This Wednesday, September 11th, was
an incredibly long day for me. It was,
first of all, my second day of hands-on observation at the Rambam school. I took the 7:30 am bus from my apartment,
planning to arrive at Rambam at 8:00 am.
TZ rode the bus with me, as did Perrin and Natalie, and Noah and
Devin. TZ and I had no trouble
finding the entrance this time. I had
brought my tallit, tefillin, and Ashkenazic siddur with me so that I
could pray tefillat hashachar with the boys in the morning. I thought that this might be a good way to
further endear myself to them, so that they would more fully trust me (not all
of them believed that I was Jewish, I should add). One student, who shares my name, and is already
quite attached to me, was anxious that I sit with him. The students use a Sepharadic liturgy sung to
Sepharadic tunes, and are overseen by a Rabbi.
For those of you interested, the students' liturgy, ignoring the changes
caused by the fact that it is the time between Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur
(known as the Days of Awe) consists of: birchot hashachar, pesukei
dezimra, the Shema and associated blessings, the Shemoneh Esrei
with a heichi kedushah, Tachanun, Ashrei and Uva
le'Tzion, and aleinu. This is
somewhat minimal (pesukei d'zimra consisted of just baruch she'amar,
Ashrei, Kol Haneshama, and Yishtabach), much more suited
to students' attention spans than the somewhat longer, more hurried version
that I am used to. The Rabbi, after Tachanun,
gave a very brief lesson on Yom Kippur.
I couldn't, unfortunately, accurately follow all that he said.
Afterwards, I joined Moshe, TZ,
and the 8th-grade girls in their English class.
I was trying to work with a pair that later became a group of three to
understand the lesson of Monday, a story by Isaac Asimov called "Sarah
Tops." One of the girls was
moderately receptive to me, but the other one actively tried to make learning
more difficult for her partner. She
refused to speak in anything but Hebrew, asked me a series of unrelated questions
in order to distract me from the lesson at hand, turned her back on me and
refused to listen, covered her head so that she couldn't hear, and, whenever
her partner showed interest, jabbed her.
I believe that she might have some form of ADD or ADHD. I did not lose my temper with her, even when
she said some rather cruel things to me, knowing that when the teacher loses
his temper, everyone loses. That was my
only teaching for the day, and I felt rather bad about my inability to teach
anything substantive.
At 10:30 am, the school population
(consisting of maybe around 80 students, by my estimate) walked to a nearby
synagogue, where the same Rabbi who had overseen tefillah led the
students in some simple s'lichot (prayers of forgiveness), and taught them
how to perform kapara with coins.
On the way back to the school, TZ told me that her father received a
doctorate in Biblical literature, having written at thesis on Kohellet. This excited me to no end; I told her how
much one of my best friends, who is also my first learning partner, really
loves Kohellet, (yes, that's you, Peninah♥♥♥♥♥), and got me into it. For those of you who don't know about my
personal relationship with Kohellet, I think that it's one of the finest books
of philosophy from the ancient world, which asks some of the profoundest
questions about the human condition, and brings together some of the most
beautiful language (even when translated into English) found in the Bible. TZ explained to me that she's pretty much
been living with Kohellet as a brother for the past couple of years, which really
cracks me up.
Anyway, we had taught our last English
classes for the day, and TZ and I spent the rest of the morning, and until
around 12:30 pm, touring the English facilities, and thinking about lesson
plans. We not only need to teach
language, but also need to convey literature and culture, which might make
things difficult. The textbooks are
so-so, and don't seem to teach very consistently, or in very good ways. I think that even my High School French
textbooks were better than these. I
think that TZ and I, although we might use the textbooks as a guide for
what grammatical structures and forms we will be teaching to each grade level,
might end up diverging sharply from the content and vocabulary. We're trying to really motivate these
students to learn, and that isn't easy, as I know from personal experience.
We met other ITF participants on the
bus, and rode with them to their house on Rechov Havaradim. I was still in my long dress pants at this
point, which I will be wearing every day to school (none of the other teachers
wear shorts, although my short-sleeve button-down shirts, sneakers, and small
grey kippah are very much within the bounds of the dress code). We had only around an hour before our 3:00 pm
meeting at the English center, so I took time to teach a few of the others a
little bit more Hebrew. I am really
trying, as are they, but I'm not an experienced teacher, and we don't have much
time to practice. We had some programs
at the English Center and at the Kashtot Center downstairs on the campus,
ending with Carmel showing us the Israeli film Ushpizin, with English
subtitles. For those of you who haven't
seen it yet, I highly recommend it, as a story that tells a lot about Israeli
society, simultaneously about its internecine conflicts and its unities. It noticeably doesn't mention anything about
the other populations in Israel (there are no Arab characters, nor are there
even any references to any land-conflict, an omission easily noted by a
foreigner such as myself who hears a great deal about this subject). Speaking of the Arab-Zionist conflict, did
anyone notice who Assad just put the onus of getting rid of chemical weapons in
the Middle East on Israel? The conflict,
which blew up into an international human rights issue when he (probably) used
chemical weapons against his own people, has become soluble only if Israel
signs a nonproliferation treaty. I don't
know if this was his plan from the beginning, but now Assad (who now admits
that he has had chemical weapons this whole time), is trying to strongarm
Israel into giving up its WMDs, using his own civilian population as his
hostages. Even if one believes that
Israel should sign such a treaty, I find it hard to deny that the Israelis have
next to nothing to do with the chemical weapon attack, and that Assad's recent
statement (ultimatum?) diverts international attention from the actions of the
Syrian government onto those of its neighbor and enemy. Perhaps Assad hopes that international anger
at the State of Israel (never in short supply in the UN) can be used as either
a shield, to ward off world scrutiny into its actions by reminding it of all of
the issues in its southern neighbor, or as a sword, to earn a
"freebie" Israeli disarmament as part of its own Russia-negotiated
disarmament, striking a blow against its hated enemy.
