Inspiration- in honor of the 5th yartzheit of Mikey Butler and Miss Sharon Steiff

Don't leave your participles dangling. Remember your FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) and place commas accordingly. Stop saying 'like' every other second. Take that gum out of your mouth- you look like a cow. Some of the nicest clothes can be purchased at Marshall's Boutique. It's all about how you present yourself.

Eleven years later, I'm all set for the cocktail party. Miss Steiff worked us hard for two years in 7th grade and again in 8th grade. Whenever we complained, she insisted that everything she was teaching us was pertinent for our future attendance at cocktail parties. Generations of Maimonides students came out prepared. We joked that our senior year fund-raising banquet (aka "the senior prom") was the ultimate test. We dressed up all nice and were paraded around the room so all the grown ups could "ooh" and "aah." Little did we know when the real work would start. When we arrived at college most of us realized that somehow we were far more articulate in both writing and in speech than many of our classmates. I still see Miss Steiff cringing when I throw in a pointless "like" in the middle of a sentence, or better yet-- the Israeli "k'eeeelu." In honor of Miss Steiff I will do everything in my power to never let that become a part of my regular speech.

When I was in Israel for the year Miss Steiff came to visit with a mission from the Young Israel of Brookline. There's a great picture of us in the Old City that I wish I had scanned on my computer. Soon after that I found out that she had leukemia. I don't think she even finished off teaching the school year. Miss Steiff never married and never had any children, but think about the book Goodbye Mr. Chips. It was like that. She had hundreds of children.

A year or two after I had Miss Steiff as a teacher I met another individual who continues to inspire me. Mikey Butler played drums for the band at the NCSY Fall Regional shabbaton when I was in 9th or 10th grade. I don't even need to explain who Mikey was. You can google his name or do a search on facebook and you'll find countless letters, articles, blog entries, and facebook group posts about how incredible he was. We spoke briefly on the shabbat and then we were in touch for awhile on AIM. I remember once a friend of mine was struggling with something and he graciously talked her through whatever it was. They were really rough years for me too, and I wasn't always finding the right people to turn to, but I'm grateful Mikey was there. Mikey lived twenty four strong years despite battling cystic fibrosis. Then his body just gave in.

I don't usually include sick people's names in my prayers. I don't know why. Maybe I feel like it loses it's meaning after awhile. Mikey and Miss Steiff were the two exceptions. For several months I said both their names in the prayer for the sick. Freshman year when I was in Israel for winter break I attended a huge prayer service for Mikey at the Kotel. There were so many people there of all ages and from so many different places. A couple weeks later I returned to Maryland for the second semester. The first day of the semester was a snow day. In typical Maryland fashion, there probably wasn't really any snow, but I spent the day in my room instead of in class. I forget who I found out about first, but I got two devastating emails that day. Mikey and Miss Steiff had both passed away.

My first instinct was to jump on a train and go straight back to Boston for Miss Steiff's funeral. Besides being my English teacher, she was a distant cousin. My next thought was finding a way to get to Pittsburgh for Mikey's funeral. I really barely knew Mikey, but I felt it was closure I somehow needed. Reality hit and I realized I wasn't going anywhere. I was however able to listen to the eulogies for Mikey over the internet. Over a thousand people were at his funeral.

It's hard to believe that it's been five years since that day. I am now 24, the same age Mikey was when he died. I still think of Miss Steiff every time I correct even the smallest grammatical error, or when I come up with something particularly eloquent to say at a formal event. I still think of Mikey every time I hear someone banging on the drums. The way he played you would never think he was hooked up to an oxygen tank. Absolutely amazing.

This week, in honor of the lives of Miss Steiff and Mikey, I will be thinking about inspiration. The inspiration to express myself and the inspiration to live-- Day By Glorious Day (and in impeccable English).

May both their memories be blessed.

2+ weeks later

Not much has changed. Some friends have come home from reserve duty. Other ones have left. One left, came home for a day, got engaged, and went back again. My best friend's boyfriend is going into Gaza any day now. Yonatan Netanel z"l was killed by friendly fire and left behind a four month old child. His sister is a student in my department (there were signs at school announcing his death). I was holding a four month old baby when I saw the news on TV. This country is really small.

