Monday, May 14, 2007
And So it Goes
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:)
Friday, May 11, 2007
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
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
I can’t believe I’ll be home so incredibly soon. Shabbat shalom, and I’ll see you soon!
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Ten Days
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
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
Shabbat shalom!
Friday, April 27, 2007
High Holidays in April
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
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.
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
Happy 59th Birthday,
Friday, April 20, 2007
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
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
Our
In between, we were in our classes talking practically about how to teach
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
Shabbat shalom!
Friday, April 13, 2007
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
None of this is to say that we’re not fully in
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
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!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
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
Ilona: our absolutely amazing translator. Ilona is 19, involved in the Progressive Jewish community in
For Dad,
3: Cities visited. I went to Polotsk, a small city of about 80,00 people, then
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
3: Languages spoken at our lunch table in
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
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
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
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
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
Wednesday
Early morning bus to
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
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
Throughout the trip, there were zillions of conversations with Ilona and some of her friends about differences between life in
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.