And So it Goes

I'm sitting up in my apartment, wondering why our internet hasn't been turned off yet, and in a little shock. This day finally came. For a while, I wasn't sure that it would. There were days when I was fairly certain it wouldn't. But here it is. I'm going to sleep, eventually, and waking up long before the crack of dawn. I'm shlepping some heavy suitcases down the stairs (ok, the elevator), and heading to the airport!

It has been an amazing year. I now know 55 of my future colleagues, most of whom I had never met when I arrived, and some of whom are now among my closest friends. I know Israel, and especially Jerusalem, better than I thought I could. There are times when I'm insulted when people speak to me in English. (There are also times when I'm frustrated when they don't.) I feel even more certain that I'm in the right place (well, school) than I did when I arrived. I'm looking forward to a summer with my family, boyfriend, and friends, but I'm also looking toward seeing my HUC friends in Cincinnati in August.

Cassi and I went to Cup o' Joe for a last dinner tonight, and it was really weird walking out of there, as usual, knowing it would be a while before I'll return. It's been a week of lasts. I went to the Old City yesterday, and it was hard to believe I wouldn't be able to just stop by the remains of the Temple whenever I felt like it after tonight. I went to the shuk today, and it was weird not buying any produce, and really sad to know that it won't be a routine shopping trip anymore. Only the shuk could have gotten me to try so many new fruits and veggies this year! (Please don't ask what they were. My mother would be embarrassed by things I hadn't eaten until this year.) I went to HUC to drop off some final things, and again was struck by how amazing this campus is, especially in the spring.

This city is beautiful. It's not perfect, and it's not home, but it has been a most interesting, educational, enlightening, and mostly comfortable home for the last year, and although I am incredibly excited to return home tomorrow (!), I am also certain that a little piece of me is staying right here in Jerusalem.

Love from Jerusalem, for the last time, at least for now...
Jessica:)

Shopping, Cleaning, Packing.

I’m done! As we’ve been joking here, I’ve earned my R! (Yes, my R. As in, R-A-B-B-I. It’s a five-year program.) Exam week was it’s usual self: lots of papers to finish, exams to study for, stress to deal with. And I’d like to think I did a good job! In a move that had Debbie trying to excommunicate me from the family, I got all my papers done the week before exams, so that I could study (or not study, as desired). I didn’t have to worry about writing papers, and when my last exam was over Tuesday morning, instead of having to sit down and deal with several papers, I was freeeeeeeee!

Since Tuesday, I’ve been productive of another sort. I’m giving a D’var Torah at a local Reform congregation tonight, which means I agreed to speak in front of native Israelis…in Hebrew. I’m still pondering my agreement to this arrangement, but I’ve been working on it for a while now. Tuesday I met with the rabbi of the congregation, who liked what I had to say and made my Hebrew grammatically correct and understandable. Hooray! And then she told me that I should get it as much almost-memorized as possible. (I’m not sure it’s possible. But I’m not stumbling over words so much any more!) I know I haven’t done it yet, but I’m already proud of myself for doing it. I realized how much more Hebrew I know than I think I know, and how much better I read than I thought. I type in Hebrew without vowels, because that’s how it is here. And my D’var Torah is written that way as well. I wrote them in on the words I stumble over, which averages out to maybe one word per line, and it’s mostly only the first letter or two with a vowel, not the whole word. I think that’s pretty good! I’m proud of me…although I still to practice a dozen more times today.

I’ve also been doing lots of shopping. I decided that the things I’ve been admiring all year should finally be purchased, so I’ve been purchasing, but not going overboard. I’ve bought a beautiful challah cover and necklace, and there are still one or two more things I want to get, so more shopping is in my future. Later today I’m heading to a little crafts fair in Jerusalem that somehow I never make it to. Mainly because it’s on Fridays, when I tend to be fairly crazed.

I’ve also been starting to pack. I’m shipping one big box through HUC, where we paid a flat rate rather than by weight. The weight limit: what the box will hold. My box is almost full now, and not too heavy, I think. I even think my dad would be proud of the packing job. I folded things funny just to fill in cracks and spaces! I suppose maybe I shouldn’t brag about that too much. Dad, let’s just say, you’d be impressed! You taught me well.

Up next: more shopping, cleaning, packing. Add in a few visits to my favorite places in Jerusalem, and that’s basically the plan for the next few days. I can’t believe that this is my last Shabbat here. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely can’t wait to come home! But the goodbyes have started, and every time I do something, I realize it might be my last time doing it here. (Last trip to the supermarket? Not that sad. Last shuk trip? That will make me very sad. Last Shabbat? Not excited about that. Last load of laundry? Can’t wait!)

I can’t believe I’ll be home so incredibly soon. Shabbat shalom, and I’ll see you soon!

Ten Days

I should confess that since the day in January when I booked my plane ticket home in May, I have had a countdown on my Google homepage. It started at more than 100 days. It seemed like forever. Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy here and this has been a fantastic, educational, eye-opening, growth-filled year. When I first posted it, the countdown was really counting down to when I would be home for the first time in eleven months, when I would see everyone at home again. The countdown was likened to a high fever, a hot day, a beautiful spring day, a cold winter day. Now it’s at ten days. A week and a half. (“Less!” says Michael.) It is still counting down until I see everyone again, but now it’s also counting down my time in Israel in a way it wasn’t before. Lauren and I tried to schedule a fun shopping trip together. There isn’t time. Between my exam schedule and her work and travel schedule, there is no afternoon we can spend together before I leave. I had to go to my favorite Friday night service for the last time last week, because with the other Shabbat activities that were scheduled, there was not time for me to go again after that. It is strange to think that I really did, eventually, adjust to living here, and now I’m doing things for the last time. I cannot wait to come home. But I also know that I will be leaving here with the knowledge that through all its problems and issues, I love Jerusalem and Israel, and I will be back. When I return, it will not be as a tourist looking at things for the first time, but the way I return to Princeton. I will notice everything that has changed, visit all of my favorite places, and try to cram my whole experience of this year into a visit of a few days. I look forward to that challenge. Or, I will, once I’m at home and have given big hugs to everyone I haven’t seen in months, and I realize how much I really do miss life in Israel.

At HUC, we have two dominant topics of conversation right now. One is leaving. We discuss packing progress (none), shopping trips, apartment issues (such as potentially having to cancel internet a few days before leaving), what we’re going to miss, what we’re looking forward to at home. The other is exams. What we’ve finished (all my written work: three papers and an assignment in Hebrew, and my oral Bible exam), what we still have (oral liturgy exam, Hebrew exam, Biblical Grammar exam), when we finish (Tuesday morning!), our studying progress (well, I’m blogging). We had an end of the year ceremony on Thursday, where each teacher and administrator was individually thanked by one student. The presentations were remarkably well done. Most were under a minute, but evoked the relationship we have with our professors and staff here. Most of the presentations shared some memories of time spent together, and all of them were heartfelt thanks to the people who have taught us so much about our religion, our history, our country, ourselves.

