שנה טובה ומתוקה--Shanah Tovah u'Metukah

Shanah Tovah u'Metukah to everyone!

This is Rosh Hashanah Gameplan, Version 5.7.67:

It all began a few weeks ago when the Klein-Katz family invited me to their open-house potluck lunch on Sunday, the second day of Chag. By accecpting this invitation, I narrowed me plans to a neighborhood. Or so I thought. It turns out that Flo lives approximately six buildings away from Yavin and his family in the Abu Tor neighborhood of southeast Jerusalem, and we arranged that I'd stay over at her house the first night and follow her to shul and wherever she was going for dinner. I still needed Saturday lunch, dinner, and bed. I looked at my map and tried to scale the distance between Abu Tor and Katamon, where I figured I might catch Rafi for some or all of these. I'm not one of those suburban kids: I'm perfectly used to walking around, and I'm especially willing to do it on Shabbat to see what I can see. Plans were floatable until almost the last minute when I was going to take Yavin or Rafi for Saturday night, whoever called back first. Turned out Rabbi Michael did, which was OK because then Rafi said he was probably going to stay at his yeshiva for chag anyway.

So it was settled, then. The plan: Flo's house, then Shirah Chadashah for Kabbalat Shabbat/Chag, then her dinner place, then back to her house. A random shul in the morning, then walk to eat with Cheryl and Josef and either meet the Klein-Katzes at their shul, Kol HaN'shama, or walk straight to their dinner place and back to their house to sleep. Another random shul in the morning, hang out in the afternoon for lunch, then maybe go back to Flo's for havdalah or wait to actually see Rafi. Something like that.

But it's Chag. So there wasn't just walking. There was a lot of walking. Let's start with Friday at 2:45 AM. I haven't written about our overnight Zionism trip Wednesday night, but there are a few (like two, maybe) pictures showing the highlight. It wasn't terribly fun until the night when we played a lot of shesh besh. But, to quote Meir Kahane's student: "That's not what I came to tell you about." It just sets up the background of not necessarily having had so much sleep.

So, Friday, 2:45 AM. Wake up to say a quick Selichot, which Ashkenazim traditionally say beginning the week before Rosh Hashanah and the Sephardim, maybe because of some guilt complex, start saying the month before (the same day the shofar starts and the day that Moses went back up Mount Sinai). It was pretty quick given that the last day of Selichot is the longest day. But we were going to take advantage of this length. In groups of 30 or so, we walked around the Nachlaot neighborhoods just off (west, I think of) Machane Yehuda and went into three synagogues, all of which, by chance, were from Sephardic places. (Nachlaot is a series of small, walled neighborhoods, each of which originally contained Jews from Diaspora communities who wanted to maintain that sort of home-y culture and therefore moved as groups to these neighborhoods.) One was the Greek synagogue, one the Halabi (Syrian), and one the "Synagogue Ades of the Glorious Aleppo Community" (also Syrian). We were lucky in that we managed to catch one particular refrain in all three synagogues and therefore got to hear how similar they all are. To prove that religion intersects with the mundane in Israel, our tour guide brought out his CD player and we listened to a #1 hit from a few years ago. There, under the vocals and the drums, was this same catching melody. I'll see if I can upload the 9-second clip I recorded at the Ades synagogue.

Once awake at this ugly--and cold!--hour of the morning, we walked through a totally-empty shuk (this is 4:22 AM) over to the Old City, specifically to the Kotel, for the Hashkamah (sunrise) minyan. We were too late, though that's hardly my fault because I was one of three people following on the heels of our guide as she led us through--oops--the Jaffa Gate and the empty Armenian Quarter. It was a little late for sunrise but we did the quickest Shacharit I've ever seen because the buses were almost ready to pick us up. There was the usual cup-rattling under the noses of people clearly talking to something more important. Also the usual treat for any group that goes through Nachlaot: Marzipan rugelach!

