settling in

I feel like I’ve been pretty quiet lately. Guess that’s partly a function of my schedule now–busy–and partly the fact that I’m starting to settle into a routine and having fewer Big! Adventures! that feel directly blogworthy. But, of course, the little things in life are most certainly quite bloggable, so I suppose I’ll have to just tune my inner radar into the quieter bits in order to keep you all entertained out there in TVland.

Well, I don’t have a TV, so this really is all I got for screen-staring entertainment, anyway.

This past week was a lot about getting my routine on. Am starting to get the flow of classes and evening activities. Sunday I end class at 4:30 and then have another class in the evening at another place around town–a class on women and halakha that’s really fun. It’s a chance to look at a lot of the sources with which I’m familiar (and a lot with which I’m not) from the inside in a deliberate, methodical way, which will def. be useful to me from here on out. It’s chill and a nice antidote to my Codes class, which I have Sunday afternoon and includes, for the moment, a lot on the question of, “May one marry multiple wives?” (The question isn’t the problem, it’s the snarky asides some of the poskim–legal writers–seem to feel it necessary to make that I’m less into.)

Monday I get out around 6:30. A friend and I have talked about trying to start up a semi-regular crafts night for folks around town, and I think Monday might be the night. We met this week and it was soooo nice and relaxing to do something tactile and non-intellectual after a long day at the Torah Farm. I’m into beading necklaces a lot lately. Tuez I’m going to meet every other week with a hevruta–study partner–to learn mussar, a type of Jewish literature aimed at helping to bring a person to the, er, more enlightened aspects of his/her personality. I think we’re gonna learn Mesillat Yesharim. The rest of the week, thankfully, isn’t that scheduled up. Yet.

Cool story: Around the time I was applying to rab school, I heard through the PTA grapevine (thanks to my mom’s best friend) that a kid with whom I had grown up, literally two houses down from me, was at rab school in another denomination. His name came up every now and again, and periodically I’d hear that he had gotten married, that he had a kid, etc. Well, ran into the guy at services on Simchat Torah–he’s also here for the year–and turns out that both he and his wife are really cool, the kinds of people I’d be friends with anyway, which is not always my experience with people with whom I grew up. (Not most people’s, I reckon.)

What with the bond of having known each other since we were in diapers, we’ve become fast friends. It’s nice, since I’m in so little contact with people with whom I’ve grown up, it’s almost like a little tikkun (healing, fixing) for me to have a friend who shares my memories not only of Little Red Hen pizza and Big Al’s french fries (so greasy they soaked through the first of the two brown bags in which they were placed) but also of what the Park Accross The Street used to look like before they fixed it up, what it was like to be from the kind of suburb in which we were raised, etc. It’s kind of like a part of my life that has long felt like a faraway dream (I haven’t really been up there since we sold the house in ‘96) is re-integrating with the rest of me. It’s nice. Anyway, this is the cat with whom I’m gonna be learning mussar. Should be interesting. Mussar is heady stuff; I hear it changes you to learn it. Will let you know.

Oy. It’s late. I should try to get some more sleep (up randomly in the middle of the night tonight, dunno why) before it’s time for wakey-wakey and getting to minyan. Good night, good morning, have a lovely day.

Five Randomly Selected Things I Like About Jerusalem

1. Most apartment buildings are dark, mostly. There are these little switches all over the hallways of the stairs that you push to illuminate the public spaces. After about a flight’s walking time, they go off. But there’s always another one just a foot or two away, so you push that one and the lights go on again. A rather inspired way to save energy on a large scale (as basically every apt. building I’ve been in is like this), I think.

2. Seeing the names of lots of people I know–either personally or in the book-geek sense–on street signs everywhere. Besides Ramban, Ha-Ari, Bruria, Reish Lakish (etc.) there are Mandels and Lewinskys and even:

3. Pomegranates are such a central part of the cultural, er, aesthetic that they wind up popping up just about everywhere:

This is a sign at Hebrew U.

4. Pear yogurt. Fig yogurt. Rum Raisin yogurt. Passionfruit yogurt. Date yogurt. Coconut yogurt. Happiness is the dairy section of every Israeli supermarket.

