So as I am slowly adjusting I am getting happier about being here. I do love Israel, but the thought of being here for a YEAR was overwhelming and took away from my excitement a little, but now that I am starting to settle in and make some friends I am feeling a lot better about everything.
So friday afternoon we had a little JTS/Columbia reunion. There are a bunch of us in Israel right now, so it was nice to see familiar faces for a change.
Friday night I went to these incredible services! They in the basement of kol haneshama on emek refaim. I forget what exactly the minyan (group) was called, but it was a part of the Jewish renewal movement. The services happen once a month, but if you are around when they are happening you MUST go. My description won't do it justice, but there was a lot of beautiful singing and there was a wide variety of musical instruments, including a sitar!
I was lucky enough to be invited over to a fellow Rabbinical student's house for shabbat dinner. Shout out to Gavi for being an AMAZING host. It was a delicious dinner and a fun group of people. I have really been enjoying meeting my classmate, we are pretty diverse and everyone has fun stories. We all stayed there talking until about midnight.
The next morning I went to HUC for services, they were pretty good, but I really like reform services so yeah. (maybe I will have a future blog post about that). I did get to use my new huge tallis for the first time which was fun. I don't quite have the hang of the whole draping thing, but I'll get it.
I went to shabbat lunch at Gavi's again, which was great. I was with another group of awesome people. Even though a lot of us are very different we all want to be Jewish professionals so we have this HUGE thing in common which is cool. When I was speaking about my visions for Reform Judaism and what I wanted to help change/thought was lacking it was exciting that other people agreed with me and had had similar experiences.
Later I met up with a group to do havdallah in the park, which was fun. Jerusalem has some lush grass. It was a great end to a relaxing shabbat!
So to sum up, things are great here. I'm loving Jerusalem right now and I'm excited to continue to meet new people and get to know my classmates better and to continue rockin'
noted and changed, I knew it looked wrong haha
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