Last night we had an HUC community Shabbat, with our own services and dinner. Services were outside on the lawn, and we were literally facing the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. Every week, anywhere in the world, we pray facing in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, we face toward the Old City and the Temple Mount. But from inside, anywhere in the city, the old city is not usually visible. But last night, we were literally facing Jerusalem. We watched the sun set over the walls. We sang “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” (Jerusalem of Gold) and watched the walls turn gold with the setting sun. That view cannot be beat anywhere in the world. After services, we had dinner, also outside. I love that it’s finally (more or less) warm enough and dry enough to plan outdoor events with confidence. We watched a slide show that was put together by a couple of my classmates, showing pictures and video footage of the whole year. Some of the pictures went all the way back to last summer, and we laughed at events that had been forgotten (like Ethan’s attempt at a Kilo Burger) and hairstyles that have changed. We were one community, but in the back of our minds was that we were one community that, by Shabbat next week, is no longer going to be together.

I cannot wait to get back home and have so many reunions with people I have not seen for so long. I am looking forward to all those hugs! But before that, there are the hugs goodbye. There are so many people here who I will have to say goodbye to. Some I will see over the summer or in Cincinnati next fall, but others I will not. Some are staying in Israel, and while I am confident I will see them again, I have no idea when. Some are going to the other HUC campuses, and while we promise to visit and keep in touch, they’re going to be big hugs, because only time will tell when I will next see them again. HUC has been my family this year. We’ve gotten each other through so much. And I’m going to try to have the best last ten days here that I can. Or a productive three-and-a-half until my last exam, and then a great last week.

Shabbat shalom!

High Holidays in April

I'm going the slightly lazy route this week. The following is what I just submitted to my synagogue newsletter about the recent holidays...

An email went out last week to the entire HUC first year class with a subject line that read “the High Holidays of Israel.” In the email was information about three upcoming holidays, Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day), and Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day). At the time I thought the subject line was almost inappropriate. It’s a Jewish country! How could anything other than the fall holidays be considered the most important and holy part of the year? And then I noticed that all of a sudden, the Israeli flags on the streets and buildings had multiplied. Hotels had at least a dozen flags across the roof. Cars had flags hanging out the windows. Apartments had flags across the porches. In many of these places, there was a giant (not actually burning) memorial flame as well. And then I realized:

In Israel, these three holidays are the most significant days of the year.

At 10 in the morning on Yom HaShoah, the entire country stops for two minutes. A siren sounds nationwide, and everything stops. Traffic comes to a halt, and drivers turn off their engines, step outside their cars, and stand at attention. Construction workers turn off their incessant jackhammers a minute before, and during the siren, they stand at attention on the tops of unfinished buildings. Tourists marveled at the fact that for two minutes, an entire country mourns, reflects, and thinks. As soon as the siren stops, life resumes. Cars start honking, construction resumes its banging, and the day goes on, but in a different mood. Israel has a lot of survivors and a lot of children of survivors, and some feel that Israel owes its nationhood to the enormous tragedy. Remembering the Holocaust takes center stage for those two minutes, but the feeling continues all day long. Radio stations either play no music or they play sad, slow music. Restaurants and other entertainment venues are closed. There are too many remembrance ceremonies to count. The whole country remembers.

One week later is Yom HaZikaron. The only quality it shares with the American Memorial Day is its name. The day starts, of course, the evening before with a ceremony at the Kotel, the Western Wall. The ceremony starts not with an important speaker trying to quiet the crowd, but with another siren. Two more minutes of silence and memory; from 8:00 until 8:02, the country thinks of the lives lost, the children whose lives were cut short fighting for the right of this state to exist. Once again, businesses are closed and the country remembers, so it certainly is not a big sale day in the stores. This holiday is commemorated with ceremonies at high schools all over the country. At first we were surprised that it was the high schools that hold these ceremonies. And then we realized: citizens enter the army at age 18, within months after high school graduation. Before the army, this was their last community. We attended one of these ceremonies, and visited the memorial hall that was set up to remember this high school’s approximately 138 students who had fought for Israel, from the war for independence to the second Lebanon war this past summer. I have never seen so many high school students so silent.

Yom HaZikaron ends at sundown, and immediately transitions into Yom HaAtzmaut. The entire atmosphere changes. We have respectfully remembered and mourned for those who made this country possible, and then the celebration can commence. And Israelis definitely know how to celebrate their independence. I was at one Jerusalem celebration, an enormous free concert in the middle of downtown. There were teenagers, families with young children, older adults, and everything in between. There were kids with shaving cream walking around spraying. There were enormous inflatable hammers that squeaked when you hit people over the head. There was everyone, dancing, singing, celebrating, watching fireworks. That was just the evening. Everyone has the day off for Yom HaAtzmaut. Some friends of mine organized a barbecue in a big local park. I arrived and had to call to find out where they were; there were so many people barbecuing, picnicking, throwing Frisbees, and just enjoying the holiday that it was hard to find the particular group I was looking for. Yom HaAtzmaut really felt like more of a holiday than the 4^th of July, even though in theory they celebrate similar events. Because of the setup of the calendar, the whole country thinks about the sacrifices that were made for the country, and then seems to appreciate the country that much more.

Happy 59^th Birthday, Israel!

Never Forget

Has it been another week already?! I am definitely having an internal conflict right now, where I want time to fly until I get home, but I want to drag my feet a little and enjoy the last almost-month here before life intrudes again when I get back home. I like it here, and I miss home a lot. If only I could take my favorite parts (and people!) from both places and combine them…and leave out the stuff (and people?) I don’t get excited about…

Yom Hashoah, Holocaust remembrance day, was on Monday. In Israel, it is taken very seriously. For the 24 hours from Sunday evening until Monday evening, life is different. Radio stations play only sad music, if any at all. Many restaurants and entertainment venues are closed. Television stations mainly cover various Yom HaShoah related events. For a day, the whole country mourns the senseless loss of life. The most amazing part of the day came at 10:00 Monday morning. At school, we were scheduled to have a ceremony starting at 10:05. A couple of minutes before 10, most of us went out the front gate of the school and onto King David Street, a busy street through Jerusalem. At 10:00 precisely, the siren started. A horn-sounding alarm sounded around the country, from 10:00 – 10:02. Everything stops for 2 whole minutes. It seems like an insignificant amount of time, but it does not feel that way. People stop their cars in the middle of the road, and nobody honks at them. Most people that we saw actually stepped out of their cars and stood still for the two minutes, even the taxi drivers. Especially the taxi drivers. One came to a screeching halt in front of HUC when he realized the siren was starting. For once, all construction ceased. I could see construction workers on the top of an unfinished building, just standing there for two minutes. The only people moving, sadly, were the tourists with their cameras. I was not excited about their walking around, taking pictures of the indescribable scene, but I stood there and took in the moment. Two whole minutes of silence, to commemorate 11 million people slaughtered, 6,000,000 Jews. Two whole minutes of what felt like the whole world standing still, standing at attention.

The siren stopped, and I don’t think I could have counted to three before I heard a car honk. Apparently someone took in the moment for a moment too long. Life restarted. Traffic began creeping again. Construction noises overcame the city. But the mood had changed noticeably. We went back inside the gates and sat down in the courtyard for a ceremony with the entire HUC community: American students, Israeli students, faculty, staff, people I had never seen before. The readings were appropriate, there was a surprisingly long reading of names of people related to those in the HUC community, and there were some somber songs. But I do not think that the ceremony would have had the same impact if it had not started with two whole minutes of national silence.

