in its secularity. Jerusalem is trying to live up to its ancient name, and Tel Aviv is trying to build a new city. And it’s for these reasons, I guess, that a lot of my friends have said they don’t like Tel Aviv.

But we shouldn’t give up on it so quickly: Jerusalem and Tel Aviv speak for different types of Zionisms. The Zionism of Tel Aviv is more Herzlian, aiming to have for the Jews a city like the cities of the world; maybe some Ahad Haam too, in making itself an artistic and cultural centre, but it is not alone there. Jerusalem is about return to ancient lands, often a religious or national messianism, it tries to be set apart from those around it—the idea of qodesh (“holy”). TA becomes the pluralist and Jerusalem the particularist, and these ideas come out in each city’s stereotypical inhabitant.

I would say that Tel Aviv has succeeded in building a city of the world. It aims to be unique only in being an impressive city, and maybe then a touch of Jewish character. It has its skyscrapers and central shopping malls for occupation by day, its beaches and parks for the afternoon, and by night its clubs, and its waterside cafes and bars.

As a result, most of the things I did in Tel Aviv on this stay were generic city things. It being a European city, I could take a bicycle to its flat streets and ride with Shimrit to Gan Hayarkon and along its river (banked by eucalypts); could walk along the sand of the beaches, watching people sunbaking, playing ping-pong or soccer, wading in the water, or sipping drinks in classy bars laid out on the sand; could visit an art museum whose wealthy benefactors had donated some impressive works by impressive names (some of them I recognised as having been borrowed for exhibitions I had seen elsewhere in the last year). It being a Middle-Eastern city, I could also visit its busy open-air market filled with sweaty people selecting between various fruit-sellers and cheap imported products.

And the city is still Israeli despite all that: some of the restaurants around are kosher; the market has armed guards outside; opposite a major mall and commercial towers is the centre of the Israeli army; everyone is speaking Hebrew (or English, or Russian, or French); and many of the art museum’s exhibits reflect on Jewish and Israeli viewpoints.

Maybe the reason why many of my friends do not like Tel Aviv is simply because it is nothing special. At least, in comparison to Jerusalem’s sense of memory and distinctiveness. Even so, Tel Aviv’s marvel is not its uniqueness, but that it is there, a creation and an achievement, and succeeding fantastically.

A day’s flight awaits.