Set Your Watches to Jewish Standard Time (aka The First Week of Classes)

Alright, it's been a while since the last post but that is because I have been adjusting to my new apartment and going to classes. On the topic of my apartment, it turns out that my roommate is Sebastian, the German guy from my other room. This was a nice surprise seeing as how I already knew Sebastian and we get along fairly well. It was also nice, however, because he cleaned the entire apartment, including the floors and the moldy cabinet beneath the sink, without warning while I was in the computer lab one day. He cleaned everything to such a degree that several cupboards still have a harsh antiseptic smell to them. Needless to say I felt both pleased, because everything was clean now, and guilty, because I didn't help. Sebastian also go on the housing people to get us a working burner/hotplate thing and a trashcan and he bought a great deal more cooking supplies and cutlery than I did. Of course, he is going to be in Israel for a year so that makes sense. I have also found out that my apartment is right next to the apartments of several people I either roomed with or sort of got to know during Ulpan so there are people around to socialize with. But enough about my room, on to the classes.

I am currently signed up for five classes: Modern Standard Arabic Elementary I, Introduction t Rabbinic Literature I, the Honors Peace and Conflict Studies Seminar, Terrorism and Responses, and a class on the Iraq War. I am probably going to drop the Iraq class in favor of a class called The Psychology of Conflict Resolution for reasons which I will get into later. The first class I went to was intro to Rabbinic Lit, and I really enjoyed it. The first half of class was kinda dry because the teacher was basically telling us about the formation of the "Jewish Bookshelf," which is to say, the various religious works which form the basis of Rabbinic Literature. After that we actually started examining some of the Midrash, which are commentaries written by rabbis about the Jewish Bible (apparently the Torah is the first 5 books of the Bible, not necessarily the entire thing). The commentary we looked concerned the part of Genesis when Cain went out with Abel to the fields and killed him. That particular passage of the bible contains a phrase wherein Cain says something to Able immediately before killing him, but it does not say what. So the commentary was from the Rabbis about what they were arguing about. One Rabbi posited that they had decided to divide the Earth between the two of them, as their inheritance. One said that he wanted all the immovable property (land, buildings, and other real estate) while the other wanted all the movable property (everything which is not real estate). This led to a conflict because one was on the other's land and the other was wearing clothes which now belonged to the first, so Cain killed Abel. Another Rabbi said that they were arguing about where to build the Temple. A third rabbi said that they were arguing over who got to have/wed one of their sisters. We were supposed to figure out which was the best explanation or if the rabbis were crazy. Now, I happen to know that Cain killed Abel because God liked his (Abel's) sacrifice more than Cain's, so I thought that this was a stupid exercise. When we started talking about it, though it came to light that the entire question was a metaphor. The rabbis were basically saying that it is ridiculous to kill people about 1. Property 2. Religion and 3. Sex/Women. So I can't be as literal as I would normally be because this class is considerably more philosophical than I had thought.

The second class was Arabic, and that was interesting. It turns out that we will spend the entire semester just learning the alphabet. There are 28 letters in Arabic and each one has about 3 different forms depending on where it is located in the word. That class was fairly straightforward, but the teacher is kinda scary looking. Around this time I became aware of something called Jewish Standard Time. When one is operating on Jewish Standard Time, one is about 10-15 minutes later than one should be, which makes it remarkably similar to Bartmen time in my family. So pretty much every class I have been to has started late. Fortunately they are all about 3 hours long each so that didn't really make much of a difference.

The third class was my honors seminar. That was also fairly straightforward and I am looking forward to the portion where we deal with game theory. The only irritating thing about this class is that it is highly Constructivist. In international relations there are several schools of thought: realism, liberalism, constructivism, etc. I mostly adhere to the varying forms of realism, which basically say that states are motivated by a strong desire for power and security and will make decisions with those two things in mind. Constructivists say that the international system as we know it has been constructed by people and can therefore be changed and rebuilt by people. I think that this is a rather useless way of looking at things, but whatever. The strangest thing about the course is that I am actually really excited to write my term paper. I'm currently thinking of examining how America constructed the image of the Soviets as enemies during the Cold War and how the process got out of hand with the rise of McCarthyism, but that's just a preliminary idea. The most interesting thing from the class was when the teacher mentioned how differently countries define national security issues. In America, the principle national security issue is terrorism. In South Africa, it is crime, which is seriously destabilizing the country. In the Netherlands it is the ocean, which is currently trying to reclaim the Netherlands as its own.

The Fourth class was probably the best, Terrorism and Responses. The class is taught by a Major in the Israeli Army who has been working in this field for 25 years and regularly advises the FBI and associated organizations on issues surrounding terrorism. We spent the entire class coming up with a definition for terrorism while he surprised us with random hypotheticals and stories from his career to drive home his points. He turned out to be a rather polarizing individual because most people either really liked him (pretty much every guy in the class) or really, really didn't (pretty much every girl in the class). In either case I am sincerely looking forward to it, but I am annoyed by the fact that I probably won't be able to win any arguments against him seeing as how he has decades of experience on me and has killed people. These two factors make it rather hard to gain any high ground in an argument because 1. He knows his stuff at this point 2. He is arguing from a position of practical authority and 3. My self preservation instinct is constantly telling me to shut up (because, you know, he's killed people). In either case, definitely the best class.

The last class was also the worst, the one about Iraq. The subject matter seemed like it may be interesting, but the teacher's English wasn't very good ans she talked in a very boring manner. Also, she was a bit too focused on the variety of theories and opinions about why Iraq is the way it is then I would prefer. By that I mean, yes it is important to hear all those theories, but I would only want to hear them so that I could form a theory of my own to argue for, which we apparently would not be doing. The class sounded like it would just be her telling us what everyone in the field thought about Iraq, not so that we could from opinions, but so that we could regurgitate this on the final which counted for 80% of our grade. So now I'm hoping that I like that psychology of conflict resolution class. Also, since I will not be taking the Iraq class, I now have 4-day weekends every week. My life is awesome. More Later

PS: The pictures on top are two shots of Haifa at sunset, taken from the dorms.