I'm now in Tel Aviv. We drove in from the north thinking it would be easy to get a hotel room without a reservation. After all, Israel is in a recession and the tourism industry is in the toilet, right? According to the many hotels we tried to get into: wrong. They are all full. The only explanation I can think of is that they really are full, or they are running a reduced number of rooms to save costs.

We tried hotels in Hertzlia and in Tel Aviv and finally found a room in the Dan Tel Aviv. It's a great executive room - fully done up. It's also costing us. Oh well. We go home tomorrow.

I'm reading The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig) for the first time. In it, Pirsig explores modern life and the split between rational man and artistic man (he calls the categories "classical" and "romantic"). His story also touches on faith and religion. A couple quotes I really like so far:

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is frantically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. (p. 134)

and

...To doubt the literal meaning of the words of Jesus or Moses incurs hostility from most people, but it's just a fact that if Jesus or Moses were to appear today, unidentified, with the same message he spoke many years ago, his mental stability would be challenged. This isn't because what Jesus or Moses said was untrue or because modern society is in error but simply because the route they chose to reveal to others has lost relevance and comprehensibility. "Heaven above" fades from meaning when space-age consciousness asks, Where is "above"? But the fact that the old routes have tended, because of language rigidity, to lost their everyday meaning and become almost closed doesn't mean the mountain is no longer there. It's there and will be there as long as consciousness exists. (p. 168)

He does miss the fact that the other thing Moses' message has going for it is mass revelation. 600 000 people, in addition to Moses, would be institutionalized after claiming they heard the voice of God. However, that doesn't take away from his main point.