"Young man, there's a place you can go"

As we walked through Jerusalem, wading through the mourners of the moved settler's bodies, avoiding polices blockades and bearing the extreme heat of the late afteroon Jerusalem sun, we faltered. The circumstances ennervated us (that's a GRE word). Our hopes flagged. All seemed lost. And then....

Young man, there's a place you can go.
I said, young man, when you're short on your dough.
You can stay there, and I'm sure you will find
Many ways to have a good time.

We saw it there, like an oasis. The international chamber music festival was having a function, hosted at the Jerusalem branch of the...

You can get yourself clean, you can have a good meal,
You can do what about you feel ...

It is fun to stay at the YMCA. Or at least eat there food. Josh and I reveled in our shamelessness. With a quick "muzika?" to the guard to the copurtyard, we sauntered through the gate, sweaty, backpacked and clearly out of place, to sample the delicious hors d'oeuvres, bourekas, falafel balls, fruits and vegetables, and delicious mango juice. The traveler's code entitles you to acquire free meals at all costs, and indeed, pride and shame our optional in the pursuit of a free meal, and appropriately we had none. Our behaviour conformed to this code precisely. The Village People became our messiahs.

Young man, I was once in your shoes.
I said, I was down and out with the blues.
I felt no man cared if I were alive.
I felt the whole world was so tight ...

That's when someone came up to me,
And said, young man, take a walk up the street.
There's a place there called the y.m.c.a.
They can start you back on your way.

Nobody at the YMCA seemed to mind. Certainly not the Israeli wait staff. The guests, who seemed mostly American, goyish (a few Asians as well) gave us a few curious glances, but nothing more. Of course, had they given us trouble, I would have simply told them that I am, indeed, a member of the YMCA, in Westmount, on Sherbrooke. I worked out there this summer. I don't gave my card on me. But I do know the dance. (Funny how years of Bar Mitzvah's teach you the secret dance to allow entrance in a Christian organization).

With this food, we were able to have enough energy to finish the gorgeous walk to Ramat Eshkol.