Later that afternoon, we noticed that the day had turned beautiful and sunny, as are an increasing number of days here this spring. My Hebrew class plotted, and when our teacher walked into the room, we asked whether we could have class outside in the sun. Never one to turn down an opportunity to be outside in the fresh air (read: be able to smoke during class), we relocated to my favorite courtyard on campus. Unlike what happens too often with outside-in-the-sun classes, we really worked well, we just also got to enjoy the beautiful day. We read, analyzed, and discussed. I was also impressed by another move by this teacher right after we got outside. She started passing out the poem we were going to read, and we hesitantly mentioned that we had read it in our regular Hebrew class with a different teacher. She shrugged her shoulders, put it away, and pulled out a different poem. Amazingly, we had read that one as well. She hesitated for only a second, and told us to sit tight and she would be right back. She ran up to her office and came back to the courtyard 2 minutes later with another reading: an entire packet on Hatikvah, the national anthem. Of course, we all know this one, but there was a lot more to it than just the song we all know. We compared the original and modern versions of the poem, and various other aspects of the author’s life. I was really impressed at how well she was able to change the plan at the last minute, both relocating the class literally to make us more comfortable and changing the entire lesson plan to adjust to what we had already covered.

Grandma is here! She arrived with her synagogue trip in the middle of last week, and came to Jerusalem on Tuesday, but not before running into two of my classmates at Shabbat dinner in Haifa. (Monica will take this as further proof that I know 10 percent of Jerusalem, and maybe even Israel. I will continue to disagree, except perhaps in a 5 minute walking radius.) I went to do homework in the lobby of the hotel where Grandma’s group was due to arrive, so that I would be there with a hug when they walked in. Since Tuesday, we have gotten to spend some time together and share some of my favorite restaurants. As I’ve said a few times before, it’s always so nice to have someone from home come visit! I feel so much less far away with visitors.

Our Israel seminar this week was Presenting Israel. The idea was that we have been studying here and living here for almost a year, and when we arrive back in the US, we will have to find ways to share what we have learned. We visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and saw their Situation Room. There were 5 televisions on the wall, all tuned into different channels. Two of them were showing sports. In the conference room part of the Situation Room (Suite), I had a Dad-moment looking at the clocks. They had a wall with digital clocks and a city name below each one: Los Angeles, Washington, GMT (no cities there?!), Jerusalem, New Delhi, Tokyo, etc. I’m sure I’m missing a few (although I’m also sure there was nothing between LA and DC). I looked up at the 8 or 10 clocks and noticed that in addition to showing lots of time zones, the minutes were not all the same. I stared at them for a whole minute, and found that the ones furthest apart were about 57 seconds apart, and the others were spread out in between. I thought it was funny that in this very serious room in the Ministry, the clocks are apparently set manually. I’m sure it’s a pleasure to adjust for daylight savings, since each country seems to move time on a different day! We also had a speaker from the Shalem Institute talk about conflicts within Israel and how to deal with them. He basically acknowledged that there is an essentially unsolvable paradox in Israeli society.

In between, we were in our classes talking practically about how to teach Israel in the US. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion centered around what to teach. Do we act as ambassadors, discussing only the good parts of Israel and skipping over the problems? Do we talk about how the problems are being solved? Should we compare the problems to things going on at home? We all had different answers. I think that many of Israel’s problems are issues of any modern society: an income gap, minority issues, religion and state. The difference is that because this is Israel, the Jewish state, they also become Jewish issues. If Israel cannot figure out how to make sure that Holocaust survivors are not living in poverty, is that similar to America not taking care of its veterans, or is it a problem of greater Judaism? In giving a speech to a congregation, should we talk about the conflict between Secular and Reform and Orthodox, or pretend that a Jewish state is as ideal as it may sound? It was an interesting discussion, which has clearly generated more questions than answers.

Last night was fun. We had an HUC student-faculty soccer game. The students appeared to have the advantage at first, in both ability and numbers. Then one of the maintenance guys seemed to have called some of his friends, and 5 or 6 young Israelis in soccer jerseys showed up and joined the faculty team. There was no recovery, but there was a lot of fun. It was great to just stand on the sideline and watch and cheer. It was great to see the staff out of their regular roles. The Dean was the faculty goalie. It was fun to hang out with people who I don't often see outside of school. It was a good break. Towards the end, a few students decided to go distract the (reminder: Dean) goalie. They went to stand directly behind his goal and started singing at the top of their lungs. First up: "Echad, mi yodea? Echad, ani yodea...!" It is a very long Passover song, which apparently a lot of people learned all the words to after doing several years' worth of seders in the Former Soviet Union this year! Partway through the song, the students came down the field and scored our first goal. Success!! The cheering was loud, as if we had tied up the score in an important game, rather than making a small dent in the score at a fun activity. It didn't matter. A few minutes later (and after the faculty team scored again), the singers went back behind the goal. They started with "this is the song that never ends..." and moved onto "99 bottles of beer on the wall..." They hadn't made it very far into the song before the student team scored again. I was impressed! After the game a few of us went out for hot chocolate to warm back up. It's spring here, but only during the day! Nights are still pretty chilly.

I looked at my to-do list recently. I think that at this point at least half of it, if I include both the Homework side and the Other Things side, involves things that are oriented toward home. Making appointments for the summer, dealing with my summer job, and settling in Cincinnati (after the summer) have become real priorities, up there with writing three papers and doing my biblical grammar homework. I guess this really is the beginning of the end of the year.

Shabbat shalom!

Marking Time

Almost two months ago now, we got an email from the HUC administration talking about the upcoming spring and informing us of “the three P's: Purim, Pesach, Packing.” At the time, it seemed silly to simplify the rest of the year to that extent. But then Purim came and went, and we all looked longingly and expectantly toward our Passover break, even though it was almost a month away. And here I am, back from an unbelievable Passover trip, and realizing that my time in Israel is almost done. I won’t say I’m packing yet. Even I don’t start that early, although a lot of my classmates have sent bags home with family members who visited during Pesach. In my opinion, the administration did forget one other P: Papers. Everyone seems to want to get a jump start on final papers this semester, and rumor is that there are a few students who have already finished them. (I’m considering the fact that I have at least vague topic ideas for each of them to be a huge step in the right direction.) But there’s no avoiding the fact that most of us already have one foot on the plane home. Our email balance has shifted from upcoming Israel events to job opportunities near our campuses and information about our new cities. Food purchases are being scaled back in realization of how little time we have left. Shabbat service choices are being made on the basis of how few Friday nights remain before we head home. I noticed at the shuk this morning that the produce season is turning another corner. The citrus, the highlight of my winter, is looking a little pathetic. But I saw a lot of vendors with mini watermelons and honey dew, a few early (expensive!) peaches, and my favorite bakery is selling iced coffee for the first time in months. Summer is just around the corner!