5. Magic stairways! Off of lots of the main streets, you can find little stairway passages that wind up being fabulous shortcuts. It always seems like you should have to knock three times on the bookshelf to make them manifest, but maybe it’s more like that room in Harry Potter that appears whenever you need it. If you don’t know the city very well and/or exactly what you’re doing, though, it’s very easy to get lost trying to use ‘em. But I’m just a stupid Muggle, what do I know?

Five Less Randomly Selected Things I Miss About The States

1. My people. Being far away from the ones I love is just stinky stinky stinky.

2. Customer service.

3. Being able to recycle not only plastic and paper, but also cans and glass without overpowering amounts of tsuris (headache.)

4. Being able to buy normal books and other stuff (mostly books) either in stores or online and not having to pay a $9-11 shipping charge with a 2-4 week delivery date.

5. Oh, heck. They get a second entry. My people.

a little story

Last week, I was walking up the street to meet a friend. I saw ahead what looked like some sort of commotion. Looked like ambulances and IDF (army) stuff.

There was a bus turned sideways in the middle of the road.

Oh, my. There’s been a piguah (bombing), I thought. I instinctually reached for my cell phone to start calling everybody I knew to make sure they were OK. As I kept walking, I gave myself a little pep talk about being able to handle this.

As I got closer, it became clear that whatever it was wasn’t that.

There were gates up blocking the street, and IDF guys checking bags and stuff (standard security measure in these parts.) The bus, it seems, was parked funny in part to serve as a blockade.

Why?

Demonstration.

At the kikar (circle/square) at the top of the street, there were a lot of people gathered. Settlers. Part of the 100 protests going on at the same time against Sharon’s plan to pull out of Gaza.

Some of them were wearing orange shirts to match the orange signs. Even the trees were wrapped in orange. There was, not surprisingly, some pretty inflammatory language on some of their material.

The part that really struck me was the next day, when that same square was filled by Women in Black, Shalom Acshav (Peace Now) and some other people whose politics are about as far away from the settlers’ as possible.

I think I’m starting to get a sense of why so many Israelis are so jaded and angry and also confused.

(This says, praise/thank God, because (He) is good. In the psalm, there’s no question mark.)

I just hope the kikar gets a day off sometime soon.

do they know that not everybody is a Christian?

According to Google News this morning, a bunch of famous musicians are planning to record a new version of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

Now, I’m as big a fan of raising money for hunger relief as the next girl–I think it’s a great idea and I laud all those who might be doing this for free (??) to help people get food to eat. That is good. But the song itself (lyrics here) has always creeped me out with its funky colonialist overtones. Let’s not only feed the starving children of Africa, let’s make sure they practice our religion! A lot of people in Africa don’t know that it’s Christmas, but they know that it’s Ramadan, for starters. And there may even be some folks left who still know when it’s the holidays in their ancestral traditions. I’m giving Bob Geldof the benefit of the doubt and assuming he was just being naive about how this whole universalism thing works, but really. Nobody seemed to notice to object last time, and I’m sure they won’t this time either.

Somebody want to send these guys a couple of Chinua Achebe novels?

that was fun

I’m sitting in Timol Shilshom right now, trying (somewhat vainly today) to get some decent writing done, and the waitress comes up and asks if I can do them a favor. They’re in the process of changing their menu and needed some help translating the new dishes and some flowery language (”Dear valued customer….”) into English. I was happy both for a distraction from banging my head against the keyboard and also to help out one of my favorite cafes. So I got to sit here and use my new Hebrew and my old freelance marketing-writing skills (”no, no, it’ll sound more like they’re getting something exciting if we say it this way”) and they offered to comp me on a dessert or something for my trouble. I learned a few new words. I opted for an ice cream soda: butterscotch in apple cider.

Now, back to work.

bleary hi

I really have to get to bed. But wanted to at least say hello, as this first week or actual real classes unfolds. So far so good.

