Update on my life

Starting a few weeks before Pesach and up until a week ago I had the absolute joy of spending three afternoons a week (at least on the days I wasn't sick or unable to move because of my back) with this incredible adorable little guy, Noah. Playing with Noah brought back great memories of Raphi at that age. We went to the playground and hung around the apartment being silly. Once I got to bring him and his girlfriend (kids these days start young) Eliana to the playground together. Hopefully I'll see Noah in LA in September. Such a treat getting to play with him. This is a picture of him excitingly greeting his friends at his good-bye party.
I finished ulpan. That's right, I made it to the end. It's crazy that with ulpan finishing I'm more or less "done" with the beginning steps of making aliyah. I'm still convinced I have another ten years until my klitah is complete. I'm happy to say I learned a lot and made some good friends. It was comforting being around other people in the same position as me and being taught by teachers who really cared about us. For most of my time there I didn't feel that much of a connection to the place but I think over the next few months I'll really appreciate my time there and the friends I made.

This was taken at the Birthright Mega Event in Latrun. I was there with the Gift of Life Foundation to get more people in the bone marrow donor registry. American college students are so awesome. There were thousands of people there mostly from the US but also from France, Brazil, and India. I met some fellow Bostonians and fellow Terps. It was like a huge summer rock concert. It's great seeing so many people so incredibly excited about being in Israel.

Over the next few weeks I get to hang out with a slew of friends visiting from high school and college who will be visiting the country. Can't express how happy I'll be to hang out with them again. Really, really excited about that.

Also have a decent amount of babysitting jobs lined up. I have a short one in a couple weeks and then a six week full time job beginning at the end of June. It will be the first time I will be out of the apartment all day every day. It will also be the earliest I've had to wake up on a daily basis, and really the first time I'll have something in the morning I actually have to come on time to. Should be interesting. The job is for a four year old girl so hopefully I can be paid to do things like go to the zoo.

After that... I'm planning a month-long trip back to the US that will go through Rosh Hashanah. I haven't been in Newton for RH in a few years now. When I get back I'll have a few weeks (mostly taken up by Succot) until I begin a Masters in Education program at Hebrew University. So far I got accepted to the special education program and I'm waiting to hear from the Early Childhood Studies program. I'm hoping that between the Har Tsofim area and central Jerusalem I'll be able to find a sufficient amount of work for when I'm not in class (or trying to understand the material in Hebrew).

I guess I haven't been writing in my blog much lately because I've grown less cynical and more optimistic about my life here. Not to worry-- I still have plenty about the Katamon social scene, but I'm also becoming more accepting of it. In general with work for the summer and school set for the Fall (didn't expect to hear from Hebrew U until July) I'm feeling much better about things. It's been a really long and slow year. As I just told my friend who's making aliyah in a year-- the paperwork is the easy part. It's the packing the month before and the rest of your life after that that's the hard part. But I'm looking forward to toughing it out.

Once again, here is one of the top reasons I am here

I couldn't not share this.

Last night I was babysitting for Ami (5) and Erez (4). We heard a lot of police cars outside and I was telling him that the police was getting ready for President Bush to visit again.

Know why they call him Bush? Because he looks for poos in the bushes! Hahahahaha! --Ami

Oh, kids...

I am here.