None of this is to say that we’re not fully in Israel for another few weeks. One administrator told some of us that she hopes everyone is really here after Pesach, not just physically (although that would be a nice change) but also mentally. She knows we’re looking forward to returning to the US, but she also wanted to point out that we need to really enjoy the rest of our time here. And as much as I’m now immersed in forms for moving to Cincinnati, interviewing staff for my unit at JCC camp, and counting down the days until I see my family and friends and Target, I’m also trying to take in all the parts of Israel that I’m really going to miss. I realized that due to various events, tonight will be either my last or next-to-last time at my favorite Shabbat evening service in Jerusalem. As I over-filled my shuk cart this morning, I realized that it may have been my last big shopping trip. Clearly I’ll still be buying plenty of food in the next few weeks, but I shouldn’t need to refill on certain things again before I leave. I love my Friday morning shuk trips, even though I’m often barely awake enough to enjoy them, and there is nothing even close in the US.

We came within one page of finishing our big Hebrew verb book yesterday. It seemed really daunting at the beginning of the year. We had a one-day school week, which many of us thought was a little silly, and many people didn’t even bother to show up, but in some ways it gave me a much-needed shove back into reality. Some of the teachers apparently took it easy on their classes yesterday. My teachers didn’t seem to notice that we’ve been off for two weeks. It occurs to me that I do really enjoy most of my classes this year. Some of my teachers are absolutely amazing, and I have been so lucky to have the opportunity to learn from them this year. I’m going to try to soak up as much as I can in the next few weeks, even while I get life in order back home.

Kate and I went to Tel Aviv on Tuesday, partly because I really wanted to get back to their twice-a-week arts fair, and partly because I had to go meet the JCC assistant director, in Israel for Pesach, to sign my summer contract and get a pile of counselor application forms. Michael and I went to the fair in December, but it was rainy and cold, and there were very few tables out. It was packed this week! It was beautiful, warm and sunny outside, and we sometimes had trouble even seeing what they were selling through all the people. But it was great fun, and I got myself a cute necklace, in celebration of spring. Or just because I liked it and Kate convinced me. Oshrat and I met outside a coffee shop. I haven’t sat outside with a cold drink and been comfortable and happy with the weather in way too long. I’ll be doing more of that in the next few weeks. Later in the afternoon, Kate and I found ourselves not too far away from Max Brenner’s chocolate restaurant. We decided it was fate, so we went and got their chocolate fondue. Still delicious! The biggest problem I’ve had with their fondue is that there’s always so much chocolate left over after dipping everything, even the way I dip. (If you can see the color or texture of the original item through the chocolate, you’re not dipping enough.) We decided to ask the waiter whether we could have more fruit. He said it would be 5 shekels. Excited, we paid the $1.25 for a new, big bowl of fruit, and the privilege of eating even more chocolate. Happy and full, we took one of the bumpiest van rides back to Jerusalem I have ever been on.

Wednesday was a lazy work day for me. I did some work, posted lots of pictures, and got some things done. I also realized, around 9:00 at night, that I was still in my pajamas. Oops. I guess everyone needs a day like that sometimes!

Now that my Fridays are longer before Shabbat starts, I’m going to attempt to get something done. (Read: I’m going to the gym.) Shabbat shalom!

Pictures!

I narrowed down the pictures from the trip as best I could. They are here. Enjoy!

Back in the USSR...

As promised, a description of my trip follows. It was such an amazing and busy week that it's hard to condense it into a post. Want more details? Just ask. Pictures coming soon.

A quick intro to the important people on my trip:

Josh and Hayley: my HUC travel partners, and awesome trip buddies. We left Israel in the middle of the night, so none of us started on much sleep. All week we put up with each other, calmed each other down, and cheered each other up. Hayley and I roomed together, and she was amazing at putting up with my passionate hatred of the snooze button.

Ilona: our absolutely amazing translator. Ilona is 19, involved in the Progressive Jewish community in Minsk, and studying to be an English teacher. She has an awesome Russian-British accent. She took care of us all week, not laughing too hard as we tried to learn the Russian alphabet and being more patient than I thought possible when reading an entire menu aloud, only to have all but three dishes eliminated because of presence of bread products, pork products, and other offensive foods. She made this trip what it was. We all made a new friend.

For Dad, Belarus by the numbers: (Mom, see below.)

3: Cities visited. I went to Polotsk, a small city of about 80,00 people, then Vitebsk, a good-sized city and apparently the cultural capital of Belarus, and Minsk, the actual capital.

6: Seders I attended during Passover this year. Josh, Hayley, and I led five of them, with Ilona translating.

3: Seders I attended for Netzer kids, ages 14-20. We went to one in each city. We led the first and third, and the middle one was the dinner-theater-seder.

0: Items on the seder plate at the first (Polotsk) Netzer seder. We got creative. What represents karpas? A potato chip, of course. What represents a bone? A pirouette cookie, Passover acceptableness notwithstanding. This seder turned out to be amazing.

4: Haggadot present at two of our seders. They were mine, Josh’s, Hayley’s, and Ilona’s. Not surprisingly, one of these seders also was the one with the empty seder plate.

17: Adorable children encountered. Most were when visiting a kindergarten in Vitebsk, one was a great grandchild at our first seder in Polotsk, and one was a daughter at our second Polotsk seder.

3: Languages spoken at our lunch table in Vitebsk. Ilona’s friend Stas was guiding us around the city. His English was rusty, but his Hebrew was very good. Stas and Ilona spoke in Russian, Stas and me/Josh/Hayley spoke in Hebrew, Ilona and me/Josh/Hayley spoke in English. There was much confusion, but a lot of fun.

25ish: Choruses of Dayenu sung. We sang at five of the six seders, plus in the kindergarten, approximately 4 times in each singing of the song. We didn’t sing during the dinner-theater-seder, although one 16-year-old with an amazing voice did perform several songs, one of them even Passover related.

4: Museums visited. Two were on the history of Polotsk. I didn’t think a big town/small city could have that much history, but apparently, it does. One was the history of Vitebsk. Much bigger city, much less interesting history, but that could be because it was a tiny museum, all in Russian, and after a long morning of playing with kindergartners and visiting a cemetery. The fourth was the Marc Chagall house museum. I think the most exciting part here was that Josh’s grandma grew up on the same street. The museum was interesting and I liked looking at the old photos and drawings, but Josh was disappointed that the rest of the houses on the street no longer existed.

60: Drops of wine spilled out representing the ten plagues. At the dinner-theater-seder, they were followed by the youth group performing an interpretive dance of the plagues to the tune of “Echad Mi Yodea.” Creative? Yes. Impressive? Definitely. Expected? Nope.

1: Differences between American Jewish teenagers and Belarusian Jewish teenagers. That would be the language. In all other ways, we discovered that they’re pretty much the same. That’s always nice to see!

About 30: Sips or cups of wine (actually, usually grape juice). Four per seder, plus the last night in Minsk, when there were lots of toasts to various parts of the trip by the different community leaders.

10.5: Russian words I now know. Yes, no, please, floor (as in, which floor is my room on?), blanket (as in, my room is freezing, can I have an extra blanket?), potato (as in, I think I might turn into a potato after eating so many of them this week), egg (see description of potato), ice cream (actually, I forgot this word. But it seems important, so I’ll get Ilona to reteach me. It has a spider-letter in it.), goodbye, byebye, restaurant (hint: it looks like PECTOPAH), and that’s all I can remember right now.

