Jerusalem is a vortex of insanity

Granted, it's a nice insanity.

Today I was a little yeshiva bachur. I am studying for 3 days at Pardes, the modern orthodox yeshiva in Jerusalem. I started this morning with a mishna class, in which we learned about who can make up the zimun of 3 in birkat hamazon. Then a class on sources about women and mitzvot. I had lunch with Joe, and we talked about how to start (and fund) progressive centers for young people like Kavod house all over the country.

I had a brief meeting with Meesh, the outreach coordinator at Pardes. After talking to me about "my Jewish journey" for 10 minutes, she smiled and said, "So it shouldn't be hard for you to get your place packed up while you're here finding an apartment."

Then it was back to class. Afternoon midrash class focused on the character of Moses in Shemot. We talked about how Moses was a paradigm for Moshiach in the redemption story of the past, preparing us for the redemption story of the future. Finally
and topped it off with an evening hassidut hour in which Besht stories were told and crazy erotic truths revealed. Spookily, the teacher was breaking down one story and talked about how "it's never too late, the stakes just get higher as life passes along and it becomes harder to go inside the thing that you love."

Talked to Dan about his Jerusalem Post interview. Talked to Matthue about yeshiva. And now I'm home listening to Jay try to pitch funding for his Jewish philosophy magazine.

It was, in short, a long ass day. I learned more in 10 hours than I've learned this whole year. Tomorrow I have Zohar and Chumash. Wednesday picks up from today's classes again. And Thursday I am going to Simchat Shlomo, the hippie dippie ortho yeshiva to study halacha and hassidut.

It's a crazy vortex. Everyone here is nuts. Pass the beer.

Homophobia +5

In another misguided attempt to maintain high fantasy standards, Blizzard is cracking down on GLBT guild recruiting. One can only hope that the exhilarating tsunami of democracy unleashed by the Bush administration crashes ashore in Azeroth soon.

Bauhaus adventures

balconies
Originally uploaded by sarahlefton.

So I could never really have told you what Bauhaus was before, although I knew it was an architectural movement out of Germany. Now I'm a pro.
I did a very typically nerdy Sarah thing and bought a book that is a guide to 100 important Bauhaus examples in Tel Aviv, which is famously the most Bauhaus-y city in the world, with at least a thousand examples. I spent a day wandering through town, looking at these buildings and reading my little critical guide. I learned a lot.
Bauhaus was adopted by early Zionists for a bunch of really comrehensible reasons:
1. It was a new movement that owed little to the old Europe that poineers were rejecting.
2. It relied on simple forms and inexpensive materials (which ultimately has led to decay, the shadow side of these buildings.)
3. The philosophy was perfect - there should not be a separation between architecture and engineering..those who design a building should be able to produce it as well.

WoW, see what I'm missing?!

They're raising the level cap to 70 soon, and I am in Jerusalem hanging out with hippies? WTF? Must. Get. In game. Soon.




Kill the Big, Bad Dragon (Teamwork Required)
By SETH SCHIESEL

Jeff Kaplan knows what it's like to try to please all of the people all of the time. Don't envy him.

As a lead game designer at Blizzard Entertainment for World of Warcraft, the ridiculously successful online PC game that now has more than 5.5 million subscribers, Mr. Kaplan, 33, is a combination of long-term planner, whipping boy, police chief and deity for a rabid global player-base that is about as large as the populations of the cities of Chicago, Houston and Detroit combined. Earlier massively multiplayer online games like EverQuest, which topped out at around a half-million users, appealed almost entirely to hard-core young male players. World of Warcraft, however, has shattered the expectations of just about everyone in the game industry because it also appeals to a broader, more casual audience. And one of the biggest reasons for that appeal is that much of the time, World of Warcraft is a relatively easy game.

That ease of play has made the game fantastically successful, but it has also created what has become almost a blood feud in the game and on Web message boards between the game's casual users and more serious players. The issue is that once players reach Level 60, if they want to keep fighting bigger and badder monsters and if they want to get rarer and more powerful loot, they must start to work in teams, perhaps of 10 or 20 players. The most epic challenges, like conquering Blackwing Lair and its master, the black dragon Nefarian, require 40 players to work together with the coordination of synchronized swimmers.