That's what I kept thinking this week. I am here. I am here because of the brave men and women we remembered Tuesday evening through Wednesday afternoon when Jerusalem came to a standstill for a siren at 8pm and again at 11am the following morning. Everyone always talks about how appropriate it is for Israel to have Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) and Yom Haatzmaut (Independence day) back to back. That could never work in the US. How could Memorial Day come before an independence day for events that happened nearly 200 years ago? Unfortunately there are still US soldiers losing their lives all the time, but nobody in the US feels like their existence is sometimes hanging on a thread. But here the entire country feels that way. We all stop to remember. On Wednesday morning I went with my ulpan to a ceremony at a nearby high school. During the siren a girl behind me was sobbing. I didn't see who it was, and she wasn't the only one. I never saw so many teenagers express so much emotion like that. Throughout the ceremony students were leaning on each other. Afterwards when they got up there was a lot of hugging and people walked back to the school with locked arms. The eerie thing was that I realized what a close connection many of these students had to this day-- how many of them had friends or close relatives who lost their lives in battle. I have friends who have lost close friends. I have seen them crying. Last year UMD Hillel dedicated their Yom Hazikaron ceremony to the memory of Michael Levine, an American soldier whose twin sister graduated from the school a couple years ago. But I could never connect to the day the way these students did... and I hope I never do. We read a short article in class about the stereotype of Israelis as sabra fruits-- soft on the inside but prickly on the outside. The writer wrote how after a couple decades Israelis realized that it was okay to be soft, to express emotion. In fact they even had to in order to deal with the reality of living here.

Wednesday night we dried our eyes and broke out into song. I attended a Yom Haatzmaut tefilah with a full Hallel accompanied by a guitar and flute. After a "festive meal" at my brother's apartment I joined a couple thousand people at Kikar Safra (Jerusalem municipality) for singing and dancing to Israeli music. One day I will know all the hand motions and choruses. I guess it's just one more part of my klitah to look forward to. The city is so small. I felt like I recognized half the people there. Thursday morning I got up early to go on a hike with close to 25 other people. Coming back from the hike we were on a narrow road winding through valleys (note: don't look down) I had never seen before. I can't believe how developed a country can be after just 60 years. My grandma (seriously) asked me if there are sidewalks in Jerusalem, and here there are main roads winding around the sides of mountains. I hadn't seen that much green in Israel in awhile. My crazy Russian boss last summer, upon hearing that I'd be living in Jerusalem, said "Great, so we'll know that that part is ours." I had an inkling that she was Jewish, but never expected something like that from her. Rav Soloveitchik once spoke about how Avraham Avinu, after being told the borders of the land, walked the length of it in order to claim a true ownership of it. Every day I walk to ulpan, to work, wander down a small street I have never been on before, and yesterday I "inherited" a few kilometers more. I am here. Even after only nine months here I could observe Yom Haatzmaut with the excitement and pure joy of everyone around me. It isn't just that we need to appreciate the cost of having a Jewish homeland before celebrating it's independence. We NEED Yom Haatzmaut after the tears and emotions that get poured into Yom Hazikaron. We take just one day in the year to forget all our pains, all the blood that's been spilled, and just celebrate. There are flags everywhere, music coming from every, and the parks were full of families and friends celebrating together.

This year I didn't just celebrate the independence of the Jewish homeland, I celebrated the independence of my HOME. Even my 96 year old grandma, who never exactly expresses happiness over me being here, was really excited to ask me about Yom Haatzmaut. I can't wait to tell my other grandma about it whose opinion is "of course you moved to Israel, our family was always supposed to be in Israel. I couldn't do it but you could." I was thinking about how every year we say that there might never be another Tisha B'Av, that when full redemption comes we won't need it anymore. I think even when there is peace we should have Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut as usual. It is too important for this country. Even in ten generations we have to tell the stories of what happened in the past sixty years. We always need to remember why we are here.

I am here. Zeh hayom asah Hashem, nagilah v'nishmechah vo!

