I learned that many secular and religious Jews light bonfires on May 22 (but the celebration usually slides passed midnight) to celebrate the death of Rabbi Akiva. 24,000 of his students died in a plague. Some say that the ‘plague’ might have actually been the roman soldiers. Whatever the ‘plague’ may have been, it ended, and to let everyone know that it ended they lit fires on top of the hills. Hence the bonfires.

We helped a group of six girls light their fire at about 11:00. Then we went over and watched Lavi (Doron’s brother) and his friends built a very tall teepee fire. As the base was burning, we bet on which way the fire would fall. Lavi was ready to run for the fire extinguisher if it fell on the trees. Finally it toppled over safely. Later some people came by with a ton of paper files and asked if they could get rid of them. They tossed them on the fire. A huge blaze flared up and lit a tree near by. Luckily the fire extinguisher was at hand.

We stayed up till two, said our farewells and went to bed.

WARNING: DO NOT READ THE NEXT PORTION IF YOU ARE A FEMALE… Since it was just us three middle school boys after everyone else had gone to bed, we peed on the fire to put it out. We took turns. What a manly thing to do.

A huge batch of baby spiders were born on the ceiling of our bathroom. Grabbing some toilet paper I crunched it up in a little ball and nonchalantly murder the whole population, not realizing that I had only killed about 80 of 100. Every day as I walk into the bathroom I am faced with a variety of jumping spiders, little teeny tiny flea like critters, little long black creatures with wings and perhaps one of those baby spiders I thought I had killed. These are the battles we face day by day, and yet we have not been defeated yet! Wow!

Fortunately, gecko lizards get into our house as well and eat some of the spiders. But then, they could be considered just as much a pest as the bugs are. I kinda like it when they help us battle all those bugs. Well, I hope this post didn’t gross you out, I just thought I’d share a bit of our daily struggles with our readers. Oh, and you probably will understand why I didn’t put any pictures up.

P.S. Just now I was sitting outside doing boring math and stuff, when suddenly I heard a buzzing near my leg. Slowly I lifted my leg up until I could see a gigantic green beetle with long antennas. I tried to brush him of, but he just flew into my face. I thought he went away again, but after a bit when I walked inside, I heard a buzzing up in my hair. I ran into the bathroom, frantically trying to see it in the mirror. The beetle started to crawl down onto my eyebrow, and I just brushed him off. I got some toilet paper, my only weapon, and systematically hunted him down until he was no more.

Mom and I went to the wailing wall or the Western Wall or the Kotel (however you like to call it). I walked up to the wall and saw many people weeping, wailing, praying, kissing it, writing prayers down on paper and folding them up carefully to put them in the deep crevices of the ancient wall which probably dates to about 30 B.C.. The Wall was filled (literally!) with prayers. Wow… Jesus probably walked right past this old city wall. Maybe he touched it! Other people were taking pictures as tourists, and some were reading from the Torah (our Old Testament). Some were praying some laughing and playing in a Jewish celebration. Jewish women were standing on chairs to peek over to the men’s side to try and join in on their party. I wonder what God thinks about that sacred wall.

Below are Jews preparing to approach the wall by doing a ritual hand washing.

Mom is hard to spot. She has one hand up on the wall and has a white shirt on. This picture shows the paper stuck in the wall wherever people can reach.

Nathan, Dad and I where wandering down Ben Yehuda when we ran into a couple jugglers, they immediately spotted the chinese yo-yo in my hand, and asked me to join them. Soon we had a little circus. We juggled about two hour’s away. Dad stood by, conversing with the onlookers. A drunk man stumbled into the middle of the circle and slowly poured his hard liquor out on the street, and then dropped the bottle. Dad got a broom from a nearby falafal store and cleaned up the broken glass. A lot of Jews, religious and secular, use the holiday as an excuse to get totally drunk.

Now here’s an interesting part of this story: While busking in Spain we had met a Jewish guy who called himself the Holy Juggler. Around six months after that, when we first came to Israel, we met him again! Then, to top it all of, we realized that the circus dudes we were clowning around with knew him too, and he stopped by to perform a bit with us.

Once in a while a talented onlooker would ask to try, and astound the crowd with his ability to juggle pins, or spin a chinese yo-yo. Here’s a video of the mini circus that we participated in:

We had a great time juggling for the crowd of crazies. On our way home a herd of drunk pink bunny guys ran meandering in front of the bus and then pounded on our windows. It all seemed so unrelated to the book of Esther… I wonder what God thinks?