Shabbat, that centerpiece of Jewish life. It marks the seventh day of the Jewish week and the period of rest. For observant Jews it also means a period of not using electronics or doing anything related to work. This goes as far as not ripping toilet paper squares–single square dispensers only on the kibbutz. For me it just entailed dressing up a bit and having a nice dinner with my peers. For many Israelis, however, it denotes a joyous time with friends and family free from the distractions of modern life.
Everyone’s looking smart, just a degree or so more dressed up but still looking cool. This was a West Coast group of Jews after all. We’re ushered into this multi-purpose classroom and gather in this huge ellipse, sitting down in these desk-chairs you would see in a lecture hall. It’s education time.
Exhaustion washes over everyone, starving and out of energy from kayaking. No one is very interested in singing along to songs and learning inane facts about Judiasm, but we must play along.
Suddenly my contact lens really starts to bother me. I’m sitting very close to the counsellors and our guide Mickey up front–at the ‘head’ of the ellipse of desk. It’s really being a little bitch, and I’m trying to fiddle with it to get it back on my iris as tears roll down my face. Kelsi is a few desks over staring at me, and she starts cracking up. She shoots me this colloquial look and from what I can see through my distorted vision is this girl trying to stifle a laugh. I don’t get it at all–she must think this is some sort of joke.
Mickey is droning on but she is really starting to giggle and is trying really hard to stifle the laugh. I suddenly realize she must think I’m falling asleep and rubbing my eyes in some sort of bored stupor. I shoot her this quizzical look, but I’m way too late. She’s been triggered–I was the catalyst for a giggle attack.
Kelsi’s face looks redder than a fucking tomato, and now the virus has spread to the other counsellor–Peggah. Kelci is desperately holding a large piece of white cardboard to the right of her face so that Mickey can’t see her choking on her own laughs. Peggah is unfortunately seated right beside Mickey and can’t seem to control her giggles despite being so close to our trip leader who is pontificating about something uninteresting.
All hell breaks loose. Kelci’s now redder than the Kool-Aid man and the rest of the group starts to laugh as well. It’s too late, the chain reaction has started–the outbreak can no longer be contained. Mickey looks confused and stops talking as laughter fills the room. He turns his head to the left to look at his counsellors for…counsel, but all he gets back are giggles and red faces. He gives up on us and we adjourn the educational session.
§
The sun is setting, marking the beginning of Shabbat. The counsellors usher us back in the classroom and give us a little lecture about being respectful and laughing. It’s hard to take it seriously seeing how they were responsible for getting everyone going in the first place, but we nod and agree. We’re just hungry as fuck and ready to eat.
Our counsellors and Mickey guide us through the ceremony and we all light a little candle. It’s pretty uneventful. Afterwards we have a nice dinner. Lots of brisket, schnitzel, and chicken. Oy, we feasted. Our bodies were well prepared to drink.
All of our bedrooms opened up to the outside, much like a motel. A nice common area was outside, equipped with chairs, tables, and other furniture. A long wooden table was discovered, quickly appropriated for a game of beer pong. Man, was it ever agonizing. It took forever because the cups were too small, making it really difficult to get the ball in.
Halfway through our game Zach spits a sick birthright rap, which was somewhat unexpected but ultimately completely expected as we came to know him. Eventually Devin and I lost to Zach and Nick/Rick-McCrank. Zach was a fucking bouncing fiend, the best I have ever encountered. I felt inspired to work on my bounce game.
Disgusted with the beer pong, I sit around outside a concrete round-table with Devin and some other people, chatting away. This extremely loud buzzing sound keeps coming out of Tzvi’s room. It’s for a second and stops. I theorize that it’s him trying to use a North American shaver on the much higher Israeli voltage. Suddenly it happens again. We all laugh, and as I am sharing my theory on this with Devin and the group, it keeps happening. We all laugh and it happens again. The timing of the buzzing attacks could not have been funnier.
The group had fragmented into two sub-groups. There was the beer pong crew in the area we were, and then another group 20 meters down the road under this faux thatched awning. They were all sitting around some big table hanging out and playing cards.
People are getting a little drunk, so of course we decide to really step on the accelerator and play some flip cup. It was the most difficult to organize game I’ve ever experienced. One of those ones where you’re shouting “Match up! Match up!” every 10 seconds. What a mess.
After we finish the first game, a bunch of people from the sub-group tell us that these local people want to take us to the bar. I lean over a railing, eyeing up the golf-cart idling in front of the awning steps trepidatiously. The golf cart is being driven by 14 year old girls. Was this for real? We weren’t even supposed to be drinking.
As I’ve got my lean on, I can’t help but eavesdrop on Kelci and Peggah deciding if they should go. Kelci was down, Peggah not so much. “At this point it doesn’t really make a difference” was the pull quote from the conversation.
So we all decide to go to the bar as one big happy group, counsellors included. A couple of people rode in the golf cart while 30 of us followed behind in the darkness. I believe the 14 year old girls even let Zach drive it for a little while. We end up in an area that is pretty residential, and right as we all begin to question if this is for real, we turn the corner. Everyone behind is asking what the hell is going on, and if this is really a bar. We get there and shout back to the group “We’re all good!!”.
We see the “bar” is on the corner of a street lined with houses. People our age stand around smoking cigarettes outside. We clearly had found the local watering hole.
A quiet falls upon the bar as we walk in. Very East side meets West. We were 30 drunk Americans crashing this Israeli party. In a typical American fashion we start boasting that we’re going to drink this bar dry. This was going to be an interesting night.
The bar is simple. A concrete room, about ten feet by seven. It’s really barebones with the raw concrete, and there’s a little kitchen/bar area separated by a very thick concrete wall–essentially a little room. It looks like livestock could have been housed in here. This little 2 foot long wooden bar is set up, but it more resembles a counter–it must have been a window that has been repurposed as the bar surface. They have like 9 bottles of hard liquor on a crude wooden shelf, and this big old white metal fridge behind the bartender. No kegs, but that fridge was just stacked with beer. One of those fridges from the 60s that a little kid could get locked in and suffocate–you know. Something that you would find in ‘the garage’ in a stereotypical 1960s ‘American Dream’ family household. A whiteboard hangs off an exterior window with handwritten prices in Shekels.
The bar has a nice backyard. A little bit of concrete, but a nice grass yard. Some plastic patio furniture as well, occupied by some Israelis. Later I find out that if you want to pee, this is also the place to do it. I peed a few times in the darkness on the edge of the yard. I like this place.
Tubi is the name of a form of Israeli moonshine. Legend says it makes you ‘crazy’ when you drink it. I liked the gingery taste, so I took countless shots of this and chatted up the other Israelis at the bar. Everyone seemed to be in their twenties and lived here on the kibbutz. It was an interesting experience, I’ve never been to a place like this. It had a twinge of country life to it, but it was different.
Eventually Omer rallied me, Elham, Karen, Devin, and some Israeli girls down the street to the community pool. It was closed, surrounded by a seven foot tall fence lined with sharp points at the top. We climb over and swam around a bit. We all enjoyed the water and stared at the stars. I met this local girl named Marina who swam topless with us.
We decide to back to the rooms and jump over the fence again. Elham ripped her dress apart on the fence when she hopped over. A pretty severe rip unfortunately. Ripped clothing aside, we go chill out a while by the beer pong table. I saw Jeremy sleeping on the swing, and Zach and Jonah sleeping on the benches. I’m puzzled at first, but it turns out that Jonah lost the room key, so everyone staying in that room had to sleep outside. At this point I notice Emmett was in a hammock sleeping under the stars as well–another casualty of the night.