Any sane person would have gone to bed upon returning but I had to stay up to await the aforementioned phone calls to settle my plans for the weekend. Idiot. I did wind up sleeping for a little bit, though for about three hours instead of the six I really wanted. Then, after being confused by a topotogical impossibility with the #20 bus and the failure of the #12 to come, I split a taxi with Eli that took us both to within a few minutes of where we were going. Remember this: he's from the Madison area. And he was staying with the Kol HaN'shama Rabbi.

Well, it was great to see Flo Low again. She's got the top floor of a little place overlooking the Promenade and UN stuff to the South and the fence to the East. In winter, without the haze, she thinks she'll be able to see Jordan. We did a little quick readying, chatting, then moved off to shul. The great thing about Shirah Chadashah is that it's Carlebach but it's also slow enough to allow everyone to harmonize. I thought after the summer that I was going to adopt Yedidiah as "my" shul but I may switch allegiances. Bonus points that the first person to whom I wished a Shanah Tovah was Michael Oren who this time greeted me with, "I spoke with your uncle this afternoon." So maybe it's true what "they" say that you only remember someone after seeing him twice in two different situations.

Afterwards I met the family we'd be eating with, which Flo described as מעולה and נהדרת, both of which are slightly more excellently cool than מצוין. (Use Answers.com. And just wait for the coming allusion.) It's 17-year-old BGG triplets and their nearlytwelve brother, four years ago from Teaneck, NJ but since then slowly changing from "sabbatical in Israel" to making aliya. She's right, because the kids were a lot of fun to be with that night. Science, baseball, frisbee, funny jokes, etc. And then we played some Jewish geography, as in Rafi coached the kid and the male triplet played ball with Yoni. They're all (Yankees) fans and I really see a lot of myself from that age in the 12-year-old.

Flo and I went back a little after midnight and talked on her did-I-mention-the-view porch for a little while, some about national and other politics, some about social groups, but all of it waiting to be continued in the future because I may have mentioned that I woke up at 2:45 AM. Yes, this was all within 22 hours of waking up.

TBC...

Samaritans

This is coming way too late, but there's always such a delicate balance involved in trying to keep the updates coming. The first stage is always to experience these things before I can write about them. I mean, that's obvious, right? Good. So first I have to to somewhere. Then I have to think about the experience and remember it so I can write about it in my journal at night. But sometimes there's too much to write about and so I lag a day, which then snowballs into too long of a time to remember all the details that I had wanted to write. All the while there's emails from friends and family that ask questions about everyday life that would be answered on here if I were to update often enough. But I feel bad about not giving personal replies, so I spend time coming up with answers that could be organized into blog entires but that are located in all sorts of different email conversations.

Please, please, don't take this to mean that I don't like getting emails. It's much nicer to get an email than to read a short comment on my posts (though those don't hurt, either) but it's not always so easy to personalize the responses to those emails.

I think that's the end of this section of the entry. Except to remind about the photo albums.

Last Monday, the 18th, I officially switched from the History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict class into the Lost Jewish Communities class. My introduction to this course was a 45 minute bus ride to Holon, in the general Tel Aviv area, in which our group of 18 met with a few members of the Samaritan/שומרונים/Shomronim community. Specifically, we talked with Penina, the daughter of the first Samaritan to leave their main population center in Shechem/שכם/Nablus. Penina's father moved to Yafo/יפו/Jaffa before 1948, at which time Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, future second president of Israel, became very interested in Lost Jewish Communities. When he entered the Presidency in 1952 he managed to get the Samaritan community a significant amount of land in Holon and ever since then, part of the original Shechem community has lived in Holon. Their total number is in the 600-ish region, up from only 140 in 1900.

So who are they? They say that they descend from Jews who were not exiled by the Babylonians and that since there was no religious gap, their practices are the practices of the Israelite tribe from the time it crossed the Jordan. They therefore don't recognize the Talmud or any of the oral law and halachah of the later rabbis. In their religion, Har Gerizim is the place which God designated as holy for Akedat Yitzchak and so Shechem is the holy place. They point to the fact that Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Torah, which, as I've said, is what they recognize as the divine canon. They recognize the Five Books, Moses as the one prophet, God as the one god, and some of the other later writings as being the stories of perfectly nice people. But rules set down in Nevi'im and Ketuvim/נביאים וכתובים/Prophets and Writings aren't seen as carrying weight and so Jerusalem was never the focal point of their religion.