3-4: Times we were asked how women can be rabbis. The old people were especially pushy on this issue. We were also asked all kinds of questions about the situation in Israel, Reform Judaism, our family histories, and more.

700: Pictures currently on my computer from this trip. Josh and Hayley are both camera-happy, so I generally kept my camera in my bag while they snapped away. Over 300 are Hayley’s, over 300 are Josh’s, and 60 are mine. I’m working on cutting that down to a more reasonable number to post.

For my mom, a super-concise description of the trip, with as few numbers as possible.

Sunday

Ridiculously early morning flight, requiring leaving home in the middle of the night, without sleeping. Sleep on flight. Long layover in Vienna. Arrive in Minsk, have dinner, go to sleep. Scary, militaristic airport.

Monday

Met our translator Ilona. Realized about 5 minutes later that she is awesome. Really early morning bus ride to Polotsk. Bus is 10-passenger van. Bathroom stop: holes in the ground with walls, but modern plumbing the rest of the trip. Arrived in Polotsk, had lunch, led seder for seniors plus one adorable 5-year-old, Diana. We had her “help” with the seder, holding up items as we talked about them, acting out plagues, and generally being adorable. After seder, we went out for dinner, met a few of the Netzer kids who would be at one of tomorrow’s seders, and crashed.

Tuesday

Tour around Polotsk. We saw a couple of small museums, some big churches, and generally a beautiful small city. The river through the city used to be bigger, and this city is where Josh’s relatives got on a boat to head to America many years ago. Another senior seder, but this time with the more secular community. There was another cute kid, but she was 12 and therefore slightly less cute. It was hard to get this group involved. Short matzah-and-chocolate-spread break after seder, then to another one, with the Netzer kids. I was the oldest person in the room. The room wasn’t quite ready for seder; there was a box of matzah, candy, cookies, and soda, an empty seder plate, and no haggadot. We decided this one ended up as possibly our best seder, and definitely the best for thinking on our feet.

Wednesday

Early morning bus to Vitebsk, where Hayley and Josh both have family from. We led another seder for seniors, which also had no haggadot for the 40 or so people there, although everything else was set up beautifully. During the meal several Orthodox students around our age came in, and apparently had been watching our seder. They were on a similar program, and wanted to talk to us and say hello. It was an interesting moment where we couldn’t decide whether to feel the sharing of community or very checked up on. We also visited the Chagall House museum, on the street where Josh’s grandma used to live, although only that one house has been preserved; the rest of the ghetto was destroyed.

Thursday

We visited the kindergarten of the Progressive Jewish community, about 15 adorable kids from ages 3-7. We sang songs, danced, and made paper towel tye-dye afikomen covers with crayons and food coloring. From one extreme to the other: after kindergarten, we visited the Jewish cemetery. There was no record of anyone from Josh’s or Hayley’s families, probably because the cemetery was in awful condition. Many of the older gravestones couldn’t be read, and those that could were in Yiddish. The newer ones were in Russian. Hayley found one headstone/monument that turns out to probably be a family member. We said kaddish together. That night was the dinner-theater-seder. The Netzer kids put on a dramatic seder where we were mostly spectators, with a couple of parts that they had given us to explain things. There were about 75 people there. The kids did an interpretive dance of the ten plagues. There was a teenage singer who was fantastic. There was a dance party afterwards. The idea was to get the parents involved as well as the kids, but its unclear how well that worked. It was definitely entertaining though!

Friday

Pre-dawn train to Minsk, in a sleeper cabin, where we slept the whole way. Snow in Vitebsk before we left, sunny in Minsk. We met up with the other Belarus groups, and we were all on such emotional highs from the week. In the afternoon, we toured around Minsk with Ilona and saw lots of gorgeous buildings and an amazing park. In the evening, instead of Shabbat services we had yet another seder, with the Minsk Netzer group which is also Ilona’s community. They were incredibly well-prepared for us, and I thought it was the best seder meal of the trip. We played seder-bingo and had an afikomen hunt reminiscent of those at Herb’s house. There were at least three of them by the end, and I think more that were never found. Later that night we went on a night tour to the monument for all the fallen soldiers of WWII.

Saturday

We started at the holocaust memorial, a small area of a mass grave which now also has a small memorial. We were there with the rabbi and some members of the community. Then we went to services, which were familiar at times, and different at times. The afternoon was free, and we did lots of just walking around and seeing the sites. In the evening we had a cantorial concert with area cantors and HUC student Melanie performing beautifully! We then had a closing dinner, in a religious school classroom, where different community members thanked us for everything we had done, and we all went around and told assorted stories and meaningful experiences. Later that night me, Josh, Hayley, Ilona, and a friend of Ilona’s had an ice cream party in one of our hotel rooms.

Sunday

We relaxed all morning, and then ten minutes before heading to the airport, Ilona surprised us by showing up to say goodbye! It was so nice that she made the effort to come back for one more hug, because we really had such a great time with her, and it would not have been the same trip without her. Then we spent way too long at the Minsk airport, flew to Vienna and met back up with groups from Ukraine and St. Petersburg, and flew back to Tel Aviv, arriving in the middle of the night. We were all somewhat relieved to be back in Israel, and shocked to realize how little time we have left here.

Throughout the trip, there were zillions of conversations with Ilona and some of her friends about differences between life in Belarus and in America (and Israel). We talked about schooling, relationships, communism, government, television, and so much more. Between these conversations and all the questions from the community members, we covered a lot of pretty deep ground!

Whew! That’s as short a summary as I can do. I’m working on narrowing down the pictures too, and hopefully tonight they’ll be up as well!

Grandma: safe travels and I’ll see you in a few days!! Everyone else...I'll be home in less than 5 weeks! Wow.

I'm BACK!

I'm back from an absolutely amazing trip to Belarus. I promise that once I can cut down the 40 pages of journal and 700 pictures to a slightly more reasonable length and number, I will post lots of stories and pictures! For now, know that I'm back in Jerusalem safe and sound with an amazing week behind me that I will never forget. I know that's a lame tease of a post, but...you're just going to have to wait.

Freedom!

Another whirlwind week, but now I’m on vacation…for two weeks! There are most definitely perks to a Jewish school!

A fun fact I learned this week, in my ongoing amusement with the Hebrew language: the word for “tie.” (As in, Israel and England played their soccer game to an exciting 0-0 tie.) The word for that outcome is “teekav.” I know that doesn’t seem that amusing. But you might remember that I have previously laughed at this country for pronouncing their abbreviations. It turns out that teekav is an abbreviation, for the phrase “Tishbi y’taref koshiot v’she’eilot.” Meaning, “Elijah (the Tishbite, as you might recognize from the Havdalah song) will decide difficulties and questions.” That’s right. It doesn’t get much less religious than international soccer, unless you consider it a religion unto itself, but nonetheless the word for an equal outcome has incredibly religious overtones. I’d be curious to know how many Israelis know that the word is an abbreviation, and what it really means.