That time I made my three year old cousin cry

My three year old cousin Devorah has been having a rough time. She has been sick a lot, and she recently spent a few days in the hospital. For obvious reasons she has been really attached to her mother. She also likes me a lot except for today when I made her cry. Devorah was clearly getting tired and reaching meltdown stage, but in the meantime she was happily sitting next to me at the table eating some dinner. Somehow my friend Pesha came up in conversation, the mother of Raphi-- my bestest friend in the world. Raphi is about six months older than Devorah, and I always thought they'd make a cute pair. So I said, "Soon I'll introduce Raphi to Devorah so they can get married!" (or something of the sort). Probably at any time of day Devorah would have giggled and said "that's silly!" but this time she burst into tears and screamed "I don't want to leave Mommy! Mommy, mommy I can't leave you! I never want to leave you!" Devorah was completely distraught and couldn't be calmed down. I clarified that Raphi was just a nice friend I had for her to play with, but she wasn't buying it. Needless to say, it was pretty hysterical, and I had a hard time controlling my laughter (which wouldn't have helped the situation). I can think of so many situations in the future when I will want to remind Devorah of this event. In the meantime, she needs some reassurance that she will have many more years with her mommy and daddy. As for my relationship with Devorah, maybe a half hour later I was sitting on her bed with her discussing her possibly taking an airplane to visit me one day. I think she'll get over this... just don't mention marriage to her for awhile.

B'Chol Dor Va'Dor

This evening as I sat through my family's second seder, I took advantage of an opportunity to read different commentaries on random parts of the haggadah without worrying about keeping up with the relatively fast pace of the seder. Tonight I was particularly interested in the end of magid when we recite that in every generation we must feel like we are the ones coming out of Egypt. This morning before musaf Rabbi Samuels connected this "dor va'dor" to the one in "vehi she'amdah" about in every generation there being an enemy that rises up against us. Sam (aka my brother) passed over his haggadah and pointed to a comment made about this paragraph at the end of magid in the haggadah "Halaylah Hazeh" which works in a lot of pop culture commentary and includes interested poems and stories connecting to the parts of the haggadah. I can't remember who this comment was from, but it said that part of considering ourselves as having come out of Egypt is also keeping in mind the destination of Bnei Yisrael when they left. I can only imagine how they felt on their way out. On one hand they had witnessed fantastic miracles, but on the other hand they were tired and weak and leaving a familiar life behind. Even with the promise of Israel in their future, I doubt it was easy to trudge out of Egypt. I have just spent three weeks experiencing everything I loved and still love about my life in America, whether it be the convenient shopping or the friends and family I have here. On Wednesday I am getting on a plane back to my new home in Israel. Even though I am well aware of the great life I am starting for myself in Israel, it is hard to leave my "Egypt" as it were. The comment in the haggadah, which was written for Israelis, goes on to say that just over a hundred years ago basically nobody had a parent who was born in Israel. In this generation Israel has a vibrant population and so many people have special stories about how they or their families got there. The writer encourages participants in the seder to share their stories of making aliyah. At my seder this comment was kept between me and my brother. There are too many complications with talking about aliyah in front of my grandmother who still isn't exactly thrilled with me and my brother living in Israel now. But this is what I think about this idea from "b'chol dor va'dor." For every generation thinking about leaving Egypt will be different. We all relate to the message of Pesach in a different way. Even more so for thinking about the destination of the Jewish people. Bnei Yisrael left Egypt hanging onto a promise. I live the actualization of that promise every day. It is something I see every day right in front of me. Yesterday my friend's mother asked me what I like about living in Israel. Quite honestly I had to stop and think. My life there isn't easy, and I can't say I have really achieved happiness there. But I do get great satisfaction from knowing that making aliyah was something I planned on doing for a really long time, and last summer I did it. There are now members of this generation of my family living in Israel. The "dor ha'ba" will have a story of their own to tell at their seder.

Back from College Park: where even the CVS guy was happy to see me

Within three weeks I have basically made a crazy effort to see everyone who's important to me in my life. I was excited to be at home with my parents and grandmother in Newton and be welcomed by everyone at shul. I couldn't believe how big Ben and Tess got. Ben and Tess live down the street. When I met them Ben was 3 and Tess was 1. My first babysitting job was for them on Ben's 4th birthday. Now Ben is taking drivers ed and preparing to get his Learner's Permit in a couple weeks. I am loving the New England weather and, to go with that, central heating. Though really my third floor room here is as freezing cold as it always was, but the rest of the house is nice and toasty.

