שבוע שחל בו

It is the week of Tisha B'Av, and I am sitting in my living room in Newton, MA thinking about the big world around me. Here in Newton, there are newspapers on the kitchen table every morning. I feel far more connected to everything. This isn't to say that when I'm in Israel I don't read the news, but I guess so much of the news there is consumed with internal events and issues that everything else gets stuck in small print at the bottom.

I am also thinking about how history has just slipped by. If not for facebook, I would have forgotten that the evacuation (I paused when I typed that, because how can I really choose one word?) of Gush Katif took place around this time four years ago. I was thinking about it fairly recently when it was discussed at a conference I went to on Trauma and Early Childhood. But I forget that it happened in the heat of the summer, in the month of Av.

What really surprised me was that I was forgetting about the Second Lebanon War, just three years ago. I'm adjusting to a new schedule where the semester doesn't end until the end of June, or really does not end at all, I'm basically vacationing (slash writing papers) for a few weeks, and I forget what period of the year we're in. But how can I forget the war happening? I was in Maryland for the summer and had acquired a TV. My roommate and I sat watching the news for several days. When Tisha B'Av came and we were bored at the end of the day, we figured that watching bombs fall on our homeland did not count as being entertained by the TV.

Last year I wrote about how difficult it often is for me to experience Tisha B'Av. I think the Tisha B'Av that year, during the war, finally hit home for once. In just a few weeks I was leaving for two weeks in Israel for my brother's wedding. I knew that the war wouldn't really impact my trip, but it was pretty daunting what could be going on while I was there (it ended about a week before my arrival). When I got to Israel I witnessed the effects of war on a people. I was volunteering in a soup kitchen and several people who came were essentially displaced persons from the North. It was one of those "reality hitting home" moments, appropriate for Tisha B'Av, when I remembered that while we have Israel, there's still plenty to fight for.

Facebook is also reminding me of the most powerful moment of that war-- when my roommate and I saw on the news that Michael Levin had been killed in battle. I had no idea who he was at the time aside from him being American, but I quickly learned that his twin sister was a few years ahead of me at UMD. The following year on Yom Hazikaron, the UMD memorial service was centered around Michael. His sister Dara spoke along with several of his friends. The looks on their faces and tears in their eyes is seared in my memory forever. It put a face on the war, on what happens in Israel far too often. Since then I am amazed at how few degrees of separation I am from Michael. Everyone seems to have known him. Whenever his name appears in my news feed my world shrinks immediately.

I am currently writing a paper about secondary traumatization, or "what happens when the helpers get hurt." It's all about experiencing traumatic events through other people and the effects it can have on the listener or people close to the victim. Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder is considered an occupational hazard for helping professionals (therapists, firemen, teachers). It is obviously something undesirable. On the other hand, thinking about the phenomenon of STSD is getting me to think about how to experience Tisha B'Av. Tisha B'Av is a day of communal mourning, but not all of us feel the same traumatic effects of tragedies that have happened to the Jewish people and to Israel. I think part of getting together on Tisha B'Av to say kinot is to work through each other to feel the meaning of the day and look forward towards a better future.

I know that all I have to do is think about Dara Levin speaking about her brother that first Yom Hazikaron, and the tears on my friends' faces as they planted a tree on the Hillel lawn in his memory. But I'm also thinking about the new Michael Levin z"l Center for Lone Soldiers which I know will help a lot of my friends, while I wish with all my heart that (even though it's really like camp and you're all a bunch of children) one day soon there won't need to be an army that so many of my friends will be called to serve in.

Katamon through the eyes of a 15 year old, and getting ready to move on

For the four years I was in high school, my brother was in college. About twice a year I would spend shabbat with him at Brandeis and have a blast hanging out with the "big kids." All his friends got to know me pretty well. I was (and still am) simply the coolest little sister ever.

Last week I got to host Tess. Tess, who is now 15, is the first kid I ever babysat for. I've known her and her brother for fourteen years. Even before I officially babysat for the kids I would go over all the time on shabbat afternoons. So when Tess asked if she could stay with me before going to camp up North, I was pretty excited. As the youngest in my family, I never got to play big sister the way my siblings did at college. The difference? When I visited Brandeis I was hanging out with people five years older than me, at a familiar place, and only twenty minutes from my house. Tess survived a shabbat full of meals and parties with people fifteen years older. To put that in other mathematical terms, they're twice her age. Add on top of that being 6,000 miles away from home, in a totally unfamiliar place, and in an environment she knew nothing of... I would say she was pretty brave (not knowing that she would need to be).