One of the absolutely most interesting features of their religion--aside from the sacrifice which I'll address later--is the language they use. It's Hebrew. Sort of. The shapes of the letters are the shapes used for Hebrew before the Exile. At that time the letters adopted Aramaic shapes and started to look more like what Hebrew looks like today. But their Torah scrolls are written in script that looks like this. And outside of her house, Penina has a mezuzah written in the old script. The pronounciation is slightly different too but unfortunately I couldn't switch my camera setting quickly enough to record her when she read out first the Shema and then the list of central tenets of Samaritanism. One the bus a few days later I started decoding the script and found out that there are no sofit letters in the Samaritan alphabet. Or at least for chaf there aren't any.

Their synagogue is much more modest than the entry gate may give away. (By the way, written on the sides is ברוך אתה בבאך / ברוך אתה בצאתך--Blessed are you in your coming / Blessed are you in your going). Shoes are removed before entering the room. The only pieces of furniture are a few plastic chairs and some wooden rods. The chairs are for people who can't stay standing; the rods are for people who need help. (Afterwards I asked the priest about the age range of the community and he told me it was nothing out of the ordinary. Penina seemed to confirm this by

telling us that plenty of Samaritans marry Jews, thus increasing the Samaritan population. Though that's a segue to her husband's intense hatred of the Rabbanut tht I'm not quite ready to take yet.) The priest is the only one allowed up on the bimah-equivalent, and he brought out the Torah, encased in an enclosure like Sephardi Torahs are. There are engravings on the silver as well as on the sides and back of the parchment. The layout, as you can see, isn't columnular like we're used to but we didn't get a chance to look at it long enough to really figure out if there were paragraphs; the text certainly wasn't rectilinear, though.

After returning from the synagogue, Penina's husband Hillel came out and started talked to me and Harry after asking whether we undersatood Hebrew. (Penina had up to this point only spoken Hebrew and poor Tobi was stuck trying to translate pages at a time instead of the usual three sentences.) His gripe is with the Rabbanut, i.e.: the Haredis in control of everything religious in this country. Samaritans are given the Right of Return but it was decided that a Jew marrying a Samaritan is considered to be engaging in intermarriage by the Rabbanut. He simply wants to be recognized as Jewish and to be given everything that comes with this designation. He said (my translation), "There would be 50 million Jews today if the Rabbis hadn't always been restricting who is a Jew." Once, he says, he offered a Shabbat Shalom to a rabbi walking down the street and was returned with Shabbat Adom (Red Shabbat: blood).

I don't quite feel I did this subject justice, though that's probably because I wrote it in so many different snatches that it was hard to get my writing organized. I'll try to be more on it in the future.

Hezekiah's Tunnel

As promised, here's one of the "reflection-pieces" (or somesuch similar phrase) from my Jerusalem Through the Jewish Historical Perspective class. We went on a trip to Hezekiah's Tunnel in the City of David (a little south of the walled Old City) last Monday. I was also there in the last week of June:

One disadvantage to having been in Jerusalem and doing touristy-historical day trips is that some sites lose their significance the second time around. When I walked around the historical sites in the City of David only twelve weeks ago, I thought it was exciting to be there then but even at that time I was already thinking ahead because I was sure I would visit the same site when I came on Year Course. Naturally I proved correct. But I was wrong about the site losing its significance on my second visit.

In twelve weeks there has been a lot of archæological advance at the entrance of the City of David. In June, the entire section immediately to the right of the grated walk-over section was entirely undisturbed. Now workers have cleared away thousands of bucket of soil from this point of slight depression. They work to uncover the history behind the City of David in order to further establish Jewish claims of legitimacy to the land around Jerusalem and especially to the walled Old City itself. If, as some scholars argue, Jerusalem's importance was political before it was ever religious, then uncovering evidence about the earliest inhabitants of the city can prove to those who deny the Jewish claim to the land that there was a Jewish presence in Jerusalem. Even the discovery of a stone inscribed with the name of King David himself should not end the discussion over control of the city but it would certainly be a major blow to certain oppositive factions' claims.