Looks like I’ll be in the higher level, which is cool. Everything’s in Hebrew (except once class, more on that in a sec.) Mostly it’s in regular Hebrew, one with the Israeli rab students, though there’s one class that’s really an M.A. class with Israeli students that’s so fast it’s blurry–I think I got about 30% of the first lecture, but that 30% was pretty amazing, inspired, beautiful stuff, so it’s worth it for me to tough it out. (The class is on images of the wilderness–המדבּר–in the Bible, and already my mind is getting blown. May write up some of what she’s suggesting after I’ve had more than one class.) In pretty much all of my other classes the teachers are also speaking at their normal pace and level (I think), and it’s pretty cool that I can hang. I’m sure my skills will improve like crazy this year–at the beginning of ulpan I had a really difficult time understanding one of my teachers, and by the end it felt like somebody had pushed a button to make her talk more slowly and clearly, and everything was crystal. Of course, she hadn’t changed at all, but my comprehension had, tremendously. I’m sure that will happen here, too–at yesterday’s end I was just totally wiped from the effort of having to pay so much attention, both with regards to the learning (plain old, new semester, new material) and, of course, the language. I think Mondays are going to be hard. I’m there from 7:30 AM (minyan) ’till 6:30 PM.

Another cool thing is that I’m able to see my relationship to text finally really changing. All the work I’ve done the last couple of years has really begun to give me some traction–everything feels so much more open and accessible than it ever did. Had my first bekiyut class today–that’s a lot of Talmud, going very quickly–and I was surprised at how comfortable I was just motoring my way through the sugyia. It would have helped if either my hevruta (study partner) or I had had a decent night’s sleep (I was going on 4 hours, she on 3) but even so! I love bekiyut. Teacher is great, and it really suits my personality, just barrelling my way through the text and trying to get the major issues instead of picking apart every tiny move. I mean, that can be fun too–going deep–but I think this’ll be a good way for me to learn.

So, uh, this is what I’m taking this year:

Talmud Iyyun –Talmud focusing on depth and slow, deliberate readings
Talmud Bekkiyut–Talmud focusing on getting the major stuff and burning through the material
Advanced Midrash–more midrash, natch.
Poskim/Codes–focusing on kind of the history and process of halakha (Jewish law). How halakha gets made. So we look at the Talmud, and then people interpreting the Talmud, and then people interpreting them, and so forth.
Halakha HaMaaseh–practical halakha, looking at one of the major codes (Mishnah Brura). Which, surprisingly, so far I like better than Codes, which is not what I would have expected. But we’ll see. I’ve only had one class of everything, so opinions are likely to switch around as the semester moves on.
Mikra, aka the class on the wilderness in the Bible with the fast fast talking smart teacher
Hebrew–focusing on vocab, reading the newspaper, etc.
Israel Seminar–the “processey” class in English where we talk about issues around being here. Had the first one today, and it was surprisingly really quite good. It has the potential to become a parade of personalities, but it also has the potential to be thought-provoking and force me to think through some issues. So we’ll see.
(maybe) Israeli Society–I applied for an exemption, which I may or may not get, based on previous work I’ve done. So dunno.

It’s a lot of text classes. Which is kind of cool, I’m sort of into immersing myself into this right now. There’s time yet for more practical rabbinics later. One of the other good things they do here is build in beit midrash (text prep) time into the class–so a class will be 3 hours long, half seder (beit midrash) and half shiur (”regular” class). Which means that, though there is still some homework, it’s a lot less than I’m used to. That don’t stink. That’s deliberate on their part, to give us the chance to have a life and make use of being here. But I ain’t complaining.

Oh, man. It is SO time for bed!

What’s interesting

is going places with people who make you look at things a little differently. Obviously.

Last night I took a friend who lives in the Old City, is fluent in Arabic and has been working on her PoliSci dissertation on the Intifada to the Boogie with me. We joke about how it’s her project this year to get to West Jerusalem more often.

We were a little early, and there was some sort of cheezy hippie improv-dance thing happening before the actual bootyshaking got going. It was a real trip. I’m watching it and my brain goes straight to critiquing the way they’re doing energy work (there was some real potential for disaster, I gotta say) and my friend looks over at me and says,

“I just can’t stop thinking about the fact that all these people served in the army. They all stood at checkpoints. They all went rifling through some old woman’s purse or kept people from getting to work.”

And, even though a lot of the people there probably leaned left politically, she’s probably correct. The comment made me think just about how much privilege I have, being able to walk around this fast, modern country and live as comfortable a life as I do here. It’s not a comment about what should happen or how it should happen (because really, I’m still pretty sure I don’t have any good answers there) but it is helpful to be reminded that what I’ve got here does not come without a price that someone, somewhere else is paying. That’s not a comfortable feeling, and I think part of why a lot of people on the Left steer towards a sort of naive idealism is because, in order to come to a solution that will really make things better for everyone (and God willing stop this level of violence) requires us giving up at least some of that privilege. I don’t know what that means in terms of the political reality, or what I think that means, but that’s just my gut sense about the, uh, psychodynamics.