This past Tuesday turned out to be our last week visiting our Ethiopian family. We realized that our Tuesdays for the rest of the year are quite limited, with two off for Passover, and another off for Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, another HUC program the next Tuesday, and then exams! We decided that the rest of our Tuesdays would be so interrupted that it would be better to finish before Passover. I do not think any of us realized how hard it would be to say goodbye! It was really sad to say goodbye to this family who we have gotten to know and spent so much time with this year. It was also hard, because we aren’t sure that all of them understood that we are not coming back. Karen took a bunch of pictures the last night, and once they are posted, I’ll pass them along.

I felt my Hebrew improving somewhat, but this week was still stressful. I had three papers to get turned in before Passover break. All three of them had to be written in Hebrew. None of them were long papers; I think they ranged from 250 to 500 words. Nonetheless, they took me a long time! Among other things, I learned that my spelling is fairly atrocious. Happily, I got a Hebrew word processing program, so that I no longer have to handwrite, edit by hand, and rewrite. Even better is that the program is for English speakers, so all of the menus are in English, and there is a Hebrew-English dictionary built in. Needless to say, my Hebrew typing is rather slow. That’s pretty frustrating, but after typing so much in the last week, I’m getting a little better. I got confused when I was typing in Hebrew, and then someone would IM me, and I would be typing in English, and then going back to the Hebrew, where the letters are in completely different places. I prefer the speed of typing in English.

Wednesday we had our weekly Israel Seminar. We started with a somewhat depressing speaker who discussed the value of the contact theory. She basically told us that the idea that Arab and Israeli or Jewish groups spending time together will eventually bring peace has not proven even a little bit true, and that for even a little bit of progress, the groups need to spend huge, ongoing amounts of time together, for at least a year. After the speaker, we had a group of Arab women who came to the school to meet with us, of course. About a month and a half ago, we visited the Arab village of Baka al Garbyiah and met with students there. This week, they returned the favor and came to our campus. Apparently HUC goes to visit them every year, but this year was the first time that a return visit was arranged. A couple of groups met with the same people as last time, but most of us were in different groups with different people. Last time, we were explicitly told to ask hard questions and really ask about one another’s political opinions and takes on issues. This week, we were given no such instructions, so most groups did not really get there. We had a great time! My group was four HUC students and two Baka students, Fatima and Iman. Both of them were religious, wearing head scarves and full length dresses, so many of our questions were about religious differences. We took a walk through a pretty neighborhood, sat in a park, and when we got cold, went to a coffee shop. Among other things, they told us that they only dress in this fashion when they are out in public. At home, “we dress like you, without the scarves, and in jeans.” That was so interesting to hear! They also passed around pictures on their cell phones of themselves without the headscarves, when the one guy in our group went to the bathroom. It’s apparently not a problem for any woman to see them that way, only men, so they wanted to share the pictures with us. They also said that any discrimination against women does not come from religion, but rather from tradition. The women have their place in their culture, and it is not mandated by religion, but it is very deeply entrenched in their culture. They are Israeli, with Israeli citizenship and passports. I asked one of them while we were walking about identity. Did she consider herself Israeli, Arab, Palestinian, or a combination? She sees herself as an Arab who lives in Israel. She loves this country. It is her home. We also talked about relationships, kissing boys (only in private, and only after engagement), family (one of them is one of eleven siblings!), and lots of other things. It really felt like an afternoon of getting to know new friends, and was definitely a highlight of the Israel Seminar program! We all exchanged email addresses and hugs before they got back on their bus.

Everyone in Jerusalem is now deep into Pesach cleaning. A lot of kosher restaurants will close for Shabbat tonight, and reopen on Passover, with newly cleaned kosher for Passover kitchens and menus. Even the bakery where I bought my challah this morning is cleaning out for Passover. Apparently they do kosher for Passover baked goods! The challah and other bread products were all being sold from a table outside the door to the bakery. Inside there was a lot of cleaning going on.

I’m on vacation! We had daylight savings last night, and finally sprung our hour forward, so I'm back to being 7 hours ahead of the east coast. The weird part about daylight savings here is that you lose an hour of sleep, but really do gain an hour of day, and with the clocks changing on a Thursday night, I already feel it. The day is an hour longer, which means that Shabbat starts an hour later. Because all the synagogues here really start Shabbat services around sundown, service times change every week. I start an hour later today, so all of a sudden my short Friday afternoons have stretched out, and I'll be back to having a long afternoon, snack before services, and dinner at 8:30 or 9. I'm excited! I promise lots of stories and pictures when I return from my Passover adventure!

Hebrew Table

Back to back posts! I guess that by this point in the year you should know that that means one of two things. Either I have something really interesting that happened, and I don’t want to wait almost a week to write about it, or I have a lot of work to do and I don’t feel like doing it. In this case, it’s both.

For Shabbat dinner last night, I was invited to my friend Kim’s house. She warned me that it might be a Hebrew-heavy dinner. I’m not sure I fully grasped that idea. I arrived, and was greeted (in English) by Kim, her boyfriend, who is also in Jerusalem on an American program studying to be a rabbi, and a friend of hers from a college year abroad in Israel program. The friend made aliyah several years ago and now lives in Israel. We spoke in English, and I doubted Kim’s warning a little bit. Then the next guests showed up, two friends of Kim’s boyfriend from his summer ulpan. They came in and we introduced ourselves in Hebrew. That was the end of speaking English. They are studying to be ministers, and I was impressed with the breadth of their Jewish knowledge. Another friend from Kim’s boyfriend’s classes came a few minutes later. It turns out that these three friends were from Switzerland and Germany, and also studying here for the year. I never found out whether they spoke English well or not, but I’m guessing not. Hebrew was the common language, so that was the language used throughout the evening. Conversation flowed pretty freely, with some fumbling for words on all parts, some laughing corrections of grammar on all parts, and lots of patience, especially by the friend who has lived here for years and is really fluent in Hebrew. There was no sense of awkwardness that we were holding an entire evening in what was a foreign language for every single one of us. Even when Kim and I spoke to each other in our own conversation, we spoke in Hebrew, probably partly out of respect for the company, and partly because it is hard to switch back and forth! Either way, we never mentioned that we were speaking to each other in Hebrew; it just happened that way! We covered all topics. We tried to solve the peace process. We talked about families. We discussed our programs and classes in Israel. We talked about food. It was a typical Shabbat dinner, aside from the Hebrew thing. I was almost home when I realized that I was still thinking, more or less, in Hebrew.

Shabbat shalom!

Exhaustion

This week pretty much tired me out. I even skipped my early morning shuk trip this week for some extra sleep! (Well that, and I’m going away soon, so I decided I would finish what’s already in my kitchen instead of buying more this week.)

Sunday morning started the week with a celebratory sendoff. The annual Ride for Reform began that morning, and we sent off about 55 people who were going to bike the country spreading knowledge and raising money for the reform movement in Israel. 6 HUC students from my class participated, some Israelis, some older HUC students who came back for the week, and some rabbis and other people who flew in from the states. We sang some songs, blessed them, had a cute ceremony with the kindergartners, and went outside the gate to cheer them as they got on their bikes and started down the hill, en route to the first day’s destination, the Dead Sea. Unfortunately for them, the Dead Sea is the lowest place on Earth. Which means that much of the rest of their trip (which ended Thursday in Haifa) was uphill. It sounds like it was an amazing experience, and I look forward to hearing stories and seeing pictures from my friends who rode!