Even within the entrace to Hezekiah's Tunnel (the humorous Hebrew name for which is related to the word for "female") there have been very recent changes. The entrance is now approximately twenty meters behind where it was only twelve weeks ago, meaning that either more of the tunnel has been uncovered or an entire rear chaber of the building has been more fully explored. In either case, it is clear that rapid progress is being made in doing archæological work. One hopes that the feverish pace does not signify that the archæological community thinks Israel is going to turn over any part of their working space, but this thought is always at the back of one's mind at digs all over this country.

What is special about Hezekiah's Tunnel--and I'll not discuss the history--is that one has the option of experiencing the walk exactly the same way as the workers did 2700 years ago. Flashlights have been both invented and allowed in the tunnel, but when one is lucky enough to be the last member of the group to walk through the tunnel, one has the option of not using his flashlight. This experience is the true way to walk the 530 meters of the water tunnel. Given the proper rhythmic gifts, one can even beat out the sounds of the drums of the invading army--only to remember that the invading army never succeeded in infiltrating Jerusalem precisely because of the tunnel. And this realization is the entire purpose of visiting sites like Hezekiah's Tunnel. So many places in Israel have an intense historical connection and one must feel the water and the slime and the hard rock overhead in order to feel this history.

Class!

On Sunday we began classes in a very confusing block schedule schedule. I've never had a block schedule before, but even if I had I don't think it could be this confusing. Shevet Hebrew classes are from 8:30 to 10:30 every other day Sunday through Thursday and 10:30 to 12:30 every other every other day. If that made sense without you thinking too hard then there's something wrong with you. Sunday (so weird to have class on Sunday and not Friday!), Tuesday, Thursday we have Hebrew first; Monday and Wednesday, second. Hebrew is taught, strangely, entirely in Hebrew, which is a concept that none of the French, Spanish, or German teachers at LPHS managed to use. Well obviously they wouldn't have been teaching in Hebrew but you get my point.

Orit teaches in much the same way I'm used to because her method is very similar to Rivka's. We read a story and begin studying the vocabulary in the text. Then there's always a grammar lesson (for example, expections to plurals and adjective conjugation, etc.) Then, on a larger scale, two or three stories and maybe a song are strung together with a thematic intent. Our first unit was about relationships. We read "לשבור את החזיר" (Breaking the Pig) by Etgar Keret, which is about a seemingly-friendless boy with a father who wants to teach a lesson about valuing money and so makes the kid save a shekel a day from drinking bad hot chocolate--which the kid hates. He can only get a Bart Simpson doll when the pig makes no noise when shaken. But the pig remains the only smile in the boy's life and when he's finally full the boy does not want his father to smash his friend with a hammer. We wrote the end of the story ourselves, then read the author's solution to saving the pig and not getting in trouble with the father.

We moved on to the song "באה אליכם" ("Coming to You"), another piece about relations between child and son. We glean vocab and take away conjugation lessons from the song before listening to it. There was a third piece, a great rhyimg story in which a series of animals interview to be the fifth tenant in a house. Several have ligitimate reasons for not wanting to join even though they like the place: the nightengale can't stand the noise the squirrel makes; the rabbit thinks that the cookoo bird's abandoned and dispersed children will be a bad influence on her multitudes; the ant won't live in a place with a fat lazy chicken on the first floor. All of them politely decline the invitation to live in the building. But the pig, "whitest of the white since the day of creation," who doesn't want to live with a black cat is told to leave because the rest of the tenants don't want him there. Then we read the ultimate relationship story: "העץ הנדיב" (The Giving Tree). It's something I don't realize until I read it, but it really is one of my favorite books ever. I understand something new each time I read it (and something more when I hear it read to me). I have a few people in mind to whom I want to read that seemingly simple story.

