I'm a Dickhead

Michael, the Sheikh Ahmed Yassin spiritual advisor of TFR/naturalized Israeli responds to my quite pessimistic first post from Israel with this:

You're a dickhead.

I hope desert flies bit your ass while you tried to sleep.

I will now reverse course:

We held havdalah in a park after wandering through disquietingly beautiful Yemin Moshe listening to our host recite Amichai all afternoon--in Amichai's tongue on Amichai's blocks.

We sang our little havdalah nigun over and over again and I realized in that moment I was not self-conscious about practicing a religious ritual in public like that. It was pleasant with the stars emerging out over Mount Zion and the trees sweeping in a tidy breeze.

A woman who was passing by heard us singing and stopped. Then she joined our circle and sang along. We passed her a glass of wine. In the end she wished us all shavua tov and went along her way.

***

I left Havdalah to watch the World Cup match and smoke nargila near Kikar Zion. The stores was just opening up from Shabbat and we were the first ones to be seated. A few orthodox guys sat next to us at the game began. One of them asked us what happened in the games the night before. The World Cup here is its own religion, but he hadn't cheated the Sabbath to sneak a peek at the game or look up the scores. When we told him that Brazil had lost, he held his kippah as he leaned back to tell the others about it. They were in all in disbelief.