Tuesday afternoon, I had a meeting with one of my professors. We talked for about a half an hour, and the entire meeting was in Hebrew! Somehow now that I’m less than eight weeks from coming home (!), the Hebrew is really starting to come together. I’m getting more comfortable speaking it, marginally better at understand it, and I’m a big fan of that. One day this week in Hebrew class, we had very few people there. (Ok, that’s not quite accurate. For most of the week, there was fairly pathetic attendance.) On this one particular day, it just happened that the mix of people who showed up was the quieter people in the class. I loved it. It meant that we all really spoke a lot more than usual, and it was a nice change. I do like my whole class, but sometimes just having a small intimate class (I think there were six of 12 that day) can be a great change of pace.

Tuesday night I got to have dinner with Melissa, a friend from college, who was here on about a 4-day trip for work. It’s always nice to catch up with people from home, and I haven’t had any visitors for a month, so that was fun too. I’m looking forward to one more visitor in about a month!

Wednesday’s Israel Seminar this week was about the Israeli Knesset, their parliament. The Israeli government, in addition to all of the issues going on right now, is just structured very weirdly. There are 120 seats, and they is proportional representation, so a party who gains five percent of the vote across the country will get something like 5ish seats. The big parties these days have somewhere around 15-30 seats, which means parties have to work together to get anything done. It’s a very different and weird system. At the beginning of a term, the party with the most seats has to make a coalition, gathering other parties with not-too-different ideas to agree to mostly vote as a block. The coalition has to be formed, with at least 61 seats, before the government can do anything, and then that coalition tries to basically push through as much legislation as possible. Except that it’s still made up of all different parties, so often one party gets upset about something and leaves the coalition, and they have to scramble to make a new one all over again, or there have to be new national elections. Like I said, it’s a crazy system. To learn the system, we had mock-coalition building. We were assigned to parties, did research, and when we started the simulation, we were told the election results and set about making coalitions. It was pretty intense in the room, with everyone getting into their roles pretty quickly. There was eye rolling at presentation of agenda, complaints of back stabbing, and marginalization of fringe parties. Ultimately, we formed the scariest coalition possible, an extreme right-wing collection of parties which included all of the religious parties. I was part of one of those. It was fun, but we were all a little terrified of what would happen to Israel if that coalition really happened.

Last night, to end the week, I got together with a couple of friends. We made mom’s recipe macaroni and cheese, which came out good, if a little weird, given that there’s no such thing as good cheddar in this country. We sat and talked for a while, and then went out for a good, rich, chocolatey dessert. A good night!

Up this weekend: a Hebrew-speaking Shabbat dinner that I was invited to and am a little terrified of, but excited about, and lots of homework. Somehow I have three essays due this week. All three are supposed to be in Hebrew. Sigh. But…Four more days of school, and then I’m on a two-week Passover vacation! Belarus is just over a week away! Wow.

Another important thing: Happy birthday, Grandma! A big birthday hug in less than a month!

Surprise Understanding

Isn’t it nice when things just come together? My Hebrew teacher decided that it would be fun this week to bring in one of the students from the Israeli rabbinic program and let us “interview” him. It turned out to be someone who had run a program for us over the summer and who we had all met at least once or twice, which was nice. The even better part was that he was a native Israeli (and therefore inherently harder to understand) and not a teacher (and therefore not accustomed to speaking at a lower level or more slowly) and I understood a good eighty percent of what he said! I realize that he was trying to slow down somewhat for us, but by the end, he was excited about what he was saying, and he sped up a lot. And I still caught it! The next day the news on the radio kicked my butt yet again, but I’m sure that comprehending a real live Israeli must mean something. It did for me, at least!

Tuesday I gave a Hebrew presentation. Our teacher basically wants us to prepare a short speech, and then lead into a class discussion. They usually relate to something Jewish, because we’ve all realized at this point in the year that those are the topics that are going to get the class talking. The exciting part was that when I get my every-other-weekly essays back, they’re generally covered in red (or green or blue) ink. But when I finished the speechy part of my presentation, she told me I had done a great job! And Hannah doesn’t really dish out the praise so easily. So that was two points for Hebrew class this week.

Wednesday’s Israel seminar was a good one, talking about women’s issues in Israel. At this point in the year we’re all a little burnt out on the seminar, so it’s great that they found another good topic and a set of good speakers/visits. We first had a guest speaker from the Israeli Religious Action Center. (The center has the unfortunate acronym IRAC. Israelis pronounce acronyms as if they are words. It sounds a lot like a less-than-neighborly country in the area.) She was a great speaker. She talked about the place of women in the country, how they are treated, and about what would be expected, but she was incredibly engaging. One of the things she discussed was the group “women of the wall,” which is a group of women that has been struggling for years to be allowed to pray aloud, wear tallit and kippot, and read Torah at the Western Wall. Because it is an area controlled by the Orthodox, this is incredibly not-allowed, and it has been a fight. She described the current state of affairs as not so bad though. The group meets once a month, to pray really early in the morning at each new month. She said the police officer who watches them said that they can wear a kippah if it is one that resembles more of a hat, so they wear their giant kippot. They can wear their tallitot if they wrap them around more like scarves, so they do. And the group gets together to pray as proud women once a month. Unfortunately, a friend of mine has been going with this group, and she said afterwards that it is not quite how it was described. She said that anyone wearing a tallit wears a jacket on top, and that prayers are spoken incredibly quietly, as if whispering, with women huddled together and constantly looking around them to make sure they are safe. I agree with the group’s message, but it sounds that they are not having the most positive experience, and because they do everything they can to avoid conflict, one wonders whether anyone outside the group knows that they are there, and whether that spreads their message at all.

After the speaker, we split up to go to different sites to talk about more specific women’s groups. I headed to an organization that deals with issues of Jewish divorce in Israel. The problem, of course, is that issues of personal status (marriage and death being the big ones) are controlled by the ultra-orthodox rabbinate. Therefore, they decide who is Jewish. They also decide who can get a Jewish divorce. If there is no religious divorce, the couple is considered still married. Under Jewish law, neither part of the couple can get married again, but the man can father other children and carry on with his life anyway, whereas if the woman is with another man, she is committing adultery. The related problem is that men control who can get a divorce. A man can basically refuse to divorce his wife so that he does not have to give her any financial support. If the issue goes to court, it goes to rabbinical court, which is, of course, all men. All very conservative men who don’t like divorce, who don’t like to push other men to get divorced, and who don’t seem to have much respect for these women. We watched video footage of a rabbinical court telling a woman that the physical abuse she was receiving must not be that bad, or that while her husband had threatened her with a knife, he never did anything with it. It wasn’t a pretty movie. It’s not a pretty situation.