But I digress. Afterwards, I took a run in Gan Golda. At around forty minutes into my run, I felt
another runner approaching me from behind.
I decided to pace him, or her, and for the next few minutes, ran
alongside him, shadowing him just slightly on the outside of the track from
him. He was a much faster runner
than I was (based on the rough shape of the shadow-runner, I guessed that he
was male, but I didn't look directly at his face). He was doing some kind of sprinting exercise,
in which he would speed up, and I could barely even stay even with him, even
though I think that he was waiting up for me.
Finally, I look directly at him – and he's a handsome 5'11"
Ethiopian guy in his late 20s. Wow: what
a guy! There we were, ontologically just
runners, sharing everything in common because of our athletic striving.
Back at my apartment, I learn that the
Internet is still down, as it had been since I returned home on Tuesday (FYI,
it's still down). Carmel was doing his
best to fix it, but the customer service people with whom he was communicating
were being very rude to him, and supremely unhelpful. By the way, I don't know to what extent this
has come out in my blog, but Carmel is absolutely superhuman in the energy that
he devotes towards making all of the Oranim Ramla-Lod participants happy and
comfortable, and does the work of two to three people. After showering, downing some milk, and
putting on a nice button-down shirt, I ran off to my friends' house on Rechov
Havaradim to have my 2:00 pm EST interview with a public school for which I'd
love to work in the 2014-2015 school year (really, it's my dream job for next
year). Just so that I won't keep anyone
in suspense, I learned on Thursday night that I had not received the job. This is nothing new to me: I've been turned
down more times than I can count, literally.
However, the stress of the interview probably contributed to me getting
into the closest I've gotten to a fight with my housemates. I attacked an argument that Noah had made,
and completely began an altercation that I shouldn't have. The worst thing is, that I did it at the very
time of year, the days between Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur, during which,
ideally, I should be on my best behavior.
Thursday, we had another of these
trips to get ITF teacher training. Our
entire group was wholly unimpressed.
Although we all agreed that having teacher training was important, we
got very little concrete information, and mostly just inspirational
messages. It really felt like a waste of
a perfectly good 7-hour period. Afterwards,
in the heat of the day, I took a trip to the shuk, and picked up groceries
for the upcoming few days. Fresh dates
were going for ₪8 per box, a box holding around a kilo and a half. And these were literally fresh off of the
frond; good stuff, that. I need to find
myself a place to get some good zchug, though; I had some at the Kashtot
center the other night, and had forgotten how good it tastes with hummus. I took a run in the park, and again met new
friends. This time, it was a group of
three Israeli kids who couldn't have been older than 15, who told me that I was
like Superman for running around the track so many times. Their English was unexpectedly good, far
better than my Hebrew, and they even knew the word for "pushup" in
English (they asked me to do 20, which I did).
I unfortunately needed to leave, on account of having promised Noah (ITF
Noah, not my housemate Noah) that I would help him with Hebrew sometime that
day. I ended the evening by giving
another Hebrew lesson to TZ on Havaradim, reviewing yesh/ein
statements and the verb lalechet with her, and teaching her pronouns. Maybe, we can get to possessives next, using shel
phrases.
I was back on Friday morning, seeing
the group out on their way to Jerusalem.
The entire ITF Ramla group had decided to spend Yom Kippur in the
Israeli capital, but I had already promised to break my fast with my host
family, which I wouldn't have been able to do, had I been in Jerusalem. Hannah gave me her housekey, so that I could enter
the house, and use the Internet, while they were away. This was incredibly kind and trusting of them
all, to trust me in this way, and very sweet of Hannah in particular. I got to make Goldilocks and the Eight Bears
jokes about the whole incident after the fact, too. The rest of Friday passed rather slowly,
Noah, too, leaving for Jerusalem. On his
way out, I apologized for my complete rudeness to him the night before, and he
forgave me. I genuinely felt terrible
about the whole incident, and hope that I won't be the cause of future
conflicts in the Yoseftal apartment. I
had read about a hundred pages worth of Benny Morris, too, since the day before,
which I hope will pay off. I've made it
to Israel's war in Lebanon in the mid-80s.