Now, Tess is a pretty smart kid. Of course this isn't surprising because I taught her most of what she knows. I gave her as much background info about this place as I could: most people are twice your age, some are creepy and some aren't, etc. It was funny hearing her reactions, how she picked up on certain situations between various couples and groups of people, and how she perceived the overall madness of a bunch of 25-35 year old single people thrown together in the phenomenon that is the Jerusalem social scene. It was humorous and only slightly disturbing when she talked about dilemmas interacting with boys her age and I informed her that fifteen years from now nothing will have changed. My favorite moments were when I encouraged her to stop by the "housecooling" party on Mendele (sometimes you need to take advantage of opportunities to see things) and prefaced it with "Remember those times I let you stay up late as long as you promised not to tell your parents? Well this is like one of those times, except this time you really can't say anything." The other favorite moment was when she said the funniest thing ever. "It's not, like, that these guys are so old, it's like... they should just be married already." Oh Tess, how much they would all agree with you. Anyway, I would say besides her getting lost twice within the first ten minutes of me letting her out of my sight and almost winding up in the gay pride parade, I was an excellent hostess and a paragon of virtue in every way.

And now back to the real world. Classes are over. My Hebrew final is over. I went to an interesting conference about trauma and early childhood. I only got bored in the middle of one session and retired to the napping room (it's so nice and empty these days). I have two more finals and five papers to get started on, but can't even imagine starting on any of that until I get over the next big hurdle in my life: moving. I have the keys to my new apartment. My landlord was ridiculously obsessive about having it painted and cleaned perfectly for us. Ilene, my new roommate, arrives on aliyah on Tuesday. I have some stuff moved in and my movers are coming Monday. I was on hold three times with the electric company before successfully switching the account into my name. I spent over an hour waiting at the municipality to put the apartment in our names, and tomorrow I take on the water company. My room is full of incredibly heavy boxes (movers here are like superheros- I don't know how they do it) and tomorrow I'm going to check out a fridge. Lisa is running around the apartment getting her stuff ready for movers coming tomorrow morning. And Harriet just plopped down next to me and started cleaning herself. Some things haven't changed... yet.

Last night Elie and Yoel (and Clive) came for dinner, as usual. This morning we davenned, also as usual, at the 8:45 Chovevei minyan and stuck around for kiddush. Alissa and I decided that next week we'll brave Ramban together. We even shook on it. Probably in two weeks we'll be back at Chovevei. It's not THAT much farther. Two weeks ago we celebrated Yoel and Alissa's engagement with an oneg (I'm not sure we could have moved out of this apartment before that happened) and last week we had one last hurrah with a seudat shlishit. And somehow out of our 20 or so guests only 3 or 4 were female. Yeah, that's our friends for you.

I don't feel a need to get all nostalgic and list all the things I loved about living here and with these roommates, and list everything I'm going to miss. Besides Harriet the Spy. I will miss the cute little par-par. Even though she's still sitting next to me cleaning her butt. As I said in the last post, it's amazing at how where you wind up living effects so much else. I felt the same way after graduating from UMD. I went there on a whim (okay, not quite a whim, but lets not get into that) and I can't imagine my life now without those friends and experiences. We decided to live in this apartment because it was the best deal with found. We had no idea who was living around the corner from here. Ted's kiddushs were something of a legend to everyone else but us. Elie and Yoel became our regular guests, and now my roommate is engaged to Yoel. I'm only moving a mile or so away. A 35 minute walk, tops. But this was my first home in Israel, and this is where I built my life here.

Now it's time for the next chapter, as we're calling it. New apartment, new roommate, new adventures, no cat. And I'm excited. I hate change. I handle change really, really badly. But it's going to be good. And in three weeks I'm going to the US for a month so my real start in the new place will be after being in the US and not straight from living here. And to my roommates- once a roommate, always a roommate. You join the ranks of some of the coolest people ever. Lisa- we met on August 20, 2002, spent 4 years planning our aliyah, and 5 years after that date made aliyah together. I think that's pretty neat. Then we found Alissa, and together the three of us braved the Jerusalem social scene for two years. We spent hours pondering the social dynamics and other mysteries of this place, and probably came up with nothing useful and conclusive. Except for getting Alissa engaged. Now I'll live with someone new to the scene and when she brings these issues up I can be like "oh that, we went through that last December, and sorry to say the situation is totally hopeless." How fun will that be?

That Par-Par is still next to me, and is now asleep. Furry ball of love. And I think that's the perfect way to end this blog entry.