So, Abby, what movie might fit into this theme of relationships? We watched "כנפיים שבורות" ("Broken Wings") this morning, which is something that can work in a two-hour class. It's the one thing I won't analyze, but that's only because it's a movie and I can't deal with it. It was pretty good but unfortunately that's we way I describe a lot of them. But no, I did get the point I think.

I think the best other class I'm taking is going to be "Jerusalem through the Jewish Historical Perspective". We learn about Jerusalem on Tuesday then go on a three-hour siyur (field trip, basically) on Sunday afternoon. It's a pretty good deal with the only real work being short commentaries on the trips we've taken. I'll probably post those on here after I write them. The first trip, which we'll be taking this Sunday, is to Hezekiah's Tunnel. I made the mistake of not bringing my camera the last time I was there, so I think I will this weekend.

I also have a Midrash class, starting with the Akedah then moving to Adam and Eve and then sort of all around I think, but not so sure. The History of Zionism class is a good fit for me because Akiba's weak point always has been teaching Jewish history. For this class we visited the Herzl Museum on Har Herzl. It was cheesier than last time but other than that not much else was different. The point was still the same and the scoffing reactions of the group were the same at the same places in the presentation. It's a little condescending of a presentation but all of these new-style media museums are like that, I think. I'm much more a fan of the museums containing racks of artifacts and boxes and display cases than the TV-style ones.

The final class, the one I want to change out of, is the History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict class. Why do I want to switch? Two reasons. The first is that, as a history class, it shouldn't be taught by someone with an ease of inserting bias into his lessons. We're a Jewish Zionist group being taught a Zionist subject by a Zionist teacher on a course in Israel. I have a hard time seeing--after only one class, even--that it will give equal time to the "histories" of both sides of this conflict. That's the ideological reason. The practical reason I want to switch classes is that I can take this sort of history class anywhere, especially at Brandeis. What I can't do is take a class like Lost Jewish Communities because there's no way to visit all these old communities when I'm sitting in Waltham. So I'm hoping to be able to switch into that class before too much time has gone by.

Now I've got to go read some stuff and work out Shabbos and Rosh Hashanah plans. Update in a few. And bollocks on losing my sunglasses dancing at the Kotel last Erev Shabbos. The Brits are teaching us some English.

Stuff We've Done

We started with the hikes through the north that were cleared only days--hours--before we got to Israel. We slept in the campsite at Nachal Amud, which is due south of and looking across at Tzfat and just about as far north as the north end of the Kinneret. Bathroom situation was fun as always with the Israeli-style waterless eco-toilets. The rocks were a little hard for comfort but the fire was warm. Mapal Devora looked the same as it did except that we didn't get close enough to sit under the falls or go behind them. Line of the day:

"...so you say 'aboot'?" --D, Houston
"F*** you, I'm not from Alberta." --M, Montreal
"Hey! I'm from Alberta!" --A, Calgary

We went up to Har Bental, a base that became famous in '73. So we watched the Syrian border and heard from our tour guide Shlomit about the sentiment against Olmert today and how it compares to what Golda faced in '73. I was talking with Yigal afterwards and he says that the problem is that she took responsibility and stepped down whereas he refuses to entertain the idea of a government inquiry commission.

The next day, which was Thursday, we did a little hike right around the Nachal area. When Inquisition-era Jews moved to Tzfat their main industry was textiles and on the hike we saw some windows built up where they had used the power of the stream to drive their commerce. Part of the hike went through what seemed like a foreign country: suddenly we were covered in greenery and it was cool and shady and the brook was bubbling nearby. Then, though, it was back out into the sun and it was clear we were back in Israel again. The part of the tiyul I most looked forward to was the drive through Kiryat Shmoneh. I'd never been there before, and certainly if we had gone it would have been before the war up there. We saw a few direct hits and a few parking lot craters before listening to the director of MADA (Magen David Adom/Red Cross) in K8 give a little discussion of the events of the part month. Then we drove up to the spot above Tel Hai, which is where Trumpeldor and seven others fell in 1920. It also happens to be where twelve reservists were killed when a Katyusha hit the parking lot on August sixth.