I am at the point in my semester where I actually have to do work. Teachers are finally telling me what the assignments are that my entire grade will be based on. They will be due over the next two months. A couple are due during the beginning of the next semester. I have 3 1/2 weeks left of class. The end of this semester technically means I'm a quarter done with the program (thesis not included). I still sit quietly through most of my classes. Lately I've been overtired on Mondays and space out a lot (no thanks to a certain Harriet the Spy). Today I got to hand in my own copy of the statistics homework. Okay, it was because my partner couldn't make it, but it was still exciting. Usually we use hers because her Hebrew is actually understandable. Little by little I am speaking more at school but only when I have to. I'll figure it out one of these days.

Everything feels very different. The students are more subdued. My Introduction to Trauma class has been taking on a lot more meaning. Even the professor is expressing how hard it is to be somewhat academic about a topic that's been so real these past couple of weeks. Hebrew U, like other universities, has opened up it's available space in the dorms for students and their families from the south who need a safe place to stay. Families all over the country are opening their homes to total strangers. At the supermarket you can get half price candy and snacks to be delivered to soldiers. I'm hoping to bake cookies for my friends coming back from reserve duty. It's therapeutic. And a way to procrastinate. But mostly therapeutic.

It's hard to complain about how much work I have plenty of time to do but can't get myself to even start when all this is going on. With rockets falling in both the north and south it is hard feeling safe in Jerusalem which is smack in the middle. We are not physically effected at all, but the war is on all our minds. My friend was going to host a movie night last week then sent us all a message saying he just couldn't do it. Not until our friends come home safe. None of us were about to argue.

I kind of wonder how this experience compares to that of students my age in the US when their friends were being sent to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. Except I know it is definitely different in this case where our friends are two hours away and rockets are falling miles from where the actual fighting is.

The Big Lebowski movie night sounded like fun though I was just happy for an excuse to go out and hang out with friends. Now that it is on hold until everyone comes home, I am really looking forward to it.

Extraordinary

This blog post was written special for the "Why I LOVE Israel" Blog Carnival. To read about this event and find other entries go to http://realisrael.wordpress.com.
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When I moved to Israel just over a year ago, I did many of the same things anyone else around the world does when they move to a new place. I went to the bank to set up my first bank account on my own. I probably scrunched up my face as I tried to decipher the small print in Hebrew. Then the bank teller welcomed me home.

I usually go to the supermarket on Sundays and then again on Thursday or Friday morning if I'm cooking for Shabbat. It took me awhile to learn where the best places to go shopping are and where I can get the best deals. The most I've learned has probably been from the people I've stood in line with. They are always happy to comment on what I'm about to buy and what good deals I accidentally discovered. Lines in Israel might be a hypothetical concept, but you can always make friends in them.

I spend two days a week at Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. The bus to campus is full of students like me, having rolled out of bed just in time to catch the far too infrequent 30 bus. At school groups of friends sit around the grass talking, laughing, and playing random instruments. The Forum always has vendors selling everything from jewelry to children's books. In the classroom as we discuss the future of Israel's children our similarities are illuminated and our differences are set aside.

When I'm not in school or sitting at home pretending to do homework I'm usually babysitting. There are several families in the neighborhood I help out. Sometimes we play in the house. Other times we go to the park and the kids play with other children they only met moments before. Parents and other babysitters will talk to me like we're old friends. Once in awhile a parent will take out a package of cookies and bottle of juice with enough cups and napkins for everyone there.

I really like to walk everywhere. You walk enough in Jerusalem and you realize how small this place really is. By now I feel that I recognize everybody. Once in awhile I take the bus. When we get near a supermarket there is always at least one elderly man or woman who insists on standing with their many packages instead of taking one of the many seats immediately offered to them. One time a woman handed me her baby to hold while she organized her bags and secured the stroller. She never asked me if it was okay or thanked me afterwards but it didn't matter to me, and none of it came as a surprise.

I love Israel because I can walk down the street and match up the exact place I'm in with an event I read about in the Bible or learned about in a Jewish History class. I love Israel because on Friday afternoon a siren goes off and the city quiets down as people begin Shabbat, however it is they choose to celebrate it. I loved how on the holiday of Succot (Tabernacles) thousands of Christians from around the world paraded through the streets of Jerusalem and were so intensely excited to be in their Holyland. I loved how every night of Chanukah menorahs were lit around campus to celebrate a miracle from hundreds of years ago. I live in Israel so I can be part of a miracle that only started taking formation sixty years ago.