But because the game from Level 1 to Level 59 is so easy, there are a ton of Level 60 users who don't know how to be team players and don't have the time or inclination to learn. And that is the root of the current conflict. Casual players complain that they can't get rewards comparable to those earned by hard-core raiders, like the Claw of Chromaggus or Mish'undare, Circlet of the Mind Flayer. Raiders like me often respond that casual players just want a handout.

And caught in the middle are Mr. Kaplan, known online as Tigole, and the rest of the Blizzard team. For the game's newest high-end area, called Ahn'Qiraj, they set up a system earlier this month that essentially requires most of each server's population, casual and hard-core, to work together to amass huge amounts of war materiel like bandages and metals before the gates to the dungeon will open. Naturally, the population on some servers has responded by pulling together (much respect to the Medivh server for being first to open the gates), while on dozens of other servers, like mine, the war effort is progressing more slowly because casual players don't care about opening a high-end zone.

On Thursday morning, Mr. Kaplan took time to discuss World of Warcraft's high-end content, including new details about the game's next hard-core dungeon, the Naxxramas necropolis, home of the undead Scourge. (There is also an additional retail expansion expected later in the year, probably in the fall, that will increase the level cap to 70.) Here follow excerpts from the conversation:

Q. Tell me about your general approach to top-level content and how you can appeal to such a diverse user base.

A. What we constantly do is look at the whole picture. We need to address an audience like my mom, who plays once in a while but still manages to get to Level 60 and doesn't raid, all the way to people who play 14 hours a day who need less sleep than the rest of us. People talk about the game fundamentally changing at Level 60, and they are right. There are people who are seeking that hard-core endgame experience, but to people who casually follow the quests and just ended up at Level 60, it can be very jarring to them. We're trying to put in more content for them, like the Field Duty quests in Ahn'Qiraj, but the resolution we're all hoping for is the expansion, which will give those players more WOW as they know it. [Mr. Kaplan also said that the game would soon add a new casual-player-friendly armor set obtained through a multipart quest. The first parts can be completed by a solo player, he said, while the later parts will require a group of no more than five people.]

Q. Why not just let casual players get rewards comparable to those from raids?

A. It would be almost impossible for us to do, and this is a philosophical decision. We need to put a structure in place for players where they feel that if they do more difficult encounters, they'll get rewarded for it. As soon as we give more equal rewards across the board, for a lot of players it will diminish the accomplishment of killing something like Nefarian. My favorite times in the development cycle are when there are encounters that are close to being defeated but have not yet been beaten. It really creates a sense of awe among the players that there is something big and truly dangerous in the world. But it would be very disappointing if the items found on Nefarian were the same thing you could get in your nightly Stratholme run. [Stratholme is a much easier five-person dungeon.]

Q. What is your reaction to how the efforts to open Ahn'Qiraj are going?

A. This is the first time that we've really put all of the power in the hands of players. So you see some really interesting things going on. In some places, you see multiple über-guilds that have treated each other with respect, or who have called a truce, and are engaged in some massive collective farming. You see a lot of guilds setting up contests to encourage others to participate. The event really comes down to the politics and diplomacy on each realm. But we don't want to punish players on realms that aren't cooperating, so in a week or two the resources will start to just come in on their own. So we gave just enough time to let all of the servers show their feathers and strut their stuff; this is the time to see which servers can really put in the effort.

Q. How long do you think it will be until the top boss in Ahn'Qiraj is defeated?

A. My estimates are in the one-to-two-month range, but my expectation is that it could happen today. I've learned that as soon as something is in the game, you have to expect that it's going to be beaten.

Q. What can you tell me about Naxxramas?

A. Naxxramas is going to be the most difficult thing in the game until the expansion pack comes out. It will be the pinnacle, and it's absolutely massive. You'll see this big necropolis floating above Eastern Plaguelands. It's a 40-man raid zone, and it's bigger than the Undercity [one of the main cities in the game]. Things could change, but we're up to something like 18 bosses in there, and they are really cool, too. But it's going to be hard. Really hard. We're hoping to release it in the spring.

Q. Will we need to open Naxxramas with a big farming event like Ahn'Qiraj?

A. No. Naxxramas will just be open. But we do want to do a world event, which we want to call the Scourge Invasion, or hopefully something cooler than that, that would basically be something for everyone who's not going into Naxxramas. So they would see the impact without having to actually go in. [In other words, get ready for undead to pop up in some unlikely places.]

high end felafel

felafel
Originally uploaded by sarahlefton.

Rei tells me that the fried tapuach adama (potato) widget on top marks this as a haughty felafel. No simple chips here!