You know? All these hippies know how to use a gun.

The good news is that once we finally got dancing, we both had a lot of fun. Music is always a good thing.

Haaretz has a story today about people not being allowed to get to work and how that’s affecting the Palestinian economy and the Israeli olive harvest here. Another story about the IDF and the Palestinian olive harvest (and Rabbis for Human Rights’ campaign to go pick olives to help compensate for the workers who can’t get past checkpoints) can be found from the Jerusalem Post here.

correct proportions

Today I sat in one of my coffee shops and wrote for a few hours.

Then I went to a classmate’s house and studied Mishnah for a few hours.

Now I’m getting ready to go dance my booty off for a few hours.

This may be as close as I can get to my life exactly as I’d script it.

Kewl.

Orienting

So the last three days have been Orientation time for me. That’s right, I haven’t actually started school yet! (At the school in Israel they wait ’till the endless round of holidays are over and then keep us there about a month later than in the States.)

Some background: I’ll be studying at an Israeli rabbinical school–one that has a full ordination program in my denomination for Israelis. So they’re there for 5 years. For what is usually the third year, they ship us kids from the two schools of our denomination in the States here to learn. Depending on one’s Hebrew level, some classes might be with the Israelis, and there are a few classes that are specifically for us Americanim.

Day one was mostly administrative: meet the administrators and (some) faculty, get a lot of paperworky info about registration, volunteer projects, etc., do Hebrew and Talmud level testing, etc., with a reception in the evening for folks to start getting to know each other a little. There are 11 people from my school and 12 or 13 from The Other School. So far I’m feeling pretty good about the group as a whole–I like the people who are here from my school, and The Other School kids seem good, as well. A lot of them are married men in their early-mid 20’s. Well, all of them, really, except for the 4 women (one of whom is married to one of the married guys.) The people from TOS that I’ve gotten to know a bit I like, and so far the small talking has been generally not bad, either. Also had a pretty wonderful academic advising meeting–I am, as always, sort of a weird case re: class placement, and I was quite pleased with the way my advisor decided to handle that and what the possibilities might be. I may wind up rearranging my sched. a couple of times before I’m through, but he didn’t seem to think this was all that big a deal, which is nice. So this year may have some real potential.

Yesterday and today were more activity-oriented. I confess, I was a little nervous when it became clear that the theme of the days was going to be Zionist history–it can be a pretty loaded topic these days–but they actually did a fabulous job. We started off with an excercise in which we analized the messages being set forth in early (1910s-40s) Zionist propaganda, posters and the like. Lots of room for critical analysis. Then we went on a tour of Nobel Prize-winning writer S.Y. Agnon’s house, ending with sitting around his garden discussing a couple of stories and feeling the season’s first warm sweet drops of rain fall. (We’d only started saying the prayer for rain about 4 days earlier!)

Today we went on a tour of the town of Zikhron Yaakov, an early early settlement a few hours NW or Jerusalem. We had the same guide/educator for the two days, and he did what was actually a phenomenal pedagogical move: the first half of the day was largely lecture with some discussion–getting the basic history and background about the place. Then he let us loose on the town’s history museum and told us to think about (and then we discussed) how they portrayed the same history, what we’d keep and what we’d do differently, what got left out, whose POVs were over- or underrepresented, etc. Was good both as a way of engaging us and as getting us to think about our learning as educators ourselves. Then we had Q and A with a panel of people from the town’s shul of our denomination, so more with the hard questions and complicated answers.

What I most appreciated about the two days’ program is that they seemed really interested in allowing us to think about complexity and subtlety and nuance and shades of grey and not just to show us a pretty picture of how great it is to be a Jew in the Holy Land. The early history wasn’t put on a pedastal and the messy realities of today (even just re: Jews relating to other Jews) were in full view. So when someone on the panel talked about what was beautiful and rewarding and profound, it was easy to believe him/her because we were also hearing the truth about what’s hard.

So, yeah, so far so good. We’ll see how things feel after classes start on Sunday (here, Friday is more like a day off and Sunday is a workday), but this wasn’t a bad way to start.