And then came the fun part: my 2008 East Coast Tour. Usually my annual tour is a simple trip to Philadelphia to see my grandmother and Teaneck for shabbat to see my cousins. This year I had to fit in going to College Park too. The past week was without a doubt the most exciting part of my trip back to America. Last Sunday, just five days after I arrived in the US, I flew down to Philadelphia. When I told my grandmother how long I was there for she gave me a sour look and said "Fine, I'll take what I can get!" I give her a tremendous amount of credit. She is on the verge of falling apart physically but insists on living on her own in her own house. She has people who come in to help her but she is adamant that she do as much as she can on her own. There are sometimes disasterous results, but this is what's important to her. Going to Philadelphia is never the most exciting part of a vacation but there are always stories to be told (gotta love the skeletons she pulls out of the closet from my family!) and she spends a good five hours or so telling me everything that's wrong with me but ending with "I love you anyway."

And from Philadelphia I went to... MARYLAND! I was so excited the second I saw a sign out the train window for Elkton, MD, right near the Delaware border and even happier when I caught site of a Maryland flag on the side of a Coca Cola factory. From Union Station I went to Kemp Mill to visit the daughters of someone who currently teaches at UMD but got her masters at Brandeis so has known me since I was the age of her oldest girls. I babysat for them and came for shabbat a couple times while I was at UMD and they complained that I didn't visit enough, so I had to work them into my trip! From there I went to University Towers to see more friends (arf!), and then Rebecca #2 picked me up to bring me to Silver Spring to see yet more friends who conveniently live together. I got to see Alan AND Noam AND Margo who despite what Alan implied are ALL my friends. The following morning I got on a bus to College Park. I was jumping up and down in my seat the entire way there.

College Park is beautiful. I could smell the fresh grass the second I got off the bus. Okay, I know this is an insane comparison to make, but I was full emotion like I was when I got off the plane in Israel back in August. I felt like I was home. To continue with what I wrote in my last post, on Friday I went to DC to see the Cherry Blossoms. It was too bad all my friends were too deathly ill to join me (or had class) but I enjoyed walking around icky humid DC on my own. I also visited my dinosaur friends (ie the skeletons) at the museum of Natural History. For those of you who don't know, one of the best classes I took at UMD was Dinosaur Class. When I got back to College Park I went to the Book Exchange to get a fresh pair of sweatpants. Then checked out Rugged Warehouse because UMD was 20 degrees warmer than the weather I had packed for, and basically I didn't wind up wearing 75% of what I packed for the trip. Then I went to CVS and was thrilled to get Jason as my cashier. To explain, Jason is the best CVS employee in the entire world. I want to be best friends with him. In the thirty seconds it took me to check out he caught me up on his life and I caught him up on mine. Does anyone know his last name? He must be on facebook. Anyway, that's when you really know you're at home somewhere - when even the CVS guy is happy to see you.

It was a typical shabbat at UMD. Friday night we had a meal at Shira's. On facebook she classified it as a protest against me leaving and encouraged people to picket. Stu made the best (and only) sign calling for me to get out of Israel. I can't wait to hang it on my wall in Israel and have lots of people see it and get the wrong idea. For shacharit the following morning, while you'd think that after almost a year I could sit through shacharit at Hillel, I didn't even bother davenning there at all. I just went for the end to see people... and it was so great seeing people. Shabbat lunch was at Chabad so I could catch up with all of them. My friend Doni was also in from Israel and in College Park for shabbat. He's in the army so I never ever see him. He said it's crazy we both had to go 6000 miles to see each other. It was good having him there... nice reminder of where we've both gone with our lives. Shabbat afternoon I did the unthinkable and went back to Hillel for mincha (not that I went in) and seudat shlishit so I could see more people. Even though there are like billions of freshmen at Hillel now I am happy to report that the community is still holding together. It was good to be back. Since I clearly wasn't going to stick around for havdalah, I left early to go have some quiet time on the mall. I can't believe I spent four years on that campus and that my time there was really all over. I was remembering when I sat out there during my orientation trip and thought about what had brought me there. But that aside ("ha'mevin yavin") it was a special few minutes. It had finally cooled down and campus looked fabulous as always.

