So I finally got fed up with the flawed plumbing in my old apartment. The landlord told me that if I didn't like having the shower drain bubble up and flood the floor of the front room then I could leave. So I did. And, after more hauling trips than I care to imagine in truly punishing heat, here I am. The new place is not so far away, closer to the center of town and closer to Becca and Avraham. I was quite happy that I got the phone line hooked in yesterday instead of on the predicted date of tomorrow, since it means that I didn't have to interrupt my network services for more than the few minutes it took to carry the computer and sundry between apartments. Now the task at hand is to unpack and organize everything.

I'm pretty ticked off at both sides of this issue. I cannot swallow the claims of those who oppose the event on the grounds that it will "defile the Holy city". The three religions that dominate the city all consider each other anything ranging from run-of-the-mill heresy to vilest idolatry. And yet they somehow manage to tolerate each other's public demonstrations. Why is walking down the street holding a placard saying "It's OK to be gay" so much more despicable to Jewish sensibilities than monks marching through the Old City on Xmas carrying effigies of their messiah on life-sized crosses? I flatly disbelieve the complaint that the parade is a gross immodesty. If modesty was the real basis for opposing a parade, then the opponents would lobby for enforcement of public lewdness laws and for reasonable controls on the behaviors sanctioned among the parade's participants. They would not be trying to nullify any and every public expression of queer identity. I cannot respect a party that refuses to tolerate the respectful expression of opposing viewpoints.

On the other hand, the organizers of the Pride event can't pretend that they don't know from past years that this kind of vitriolic reaction would be provoked. Perhaps they are too full of their desire to prove a point of principle to care whether or not their actions help or hurt our cause in the long run. I certainly don't think that a bill in the Knesset to ban pride parades everywhere in the country is a step forward. (Unless the intention is to highlight how Israel's commitment to Democratic principles is a farce. But that's a whole 'nother rant.) I agree that it's a tragedy if queer people can't publicly support each other as a beleaguered minority in the capital of our nation. But it's a greater tragedy to lose the patient because you were attacking the symptoms instead of the root causes of the disease.

I don't have much respect for this dispute right now because I don't see that either side is having much respect for the other. If the queer and religious factions in this fray would actually enter into a dialog with the intention of finding a way for the GLBT community to publicly affirm their right to exist but without offending the tender sensibilities of certain religious factions, I think it could be done. But it would require serious compromise on both sides, and thus serious maturity on both sides. I'm not overly optimistic in the short term.

A couple weeks ago, I went to the birthday party of Eliyahu Alpern and spun a little fire. It turns out that one of the perks of providing a little entertainment at a photographer's birthday party is that you get some nice photographs of yourself published. Enjoy!

I took a vacation on the two days preceding the holiday to catch a ride with Becca, Avraham, and Ashira to Jon's farm. We got the full tour of the farm on Monday afternoon. Ashira was with the animals, especially a tiny baby black goat. An old goat named Yogi who was born with lame hind legs impressed us all with his trick of walking solely on his front legs. Words don't quite describe how surprising this sight is. Becca's interest was piqued by some of the building techniques used for the structures on the farm, such as the use of mud as a primary material and the use of inorganic garbage as wall filler.

After a few hours of visiting, the Loewenthals moved on to Mitzpeh Ramon to spend chag with friends there, but I stayed on the farm overnight with Jonathan. Although I was harassed by mosquitos all night and woke up with a mysteriously swollen and numb lower lip (which we can only assume was caused by something like a spider bite in middle of the night), I somehow had plenty of pep available to devote to participating with Jon and his fellows in working the fields. (Don't worry too much about the bug bite; it healed completely before the day was over.) We plucked weeds by hand from the strawberry beds and hoed away the grass that had overgrown between the rows and fertilized various vegetables by hand scooping away a depression around the base of the plant and dumping in a couple handfuls of dried poop pellets that they called kufti. After lunch, Jon and I caught a bus to Jerusalem together. We spent a few hours downtown and around the shuk before we had to scurry off to our respective holiday hosts. I tried to buy Jon a pair of new sandals for his birthday, since his old ones were literally falling apart, but the stores were rapidly closing and we couldn't find a shoe merchant that had what he wanted and was still open. So I just gave him the money, and hopefully he's bought new sandals for himself by now.

Jon spent Shavuot with Dan Siegel and their mutual friends. I slept and ate meals at the apartment of Elroi and Josh, a couple friends I made last summer during the war. As this was one of Elroi's "big gay yontifs", the table was surrounded entirely by fairies, except for a single token straight man (although he more than proved his qualifications as an honorary pansy by manifesting his napkin folding skills at lunch). I went to Pardes for Shavuot night learning, but I'm sorry to say that I barely made it past midnight. Although I was really enjoying a lecture on Korach by celebrated chumash commentator, Aviva Zornberg, I was fighting off a headache from too much sun exposure and tiredness from the field labor earlier in the day. In the morning, I went to a nice shul in the Old City that I'd never visited before called "Istanbuli". It was built three or four hundred years ago under the reign of the Turkish empire, and most of the congregants today are descended from the Portuguese Sephardic community. Jon was supposed to come over for lunch at 2pm, but his exertions from the previous night left him comatose well through the late afternoon. I was a little disappointed that Jon didn't make it out to "meet the queers" (as Josh so eloquently put it), but I had plenty of fun. I played the coy glancing game with one of the other houseguests for most of the holiday, and we exchanged phone/email information motzei chag. He teaches statistics at the Open University, so he gets big points for nerdiness, but I'm not so sure an Israeli is what I'm seeking, unfortunately. I dated an Israeli for a little while a couple weeks after Pesach, and I discovered that I'm really not so comfortable constantly hitting a speed bump on the road to communication, with limited Hebrew on my side and limited English on the other.

I didn't touch base with Seth and Rachel on Shavuot, but I had seen them the Shabbat beforehand when they came to Tzfat with Rachel's family for a bar mitzvah. I guess that's all the news for now.

In a semi-desperate attempt to use up a kilo of whole wheat flour that's been in my freezer for a long time, I did something I don't know if I've ever done before. I made my own challah from scratch. I think it turned out very nicely, although I had been worried that it wasn't rising enough. I stuck it in the oven anyway because I had no more time to wait if it was going to get enough time in the oven before Shabbos. I kneaded sunflower seeds into the dough. You'll also notice that I had no time to braid it, so the loaves were simply lump-shaped. It came out thick and hearty and a little on the crumbly side. It actually sort of reminds me of Rebecca's challah.