Orthodox Jews are Hipsters

Today our ceramics class presented final projects. I was a little concerned because half of my "Family of Cylinders" was still baking away in the kiln, and the remainder of my stuff was unglazed...some of it not even fired for the first time. The reason for this is that a) I'm American, so I don't understand when the israeli potters blab about "bisque" and "angobi" and "chomer" and all that hebrew clay jargon. b) I am not in the ceramics department. I am in fine arts, so i don't spend every breathing minute in the pottery studio. c) glaze is expensive and I don't want to buy dozens of colors by myself. and d) I like throwing pots on the wheel a lot more than spending hours meticulously painting designs on a piece of clay.

So this morning, despite the fact that the world was working against me, I was confident. This class is a learning experience. I don't need pots and mugs to take away, I now have a skill. My other classmates, on the other hand, were freaking out. I think 4 girls were on the verge of tears. One girl was so finicky with her fishing line, trying to create the illusion that her pots were suspended in mid-air. People brought tablecloths to place their work on, and you could hear them trembling as the teacher walked over to their station. This is their lives. Their cares reduced (raised?) to mud.

I guess it's years of army training that does that to you. Anyways, some stuff my instructor said about my work:

- you have improved. your cylinders have grown very tall.

- you approach the clay with grace. you accept what the clay gives you.

- your handles combine ceramics with elements of abstract sculpture.

- you have a steady painting hand. Your designs are like MC Escher.

- you are positive, you don't take everything too seriously. You work confidently and i can tell you enjoy the process.

not bad considering i thought my unglazed collection was shit. maybe she was bullshitting me to be nice, and she'll give me a really bad final grade.

On a more important note, I realized that Orthodox Jews are hipsters.

They are incredibly obscure and exclusive.

Hipsters consider themselves "above others" and elite...we, too are the chosen people.

Rattails= peyis

in Mea Shearim, the big, thick-rimmed glasses are quite a trend, as with indie, underground, hipsterculture.

both are greasy and unshaven.

act incredibly White.

Both are uninformed in mainstream culture and prefer to sit in their hipster dens/shteibles contemplating the esoteric, the etherial, the transcendental: God/Animal Collective.

both maintain higher standards of eating: kashrut/veganism.

This article's funny: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/n_9756/

Guess who's back, Back again? (Hint: it's not Shady)

Man oh man oh man oh mano Manishewitz. Hello old friend! Ol' bloggie, ol' pal. Sorry it's been a while. I hope you don't feel neglected.

I do feel neglected...where the hell have you been?

I've been doing things, I swear.

But I'm not just an outlet for you to type on...i am also your connection to friends and family elsewhere.

I know...I've been talking to them too. I haven't been incommunicado.

But you've been lazy.

Ok. Lazy. Whatever. call it what you want. I've been doing stuff. Really, I have.

But you will forget about it all if you don't write it down, Aliza.

Don't address me by my name. You're not my mother.

But I'm your blog. Your own creation. Like your child. I should be MORE important.

I have been jotting and journaling. Don't make me feel guilty. Enjoying israel without blogging every detail is not a crime.

Not a crime...but a sin.

I need something to atone for on yom kippur...To prove i've been doing stuff, I'll give you a short rundown.

Good enough.

For who? Me?

Yes. I am you. And you are your own witness.

wow. mind fuck.

I guess this is the first post of the new year. 2011. Do I say Twenty Eleven? or Two Thousand Eleven? I like Twenty Eleven because it reminds me of 7/11 which reminds me of slurpees.

Since I last posted, I did go on that trip to the north. Some highlights:

- Visiting Ein Hod: an Artists village that was destroyed by the Haifa forest fires. I am convinced that if I make aliyah, i want to move there. It is so creative and everyone's so talented. Theres such a great vibe there...from the man who owns the music box museum, to the two, twin israeli sisters who operate a wonderful ceramic studio.

-I painted the walls of an artist's new home because his old home was charred by the fire.

- Had a tarbukah workshop in a Druze home. got a drum solo on a professional middleastern hand drum.

- Our hotel had a hot tub, and we cracked it open on saturday night and made a party.

New Years:

- our new years consisted of me and some friends hanging around in our hotel room, steaming in the hotel sauna, eating overrated hot dogs, going to a friend's house for a few, and then to a reallllllllly crowded but lame street party in florentine for the countdown.

- New Years day we had really nice mexican food, watched a lot of discovery channel, and then we walked the beach/tel aviv with white matching yarlmulkes and towel capes to appear as a cult...and ended up getting asked to daven maariv with the hotel minyan. I lost my favorite camera. I don't have pictures.

Other little fun nuggets:

- I met up with nikki and hannah in Tel AVIV!!!!! Hannah and I got the wrong day at first and ended up seeing nikki for a moment in her hostel. Looked like she was having fun. Hannah and I met up again on the right day at the Tel Aviv port. We ended up splitting some mugs of hot chocolate at Max Brenner.

- I got all of my hair cut off. It was quite a chop. My hair dresser had tourettes and kept on BEEPing as he was clipping away.

- Last week we visited the Angel bakery, the largest bakery in Israel. They shoved loaves upon loaves of steaming hot bread into our hands. I ate so many carbs. I saw vats of steaming yeast and got to shove my hands into a vat of sesame seeds.

- I took the 26 bus all the way to the biblical zoo. I was five feet from a giraffe. saw a lot of cheetahs and lions. Gazelles, ibixes....fed tropical birds this fruit-flavored semen-looking shake. It reminded me of how much i don't miss my old parakeets biting me.

- I hurt my hip/leg and it hurts to walk a little bit, so I went swimming in the pool at the gym. "Hydrotherapy". It was really relaxing. I need to work on doing backstroke without bumping my head on the wall.

...so the semester's coming to a close. I'm finishing up my classes. doing a couple of final projects. I have a final evaluation in ulpan in an hour or so, and i'm sacrificing cramming time to write this. I am thrilled to visit home, and the snow...and eat lox, play drums for the old people, and have shabbos with my whole family. Life's great right now, and i can see it getting even better.

How's that for a cheezy ending? its so hard ending these blog posts without an inspirational foresight. How bout this: My intestines are making funny sounds and i think i'm really backed up from this week's trip.

Eating Bread at Angel Factory

Drum solo at Druze home

Music box man.

Artist at Ein Hod

Beautiful Pottery studio at Ein Hod.