When I'm in Israel I probably tell my few friends there how much I miss my many friends back in College Park way too often. I realize that I was very lucky and got in with a great group of friends really quickly. Even so, I was saying a week or so ago that even a total loner has friends in college at this point in the year, even if it's just one or two people they can reliably hang out with at night or on the weekends. When I left Hillel Saturday evening really feeling happy about the great people I met and became friends with in college I saw a kid standing by the walkway of Hillel facing the fence on the side and basically staring at his feet. Okay, maybe not everyone finds their niche. It totally broke my heart. I wished he had at least been pacing up and down the path so I could have said hi. Sigh.

Saturday night me, Shira, Dan, Stu (I miss listing all of us together) and Minnesota Sara (who is just as important) went out on the mall to blow bubbles. By now this is a scripted ritual. We start on the steps of the Administration Building, Shira and Sara stop to waltz by the fountain, following by sprawling out on the sundial and then ending up by Testudo in front of the library. And this time Shira and Sara stopped to make out behind a tree, but what else is new? So glad nothing has changed. Just like old times and all that. Glad everyone got at least slightly healthier to go out Saturday night. That night was really what I visited for.

So with a few more pats on Testudo's nose than usual I got ready to leave College Park. I still feel such a connection to that place and know that even long after all my friends have graduated it will still be important for me to come back there. It's crazy that I chose to go to UMD for such a silly reason and it wound up being one of the best decisions of my life. When I accepted admission to the school I had barely seen the campus and knew little about the programs there. Now I have been taught by some incredible professors, especially in the History department, lived in a crazy college town, spent every day walking along perfectly trimmed grass into tall brick buildings with white pillars, and I have friends I can't imagine living without. They even picketed against me leaving!ends I can't imagine living without. They even picketed against me leaving!

Sunday morning I stagged out of bed (or rather rolled off the air mattress) bright and early to leave for Teaneck. I'm glad I left visiting my cousins for the end of the trip after College Park or else I don't know if I would have ever left. My little cousins (Aharon, Adina, and Eitan) were well aware that they had less than 24 hours with me and milked every second of it. Eitan and Adina whisked Spotty and Peter off to feed them (cottage cheese as always) and Aharon showed me the report he was doing on the computer using Google images. 9 year olds are smart these days. Aharon got so tall I'm not even sure I can call him a little cousin anymore. I love watching them grow. They are so cool. I could say a zillion things about how cute they are. Monday morning. #1 on that list is waking up Monday morning to Eitan opening my door to crawl into bed with me... with Spotty, who slept in Eitan's bed for the night (Peter slept with Adina). Being adored is wonderful.


I was exhausted when I got back to Newton yesterday, and today I was out playing with my cousin Devorah all afternoon. What a trooper! She hasn't been feeling well for awhile and just spent a few days in the hospital because she was so anemic. Today, thanks to a healthy blood transfusion, she spent over an hour bouncing around at the park. She commented that she had to wait a long time to see me, and it was only two weeks since I last saw her. So cute.

Tomorrow I have two more playdates. Sam and Michal are coming in from Israel. I'm spending Thursday with my mom. My sister is coming in Thursday night. I haven't seen her since my college graduation. My time here is flying by, and as I said, it's extremely intense seeing everyone in three weeks and knowing I won't see them again for awhile. Thankfully my next trip back is only four and not seven months away. My cousins were a little more forgiving about letting me go this time. I can't even think about going back to Israel right now. I'm glad I'm going back, but I just don't want to think about it. Being here is too special.