It was good, in case you're wondering. And I picked up some new advanced felafel technique to make fitting more salads inside possbile. As you can see, I was just dripping this and that on top, but now I know about smashing...further reports to come.

International Style

The best part about the overwhelming Bauhaus nature of Tel Aviv architecture is that you don't get wet when it rains and you've forgotten your umbrella.

Offer's offer

Happily it only took a few days for me to get picked up by a random Israeli guy, in this case, my cab driver Offer.

"I can tell in your eyes that you are a special girl. You are not like other Americans."

Sigh. Lest you nudge me to take advantage of a nice offer, I'll just say that he was at least 50 and had no qualms about ripping me off for 35 shekels while trying to marry me.

Suddenly Shawarma

Who wants to be a Jew?

My friend Ran and I went to the theater tonight and caught a fun dance show that is in the vein of Blue Man Group. Something about all those sexy dancing Israelis made me want a kabob. I'm not really sure what it was but I went with it.

So we're at this kabob joint around the corner from the theater - your culinary wish is Israel's command, it seems - and the TV over the counter is on, and this show comes on called "Mi Rotzeh lihiyot Yehudi?" - Who wants to be a Jew?

This is sort of a hybrid talk show/game show type deal in which this has-been stand-up comic named Gil Kopash heckles celebrity guests with funny questions about Judaism while sharing a glass of kosher wine and wearing a series of stupid touristy tee shirts like you might see on a Bar Mitzvah kid in the airport. Tonight's guests were a somewhat hoochie female actress, an uptight gay writer and a hasidic comedian. They got asked questions like this:

To the actress: Name the 5 books of the Torah
To the gay dude: Fill in the blank, Bereshit bara _______ et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz
To the hasid: Name each of the twelve tribes of Israel and the first generation of each one complete with their wives' names and the color of their shield, etc, etc

If they got it right they got a Rebbe Nachman and if they got it wrong they got a Tomy Lapid. Very funny. The whole thing has a backup band of Hasids in tzit tzit and ballcaps playing rock called the Jewish Joint and funny Monty Python-esque graphics.

I was laughing my ass off. (Ran was doing a nice job translating.) Anyway during a commercial I'm saying, JESUS I can't believe I have never heard of this show, and I can't believe he isn't wearing one of my tee shirts, and I have to hook him up, and I want to be on the show, and I want to watch it back home, blah blah blah. And Ran looks at me incredulous.

"This show sucks, it's totally not gonna get, how do you say, renewed! No one likes it and Gil Kopash is SO over!"

And after an informal poll at the bar tonight, I found that 3 out of 3 Israelis agree. See here's the thing, hipster Judaism is totally not of interest to ISraelis, at least the ones I know (who, incidentally are reasonably Jewishly knowledgable if largely secular young people.) The stuff that I do, and that Dan does, and that Jay does and that Jenny does and that Matthue does, etc, is funky and important and apparently irritating to American Jew-watchers, but here, it doesn't even register.

And I got very excited to see it - that's it in a nutshell. I wonder how I'd fare here, really. Would I stay where I am, in my fence-walking fascination with religion? Or would I fall one way or the other? Can you walk that tightrope in Israel? I have no idea, but I have a feeling I'll be talking about this show with a lot of people over the next few weeks.

walla, sabich

sabich
Originally uploaded by sarahlefton.

I went out for a scooter ride today with my friend Ran. He's a great tour guide, which means he drags me out of bed, explains everything as we pass it, and is game for multiple coffee stops.

He insisted multiple times that we stop for sabich, which is an Iraqi dish. It looks like everything else here - pita stuffed with this and that. The that in this case is fried eggplant, egg, potato, hummus, tahina, mango pickle and spicey whatever.

Here's the cool thing which I just found out upon coming home and raving about my new favorite food. - sabich is an acronym which stands for "Sim Beytzah Od Chatzil" - Put in the egg, More eggplant. I love it. I've heard tell already of a place in Ramat Gan where I can get sabich from a crazy dude who speaks in his own sabich language where tahina is 1 and harif (spice) is 2, and you have to learn the codes to get anything to eat. Sounds like a plan.

oonce

just in case i had forgotten where i am, a blast of really bad techno just greeted me as i opened the window.

oonce oonce oonce. shavua tov.

our little trip to haifa

haifa is about as far from tel aviv as santa cruz is from san francisco. it's really not a big deal. this is something i had not realized last time i was here, when i had to figure out everything for myself.