I deliberately use the term "in Lebanon" rather than
"with Lebanon," because the main target of the operations was the
PLO, and the main adversary quickly became Syria, which had troops stationed in
Lebanon. Also, I had no idea about all
of the Christian Phalange massacres of Muslims that went on in the camps
outside of Beirut at this time; I really hope that this reading is shoring up
my ignorance of such important issues. On
Friday evening, I left for the Sepharadi synagogue on Rechov Tzahal, but needed
to return to my apartment after walking the entire way, because I had forgotten
to wear my tallit to arvit.
I returned, tallit and back, and saw that my detour had probably cost me
my place; there were no machzorim left.
I had no desire to be left without a synagogue for Erev Yom Kippur the
way I had been on Erev Rosh Hashannah I, so I walked to the Sepharadi synagogue
at the far end of Rechov Bar-Ilan. I
arrived towards the end of Kol Nidrei, and although the synagogue was
packed, I managed to take one of the few remaining machzorim. As I was walking in, the honors for Kol
Nidrei were being auctioned off, and one honor went of the high price of ₪3000
(that's nearly $820, by the way, for those of you keeping track). I ended up staying for around two hours,
because after arvit, we recited a long litany of s'lichot. I really love these Sepharadi tunes, and got several
of the refrains stuck in my head, especially "עלינו רחם לפנך חטאנו." The fast was quite easy for me, and I went to
bed fairly soon after returning from synagogue.
Outside, by the way, the children had taken over the streets with their
bicycles, and it looked like an elementary school bike rodeo all across
Ramla. On Yom Kippur, the entire country
comes to a halt; traffic disappears, and Israel becomes a no-fly zone. The only vehicles at all are ambulances with
muted sirens, and I regret to say, for the victims' sake, that I saw several of
these throughout Yom Kippur. My
housemates were disappointed when all but one of the television stations
switched off in honor of the holiday. I
don't live anywhere near any of the Arab neighborhoods, and can't say what was
happening there.
On Saturday morning, I got up
late. Very late. It was nearly 8:30 am when I finally dragged
myself up and out of bed. I donned my tallit,
and hurried to the synagogue, arriving there just after kedushah. Of shacharit, not of musaf, in
case anyone was wondering. I had caught
up by the post-shacharit s'lichot. There were s'lichot galore.
Surprisingly, there were fewer people in the synagogue during shacharit
and musaf than there had been during arvit the night before. During the middle of the musaf repetition,
there was a long descriptive passage about the process of the goat sacrifice
from the traditional Yom Kippur ceremony in the times when the Temple in
Jerusalem still stood. I can't be
certain of the source, but the language seemed very reminiscent of the Mishnah. I stayed until aleinu, which occurred
at just after 1:30 pm. I was thoroughly
exhausted, and went back to my apartment to rest. No sleep for me, though; my roommate Ben
needed help with his Ulpan homework, and so I helped him. I learned a couple of words in the
process. I also had time for myself,
reading Sefer Yonah and Shir Hashirim in honor of the holiday. These two might be my favorite book of Nevi'im
and second-favorite of Ketuvim, respectively. When I returned at what I
thought was the beginning minchah, they were just beginning the
repetition. Oh, well. Again, I caught up during the post-minchah
s'lichot, which were very similar to the s'lichot that I had been
saying all day. After ne'ilah, at
around 7:30 pm, the shofar was blown, and a large contingent of the men
left the synagogue. I stayed on for arvit
and havallah, and drank a couple of cups of water before leaving for my
Moroccan Savta's house for break-fast.
I had thought of a plan ahead of time to avoid taking any meat dishes: I
would say that I wanted to drink milk later, which I knew they would
understand, and, also, which was true.
When I entered, I met a few new family members (cousins). We sat down, and Savta began to pass
out bowls of thick vegetable soup. When
mine arrived – it had a whole leg of chicken in it. Yes, you read that correctly. A whole chicken leg, sitting in my veggie
soup, because I was the guest of honor, and deserved to have the best cuts of
meat (only one other person, Micha'el, who is Savta's nephew, received a
whole piece of meat in his bowl of soup, and it was not nearly as juicy-looking
as mine). I dutifully cleaned my plate,
including the bones. But, boy, it sure
is difficult to be tzimchoni in this country!
Lots of fun stuff planned for this
coming week, including a group tour to the Golan Heights, which, on Birthright,
I found to be one of the most beautiful places in the world I had ever
personally visited. It ranks with Acadia,
up in Maine. On my mind now is making
certain that I will have a sukkah in which to eat, and can find a way to
purchase my arbat minim, preferably for a price under ₪50.
Thanks again, Hannah, and everyone
else living in the house on Rechov Havaradim, for allowing me to use your
Internet, and making the posting of this blog entry possible!
~JD
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