All those things make me love a place, but it took more than that to decide to live here. It took seeing bus drivers refusing to move until all elderly passengers had found seats, and I need to have a superb university to attend for graduate school. I need neighborhood store owners who greet me like an old friend and having total strangers to graciously help me with my charges and become friends with me at the park.

My life here is both ordinary and extraordinary. When I visit the US and tell people about my life here, it seems that they forgot that in Israel too people go to supermarkets and study in graduate school. So I tell them about the ordinary, and I try to sneak in stories about the extraordinary too.

There's a lot out there to read about Israel. A lot of it can be debated for hours on end. The media isn't going to talk about how I opened a bank account and waited anxiously until I heard back about my acceptance to Hebrew University. But in the end of the day, that's what Israel is like. That's what people are doing-- ordinary things, in often extraordinary ways.

When Rockets Are Falling

This blog post may be just one more excuse not to be interpreting the long neglected powerpoints from my research methodology class, but since my main distractions are facebook and email, and most people are writing to me asking how the situation is here, I feel inspired to write this.

Last shabbat as my roommate and I were walking home from shabbat lunch she said to me that she was worried that when Israel finally attacked Gaza, our friends might be called up to serve. I didn't think so much about it at the time. I wasn't so aware of what the plans really were for when Israel was going to attack, and the only friends that came to mind were the ones in basic training who won't be seeing action for awhile. That evening we found out that while we had that conversation, Israel had begun the attack. It seems silly stating it this way, but since then three of my facebook friends have been called up to reserve duty. I found out this information from their statuses and have read the comments of encouragement from other friends. I guess I forgot that those "old guys" I have as friends served in the army way back when they made aliyah and are now as eligible as any other Israeli to serve in this new war effort.

On a day to day level nothing has changed. If I didn't look at a newspaper (or babysit for the children of a reporter who listens to the headlines at home on the hour) I might never know anything is going on. I guess I am aware of a higher security threat as I board buses and go grocery shopping, but the stores are running as usual and I still need to go out and buy my vegetables despite what is going on an hour away. This past week we were all thankful for another few days of rain and I traveled to Tel Aviv to welcome three friends on aliyah. This is a map from something a friend posted.

Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and the road from one to the other, are about equidistant from the range of the rockets that have been fired into Israel. Tel Aviv might even be a little closer. I barely gave this a thought as I traveled across the tiny width of the country. It might as well be thousands of miles away.

But it so obviously isn't. Rockets have hit Be'er Sheva. I have friends in school there, and now a friend on reserve duty there. I saw that one has relocated to Jerusalem for now because the siren in her neighborhood wasn't working. One happens to be in the US at the moment. Not that it matters in terms of school-- all schools in range have been closed until further notice. On the second day of school closures a rocket fell directly into a high school classroom. Just take a look at the map above. Israel is a small place. My neighbor from one street over is probably less than two hours away from here, but he's in a war zone.

This semester I'm taking a class called Introduction to Trauma. I felt it was important to learn about trauma if I was going to be working with people in Israel, and it was especially important to learn about it from an Israeli perspective. There are times in class I feel like a complete outsider. I can't relate to being down the street from a bus being blown up or holding my breath until my brother came back from army duty. It almost makes me paranoid of what people I know might be experiencing and how my friends in reserve duty will feel when they are released, or how it effects my many friends just beginning their army service. I wrote something similar after the attack on Mercaz HaRav-- "This is what it feels like to be Israeli."

From my perspective I feel nothing political about the situation. I know that something had to be done about the situation in Sderot and felt very unsure and uneasy about what could be done. I will do as much research as I can before voting in the next prime minister election, but I know that yelling and complaining about anything isn't about to make a difference. I don't want to hear about whether Israel is right or wrong and whether or not it's fair that so many soldiers are risking their lives in Gaza right now. Gilad Shalit has been in Hamas custody for over a thousand days and it's only hit home now that I have friends on the battlefield.

We're all Israelis here. By definition we'll never get tired of yelling and screaming and complaining. But if you want to know what it's like here at the end of the day, we're all just waiting. This won't end tomorrow. I know I'll see more status updates that more friends are being called for reserve duty. So now I'm going to finally force myself to scan through old powerpoints and kick myself to start writing my paper. Later today I'll go babysit for the reporter's children and watch the news there ("Look Daddy! Airplanes!") and tomorrow I'll go to school and sit with both my Jewish and Arab classmates and we'll all be sitting there waiting and thinking how much we hope everyone comes home safely.