We had some interesting guests with us. Somewhere in Kiryat Shmoneh, the reporter for the Ten o'Clock BBC News (either the main guy or the Israel desk guy; even with Google/google images I can't quite tell) and his cameraman joined our already-full tour bus. We were told that they were doing some sort of story on youth groups or Young Judaea in particular...anyway, it's not so important.

They came up with us to the parking lot area. Before we got to the top of the hill, which is where the lot is, we passed the Trumpeldor lion statue and then a cemetary where people from the area who died fighting for Israel are buried. I had wanted to engage the reporter (heretofore known as "Anchor") from when he first stepped onto the bus, but when I said as much to Yoni, my madrich, he said that "there are entire organizations devoted to dealing with the BBC" and that I shouldn't try to throw my hat into the ring. But no, I don't think that was a sufficiently fiery response, so I went for it anyway.

As we passed the cemetary, me carefully walking just in front of Anchor, the following interchange:

Anchor: It's a very nice cemetary.
Me: You'd rather they not need the cemetary.
Anchor: Everyone has to die sometime.

"Everyone has to die sometime." ???????

At the top of the hill, where the praking lot is, we read from a packet a brief biography of each of the twelve soldiers killed there. As we did so, there was constant noise from Israeli helicopters flying around overhead. It's hard to tell whether they were actually going over Lebanese airspace because of visual perspective problems but I don't think it's unlikely. The cameraman stayed behind the wall [you can see the wall in the background of the picture above; it has the twelve pictures on it] until the middle of the reading, when he came out and began to film...the helicopters overhead! What a lovely display of Israeli military might!

We were only just beginning, though. After a drive high into the mountains right on the Lebanon border (in other words, 800 meters above sea level and 10 meters from a waving Indian dude in a turban wearing a UN jacket) during which we tailed a tank for much of the time, we stopped at a three-tank base called [oy, it's on my camera which isn't here right now!]. We spoke with a 21-year-old soldier who made aliyah from South Africa two years ago. I spent the entire time while the usual questions ("Did you choose tanks?" No, but he's glad he's there; "Did you come with your family?" Yes, he did. etc.) were being asked thinking of a way to get the BBC guy. Actually, let me back up a step first....

The cameraman had been standing in the middle of a circle: imagine the soldier as the center of a clock and our group as the dots around it for about 160 degrees of the circle. The cameraman was standing somewhere at the radial length of approximately the hour hand. So he was always in someone's way. When he decided it was my turn, I tapped him and asked him if he could please move because he was standing right in front of me and I was having a hard time seeing. It's not like he had a microphone and needed to be standing close. The zoom on his camera is certainly better than the one on mine, but I make do with what I've got. Maybe he figured they'd gotten two strikes on me, because he then came to stand with the end of his camera approximately seven and two-thirds inches from the left side of my face. And he stood there. And I stared. And stared. And the rest of the group was full of nervous laughter. Mind you, I was wearing my sunglasses and so far I have yet to find someone who can see through them to know in which direction my eyes are looking.

So that was all the background. As I said, I spent this entire Q & A period trying to come up with a question that I knew the soldier would answer the right way, so the BBC guys would know I'm not just another pro-Israel nit to pick, and to, I hoped, get some compliments from the counselors or the other kids. If I hadn't expected the last of those to be true, I would have been three for three. Anchor and the cameraman were now the 12 o'clock to my 6 o'clock with the soldier still in the middle. Natalie, a madricha, was standing at 12 at the distance the end of the minute hand would have been, so her back was directly in front of the BBC.

Taking my sunglasses off, and looking directly through the soldier at the cameraman, I asked whether he had a better understanding of Israel now that he lives here than when he lived in South Africa. He began, "That's a very good question and I'm glad the media are here to listen to the answer... When you're in the rest of the world, you rely on the media and often they don't tell the full story..." Natalie flashed a huge smile; Shlomit complimented me and an "excellent question". And if I'm not mistaken, Anchorman himself gave a little grin. After the circle broke up (read: after the circle broke up and we started to climb on the tanks) I thanked the soldier for giving the perfect answer, the exact one I was prepared for when I asked the question.

