Summer in Jerusalem 2018

I stopped blogging for two-ish weeks since my parents were visiting, and my mother is a far better blogger (for information about what we did while they were here, as well as their incredible trip through Southern Spain before meeting me, go here!). While they were visiting (and while I was working), my mom and sister had taken a two-day trip to Jordan, which they loved (and kept referencing to my dad and me, letting us know that we couldn’t complain about the heat since we hadn’t even been to Petra to experience the real heat). So, I knew that I definitely wanted to go! Maddy and I -- almost everyone (including her classmates) has assumed we are sisters! The Thursday night (equivalent to Friday in the US) before the tour began my roommate Mady and I went out with some of her friends from her Arabic class, as well as their professor! It was a very fun group, and super helpful to have their teacher along -- as a native he knew all the smaller/less tourist-y bars and was a welcome...

A young Orthodox girl yelling at a Women at the Wall protester Some of my friends from Jordan (living in Tel Aviv on Yale program) were coming out to Jerusalem for the weekend, so spent the previous night with one of them (Marcelina) in the shuk (market) with my roommate Mady. She slept over in our apartment, and we were up bright and early the next morning to make it to Women at the Wall. Women at the Wall is a reformed Jewish movement to advocate for the right of women to prayer at the Western Wall, one of the holiest places to Jews across the world. Although this is not technically forbidden in Judaism, and there is a law in place that says women can do this, it is a huge and very contentious issue between the orthodox and reformed communities. In order to protest, the organization performs bat mitzvahs at the wall and holds services for Rosh Chodesh. Although Marcelina is Catholic and I am not particularly Jewish, we both wanted to go in order to get a better sense of th...