New Classes, part 2

I finally made it to Shabbat! The rest of my classes:

Tuesday
Hebrew, again.

Rabbinics (class twice a week): We’ll see how this one goes. We all got a very official, holy looking book, Avot d’Ravi Natan, basically the Fathers According to Rabbi Natan. I don’t think there’s an English letter to be found in the book! But we read and translated the first part in class Tuesday and Thursday, which was a pretty cool thing to be able to do. I’m thinking it will be interesting, as long as I can ignore how easily distracted the professor sometimes can be. He gets sidetracked by little irrelevant things, so we don’t get nearly as much accomplished in class as we should. I’m trying hard to ignore it. Oh, it’s also all in Hebrew. Except when we’re translating text, in which case it’s a mix. We directly translate into English, but when we’re discussing the translation, it’s in Hebrew. (As in, “does that suffix refer to the mountain, to Moses, or to God?” That discussion was all in Hebrew.)

Modern Jewish History (once a week): I’ve been referring to this class as remedial history, because we all have to take a history class, either this one or “Zionist Idea to Israeli State,” and that one is only open to people who have taken college-level European Jewish history, which I have not taken. But we have a great professor, and a great, small class, so it should be a good one! We do have three expensive, slightly hard to find books though, which did not start it on such a positive note, but I have all my books now, so I’m ready to go.

After history, there is the 80 minute lunch break, followed by a period when I don’t have class, plus the 20 minute break after that class, so I had 3 hours off. I went on a much-needed school supply shopping trip and then to the gym, and I was showered and 5 minutes early for the last class of the day. I like the breaks!

Jewish Thought (once a week): This is an optional “enrichment class,” meaning that it is not for a grade, just for our own knowledge. But this particular enrichment class is taught by the Dean of the Israel program, and is entitled “Why I am a Reform Jew.” About 90 percent of the class is currently signed up for this one. (In contrast, the other enrichment class this semester, Parshat HaShavuah, discussing the weekly Torah portion, has 10-15 people in it right now.) Rabbi Marmur is a great speaker, and especially while living in Israel where Reform Judaism is an anomaly and often criticized and misunderstood, it is a great and appropriate class for them to offer.

Wednesday: Israel Seminar.

Every Wednesday for the year we have Israel seminar, which is a class designed to learn about “the changing nature of Israeli society.” They divided us into three classes, so we finally get out of our Hebrew class groups for the whole day, and they divided us based on past Israel experience. So my class is made up of people who have never been to Israel and people who have been on a short, touristy trip, mainly Birthright, NFTY, or a family trip. The other classes are people who have spent more time here, one of the classes is mostly summer study program graduates, and the last class is people with extended stays here, either with family, on semester- or year-long programs, and other real living-in-Israel experiences. It is an interesting way to have divided us for this seminar, and I like it. I think it’s good that people who have lived here for a year before will not have to have the same discussions or go on the same trips as people who have not been here ever. Some days we will be in the classroom, discussing readings and articles and learning about Israeli society. On most days, however, we get out of the classroom and go experience life. We have scheduled day-trips to Tel Aviv, Yad Vashem, Mount Herzl, and lots of other places. We watch movies, we have speakers, we visit schools. Three times during the year we go on overnight trips to different parts of the country. This coming week is our first tiyul. We’re leaving early (EARLY) Tuesday morning to head north, to the Galilee and the Golan. I’m psyched that we’re going, because this tiyul has been scheduled for a long time, and for a while during the war it looked like we weren’t going to be able to go. But the bombs have stopped and the trip is on! We’ll get back Thursday night. I’m excited! This should be a very cool seminar, and I look forward to learning and experiencing a lot of different things about Israel.

Thursday
Hebrew, yet again.

Rabbinics, again. I already told you about this one. Same as Tuesday.

Hebrew, but with a different teacher. At least, that is how it is listed on our schedules. It turns out, it’s not just a different teacher, but a somewhat different topic. We’re basically learning about ancient Hebrew and the development of the Alef-Bet. At least that’s what we did on Thursday and what it looks like we’ll be doing for the immediate future. It felt a little bit like arts and crafts, since we were writing in ancient script and learning rules for vowels and things from then. We were deciphering things written in ancient script and translating them into Modern Hebrew. Yes, this class is all in Hebrew too. I’m going to learn a lot of Hebrew this year, which I am very excited about, frustrating though it may be at times.

And that’s it! Our schedule is set up so that all of us (except Cantorial students, who have a ridiculous number of extra classes) are done with classes at lunch time on Thursday, which is really nice.

Thursday afternoon Sara and I decided to go on a quest for books, since some of our books are not available at the bookstore where we buy most things, and HUC could not tell us where to get them. And Amazon does not ship to Israel. Awesome. So Sara and I walked around the city for a good two and a half hours, going into every bookstore we found. There are a lot of bookstores in this city, and we were mainly in one area. Eventually I got everything I needed, although a couple of them were from the main bookstore, where we went last. She is still lacking a couple.

And now it's Shabbat! It's been a good one so far, but I'll talk about it in a different post, since this one is long enough.