There are other pictures, some with captions but all with the intention of getting captions. And there's also the pages with the list of links to Yearcourse and Legacy photos.

Comparisons

Midnight, Sept. 10

One of the things that I find myself doing a lot during this first week is comparing Legacy-Keshet and Yearcourse. I realize the two aren't intended to be compared--one was a six-week summer program that involved a lot of touring and a lot of hanging out at the university campus and the other is a year-long program that is full of free time, should one decide to avail oneself of it that involves a lot of hanging around wherever in this country one can go to and come back from before one has class on a weekday morning. That said, though, the first parts of the trips weren't dissimilar:

Obviously the flight was the same, but even if it weren't it would be too boring to discuss here.

Yearcourse is so much bigger (I want to say there are 500-ish total and 160 in Jerusalem right now and 80 in Shevet) that disorganization is entirely expected. Leaving the airport on a single bus is much easier than trying to direct three groups simultaneously to a dozen different buses at the same time as Nativ is walking through the doors right next to us.

More people means (one might conjecture) higher chances of finding the right group of friends perfectly compatible. On the other hand, it takes longer to sift through the crowds to find that group. And, of course, I know from having experienced it that it is possible for the entire group to be the "right group". After even a half hour sitting repacking/reorganizing bags at Ben Gurion and overhearing conversations and making small talk, I realize that not all selection processes are as well-designed as the one Legacy used for this summer. I hope that in the future enough teens will be interested in programs like Yearcourse that the turn away the people who are incapable of standing with their mouths closed. That's another big difference: Keshet never had to scream their heads off to get us to shut up, much less to do that on Shabbos. I just don't understand it. Because on the other hand, nearly everyone here now has previously been to Israel, whereas only 20% of Legacy had been here before the summer. And it's not like the two groups should be so different: both have their share of USY and other youth group kids.

Midnight, Sept. 11

But here's one difference that is quite evident to me right now through several of my senses. Whether it was the selectivity of Legacy or the freedom afforded to Yearcourse, the sounds of throwing up, the smell of smoke, the feel of trying to lift my roommate's head to put his pillow under it on the floor, the sight of staggering friends-by-day, the taste of disillusionment, are all entering, entering. So maybe not several but instead all. I think I'd like to think it's just the freedom afforded to Yearcourse that causes this overload but I have the feeling that perhaps tonight wasn't anyone's first time with any of this stuff. Why did I go to Ben Yehuda tonight? Because it was our first time let out of the building. Why did everyone else go? Same reason. But free time this summer was spent singing and making (sometimes off-color) jokes and tossing discs and walking a beautiful campus. Free time this year may very well be tonight several times over. That's not to say that the Baitar Jerusalem/Hapoel Tel Aviv game playing on the TV in the street wasn't exciting to watch in that atmosphere, but I don't want to be the one who drags a roommate back to the hostel at quarter past eleven.

More differences: few people from Legacy had previously been to Israel while nearly everyone here has been at least once already. That difference I'm at a loss to explain. It's also really hard to figure out the religious observance of a lot of Yearcourse kids. The Brits especially all call themselves Modern Orthodox but Americans would apply that label to few of them. And for the number of American kids who say the same thing, the "minyan" we had the first few days certainly didn't reflect it. There has been more participation in the last few days, but always more at Minchah than Shacharit so something funny is going on.

TBC...?

Goodbye!

Yesterday +

• a lake
• Grandma and Grandpa
• an Aunt and Uncle
• 3 cousins
• 3 sisters
• 4 camp buddies
• 2 of their parents
• 2 of my parents
• packing
• packing
• repacking
• rerepacking
• 5 hours of sleep
• a drive to Midway
• a flight to Newark
• a visit with a friend (please show up!)
• a ride across New Yorl
• 5 hours in the terminal
• a hop across the ocean

=

ארץ ישראל שלי יפה וגם פורחת
מי בנה ומי נטע? כולנו ביחד