rei dragged me to the bus station - not the one of the recent bombimg but the newer one - and we took a monit sherut (shuttle) to haifa. in a classic example of israeli inanity, they dumped us off in the middle of the highway when we got there, at the little median that separates the main lane from the exit lane. drivers apparently are too lazy to pull off the road for those who don't want to ride all the way to the bus terminal. so we hiked from the highway up to a proper roadside, where rei's brother picked us up.

rei's family is great. i can't believe there are people related to him, but there they were, and they were all super nice. he has two little brothers, although both of them are bigger than he is. his mom made us an amazing dinner complete with spicy poached pears for dessert.

i recognize the incredible irony that i spent shabbat last night with a bunch of tawonga people (rei, gal, and ben simrin) hanging out in an irish bar. now that it'm in israel, you'd think i could come up with something more inspiring. i did try briefly to convince rei to hurry up so we could make it to a shul that jill jacobs recommended to me but he was being super-lazy. and i was still tired enough that i didn't care. i'm in secularland right now and clearly, nothing jewish per se is going to happen until i get to jerusalem around my religious friends.

3 down, 75 to go

DSC02845
Originally uploaded by sarah the semite.

this mahsawsheh was the third plate of hummus i've had in as many days. i think this was hands down my favorite application of garbanzo beans to date. they're just sort of stirred in with the tahina and ground up beans. hells yeah.

in haifa

DSC02871
Originally uploaded by sarah the semite.

a look at out traipse through haifa today. this is from the arab neighborhood wadi nis nas. the highlight for me was being shown the two supposedly warring felafel shops across the path from each other. lior took us into his favored spo. the guy recognized him immediately. lior told him about my uncertaintly about where to find the best felafel and i was instantly treated to a sample dipped in some marvelously tangy tahini. bliss.

i saw london i saw france

now i pretty much am seeing rei in his underpants.

i arrived in tel aviv yesterday after a grueling morning flight from london. my flight was at 8:30 am, which sounds fine, until you get to london and find out that heathrow is 80 million miles from london and that it costs 100 bucks to take a cab there. i took the underground in, which was cheap but took 2 hours. that wasn’t an option for returning because the tube doesn’t start running until 6 am. so i was fucked and i had to take a cab. sigh.

the best thing about being in israel right now is not being in london, which has a “door tax” like new york, only higher. you can’t leave your house without spending 30 pounds. what a disaster. thank g-d i was only there for 2 days. avivit did a marvelous job of showing me around and i will post photos soon on flickr but for now i will just say it was exhausting. i liked it, but it didn’t have any magical pull for me at all. i didn’t find myself wondering which neighborhood i would live in, what bar would be my bar, which dudes i would be making out with…it just felt like a mildly different big city that was fun to visit.

i was worried for awhile in there, though, that i was somehow “over” travelling abroad, that nothing would feel exciting or exotic again. but here i am in tel aviv and it’s totally exciting. of course, it’s not exotic in the least. it’s loud and crazy and full of jews and cheap produce. i feel totally at home yet lost. it’s a great feeling.

ironically this is the first shabbat in probably a year that i’m not going to shul and a dinner somewhere. i had to get to israel to blow it off i guess. rei, for those of you who don’t know him, is totally secular and so all he could muster was dinner at his mom’s house. so we’re heading to haifa in about 10 minutes to meet his family.

don’t worry, dear readers, i have 3 more shabbats here and all of them are planned to be more on the shabbosy side. i feel a bit bummed to be missing out on something tonight but honestly it’s great to be doing not much, just recovering from the jetlag with another cup of bad instant coffee.

oh here we go again

i think this is the fourth time i’m starting a blog. many of you know my feelings about this medium, which i find self-indulgent and a distraction from many of the other things one can do with one’s time. like write for money. or play world of warcraft. or make out.

anyway, i’m going on vacation and i’ll be damned if i’m going to write any of those lengthy emails that were the hallmark of my last big trip to tokyo. granted, that was some damned good writing, but it took a lot out of me. we’ll see what sort of scattershot, sloppy writing this thing encourages from me. sigh. i guess sloppy, scattershot writing is increasingly a virtue on the internet.

my outgoing itinerary, for thoe se of you who are interested, or stalking me:

SFO->LHR Sunday, January 15
LHR->TLV Thursday, January 19

If you find yourself in London or Tel Aviv over the next month, do ping me.