Earlier in the week, we had beautiful weather. It was in the 60s and 70s and beautiful. I was warm outside! I had my windows open! I was psyched that it was spring. Apparently I was wrong. This morning, before I had even gotten toothpaste onto my toothbrush, my roommate Karen was knocking on the bathroom door. “Jessica! It’s snowing!!” She did forget one vital step in the get-excited-about-snow procedure though: she hadn’t checked email to find out whether we still had school. Sigh, we did. The snow was beautiful, though, as I was looking out my window getting ready for school. It was less beautiful as it turned to a sleety mess just in time to walk through it. It continued changing from snow to sleet to rain to snow to random bursts of sunshine and back to rainy grossness all day long. It’s still going. It’s supposed to keep going, on and off, until about Sunday. I’m hoping this is Israel getting the last bit of rain out of its system until the fall. I understand the same weather pattern (beautifully and amazingly warm and sunny, followed by cold-rainy-wintry-gross) is about to turn on the east coast. Stay inside. Also, in the spirit of spring that I was feeling a few days ago, I posted some pictures of Israel looking springlike. The flowers don't look as pretty surrounded by slush.

Talk to you soon!

Vegetableier?

It’s Saturday night, and I go back to school tomorrow morning. Thinking back, I had a really good weekend! With Purim, I only had a three-day week, which is always nice.

Wednesday’s Israel seminar had an unexpected highlight. We were talking about poverty and food insecurity (a fancy word for hunger) in Israel and how it is approached in current times. There are so many more NGOs in this country than one might expect of a teeny country. I don’t remember the exact statistic, but it is something like a ratio of one per 200 people or so. There are a lot. It is partly because there are so many religious institutions, but it is also a reaction from the country’s socialist founding. In any case, we were looking at different approaches to poverty and more specifically food insecurity. We saw several different solutions: forming NGOs to address the problem, trying to solve the problem from the top, making it go away completely, and treating the symptoms, giving people food so that they are not hungry today. One place we visited was a private high school that runs a soup kitchen. The two high school seniors who spoke to us were quite possibly the most well-spoken teenagers I have ever seen, and their English was fairly amazing. It’s a safe bet that my Hebrew will never be that good. I think many of us were more interested in their school than in the soup kitchen. It is a religious school, but somewhat open: there are both religious and secular students who attend the school. The students (both wearing jeans) told us that they must attend services every day, but that they do not have to pray. They study Jewish topics, in mixed-gender classes, but being religious is not forced on them. They focus strongly on community service. We were intrigued. It sounds like a school we could visit as a study in its own right, rather than just as a sidebar on the study of a bigger topic.

Friday morning I broke one of my own rules. I tend to stay out of the Old City on Fridays. It is more crowded, because it is Islam’s day of gathering, similar to our Shabbat. But one of my classmates organized a tour of Christian sites, given by the director of the NFTY in Israel program, who recently earned his tour guide license. I decided that these are sites I would love to visit, and should visit with a tour guide because I don’t know them at all. So I went. About a dozen of us met in front of HUC, groggy, and started the day. (Well, technically my day had begun two hours earlier when I left for the shuk and supermarket. But I was still tired.) First fun fact of the day: in Israel, tour guides must be licensed. I knew that. But apparently, especially in the Old City, some Powers that Be walk around looking for guides who are guiding but not licensed. They can get in trouble. Guiding is serious business around here. We went first to a Russian church that apparently was the original entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. With various natural disasters, wars, and history in Jerusalem over a couple of thousand years, the church has been destroyed and rebuilt a few times, and one of them turned the church’s entrance around completely. After that, we visited a Protestant church, but we really just went to the courtyard. The point was to differentiate between the incredibly ornate, graphic depictions in one church and the beautiful, quiet spaces in another. Then we walked to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. (All three were within 5 minutes of one another.) This is the site believed by most branches of Christianity (Protestants excluded) to be the spot where Jesus was crucified, buried, and risen. There has been a church of one kind or another on the site since around the mid-300s, although much of the current structure is “only” about a thousand years old, from around the time of the Crusaders. The church is fascinating. I had visited with Monica, but we really didn’t know what we were looking at, and it was nice to go with a guide. It was also a Friday though, apparently the day that Jesus died, and a popular day for pilgrimages. It was packed. The church itself is owned jointly (and in pieces) by all different sects of Christianity, many of which don’t largely exist in America: Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic (Egyptian), Ethiopian, and I don’t remember what else. The groups don’t always get along. In order to change anything, all the groups have to agree. There are numerous stories or legends about ladders that haven’t moved, light bulbs that haven’t been changed, and repairs that haven’t been made, simply because the groups cannot agree on who should do it. The building is amazing. Having visited so many synagogues, there are some aspects that are similar, like the hanging lamps. Those make sense from a time before electricity. But the figures and paintings and human images in a space of worship are incredibly foreign to me, and especially noticeable in a place like this one.

After our morning of church, the student who had organized the tour was heading to his favorite hummus place in Jerusalem, in the Muslim Quarter, on the Via Delarosa. A few of us went along for the experience…and food! It was delicious. It was a place where you tell the waiter more or less what you want (in a mix of Hebrew, English, and a few words of Arabic that Jon knew): falafel, kibbeh, and hummus. There are five of us. The waiter brought out the food a few minutes later, and a few minutes after that, it was demolished. It was fabulous. We also looked around when we finished. When we arrived at lunch, the restaurant was fairly empty. But if you measure restaurant quality by the number of locals who eat there, this one certainly rated highly; it was completely full when we left. We realized that the noon Muslim service must have ended while we were eating, and then everyone came in for lunch. I was full and ready for an afternoon of cooking…

Amy and Mary, two of my classmates, really like the cook Rachel Ray, and Amy has a stack of her magazines here in our apartment. They decided to have “Rachel Ray Shabbat,” where everyone coming to dinner would be given a different Rachel Ray recipe to cook. It was happening at my apartment; I decided to join the fun. I made “not-zagna,” which was basically lasagna ingredients (including a béchamel sauce!) but with regular noodles in a bowl, not layered in a lasagna. It was more vegetabley than I ever make, but it came out delicious. [For the record, Microsoft Word would prefer “vegetableier” instead of “more vegetabley.”] The rest of the meal was also impressively good. Everything was a fancier dish than most of us would normally make (fennel salad, salmon in a complicated sauce, squash and ricotta pizza, individual cakes with chocolate sauce and crushed candy topping…), but everything was delicious. I spent the afternoon in the kitchen with my roommates, who were also cooking for this dinner, and it was a lot of fun. And now I have leftovers for the week!

Today was a good Shabbat. I did lots of nothing in the morning, a little work in the afternoon, and then went to a wine/cheese/havdalah afternoon hosted by two visiting rabbis. It was a fun break to hang out with friends, catch up, and eat lots of delicious cheese. I made it a point to try each and every one of the cheeses. I still haven’t met a cheese I didn’t like. An afternoon/evening well spent! I then went out for dinner with a few friends, which I have decided I like doing on Saturday evenings before school on Sunday. (Equivalent: Sunday night dinner out at home.) It’s a nice way to stretch the weekend out a little before going back to the craziness of the week. And a great way to put off the last bit of homework just a little longer!

On that note, I need to go to sleep so that I don’t start the week too sleep deprived. Shavuah tov, have a good week!