Monday, July 12, 2010

more stuff

Hello World,

So big news!!!! I'm getting internet in my apartment tomorrow. It's about time oy!!

Anyways my mom says that I should put more spaces to break up my longer paragraphs to make it easier for my readers. So mom this is for you:

haha

Anyways, as usual lots has happened since the last post. Orientation starts today, so before now I have basically just been on vacation in Israel, and now I'm going to actually start studying and all that. Orientation is all this week and then Ulpan starts next week. I'm actually pretty pumped (I know I'm a nerd).

So for shabbat this week I went to services at Har-el for friday night. Har el is a reform congregation in Israel about a ten minute walk from my place. One goal I have for this year is to try out as many different synagogues and minyanim as I can to really get a taste for the different possibilities and to see what I like and don't like. As I mentioned in a previous blog post I'm not a huge fan of reform style services, so as far as reform style services go this one was pretty good, but I was really missing kabbalat shabbat. I just love all the singing that happens in the more traditional/carlebach style synagogues, so yeah there was not enough of that here. But seriously why don't reform congregations do Kabbalat Shabbat? It's great. Seriously. Give it a try. Man oh man.

Har el was nice though, very welcoming. It felt very familiar in a way which was also nice. They even did this cute thing where they called up all the people who had a birthday in the coming hebrew month and blessed them and gave them flowers.

SO after services I went to dinner at Sara and Allie's apartment (two classmates of mine). It was a pot luck and let me tell you, HUC students can cook. yum! More and more people are arriving everyday and it was great to meet lots of new people at the dinner. Seriously, I am so impressed and pleased with the people I've been meeting. If we are the future leaders of the Reform movement, I'm pretty pumped for the direction the movement is heading. Never fear, we are some capable leaders (although yes we, or at least I, have a lot to learn first).

Saturday morning I went to services at HUC again. It was alumni shabbat, so it was kind of like seeing my future. weird.

I have been doing more to keep shabbat lately, I figure I should definitely give it a try and see how I like it. So for the past few weeks I haven't been using a cellphone or money etc on shabbat and I've been enjoying it. I have, however, gotten lost a couple of times on shabbat and have had an interesting time figuring out how to get un-lost. I bring this up because I got pretty lost on saturday trying to go to a park for shabbat lunch. I walked all around this lovely park (bloomfield park I think) to find out that I was in the wrong park. I was an hour late to lunch, but it was nice.

I studied some Talmud with my chevruta again which was nice. Lots of arguments, as usual. There was this one interesting line about the jewish people being like ruach (translation:wind/spirit) and how since there is always ruach there will always be the jewish people. I will try and find the exact quote later, I think it was on page 3a (of ta'anit). Oh man I <3 talmud.

Saturday night, after shabbat, I went to Tel Aviv. Wooooo. I really like it there. I'm sure this is the first of many visits up there. I met up with some other friends from HUC and we went to a party (rabbis can have fun too sometimes).

Before I forget something really strange happened in the sheirut to tel aviv. So the sheirut filled up and the driver starts going, but he is driving pretty slow and this man starts yelling at the driver in Hebrew. What I got from the "conversation" is first the man is yelling at the driver because he is going to slow, and he is asking why he is going so slow (I think it was because the road we were on was under construction). Then the driver gets annoyed and starts driving really fast, and everyone else is like "wtf slow down." Then I'm reallly not sure what happened but it somehow ends up with this guys yelling very loudly "toratchem toratchem atem atem atem" over and over or something like this. Which basically means your (plural) torah, your torah, you (plural), you (plural), you (plural).

At this point I really wish I could speak hebrew better because I had no idea why the guy was yelling at the driver about your torah, I don't know how it went from talking about driving to this (maybe I heard wrong, is there anything that sounds like Torah that would make more sense in this context?)/ Anyways all the driver has to do to calm this guy down is say not "atem" I mean "ata". Basically saying I made a mistake and meant to say just you (singular) and not you (plural). WEIRD times. Only in Israel.

We were staying at a youth hostel in tel aviv, hayarkon 48, I definitely recommend it. THe people we were sharing a room with were pretty fun, we ended up hanging out before going out on the town. As usual (I guess it comes with the territory) we spoke about religion/why we wanted to be rabbis. I have gotten to really like these conversations, it is so interesting to see people's reactions. I like thinking that maybe I can help people reconsider what it means to be a rabbi, and realize that we aren't crazy people, we are people that you can relate to and have fun with and the same with Judaism, it is a great religion that you can relate to and have fun with. ok I'll stop haha

I spent Sunday at the beach, which was great!! I got a little burnt (yes mom, I put on sunblock), but nothing too bad. There is also this great frozen yogurt place there called Tamrah. mmmmm. It also has these fun swing seats. They are swings that are by a counter so you can swing and eat. Some one should bring this to the united states, it's a great gimmick. Look free business advice, someone use it!!!

ok off to buy a fan with my roommate Ashley woooooooo

Becca

2 comments:

  1. I read the last sentence of your post and got excited cause I thought I was getting a shout-out on your blog... and then I realized that no...it wasn't me. The sad truth of our separation. But now, I am even more determined to visit. I don't want you to forget me :)

    Have you heard anything about where you are going to be placed after Israel? Perhaps I will have to look into schools in LA.

    In anticipation for your home internet installation...skype me: ashesilver.

    Can you tell I miss you yet?

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  2. Glad to hear you have internet. I've been keeping Skype running.

    ReplyDelete