Discipline in School

The more I teach, the more I learn about how children think and understand.  Nearing as I am the end of my first month of teaching, I'm daily coming into new situations, etc.  Every day, I teach with students who want to study and learn.  Many of them are successful; others are not.  Sometimes, students have bad days, and the same student who memorizes the English names for the numbers up to 100 in a single day will be unable to remember what "garden" means.  Sometimes, students encourage and learn from each other, and two good students can become a couple of great students when paired together.  More frequently, one boy or girl among three or four others will distract his or her classmates, and make it difficult or impossible to concentrate.  Speaking of concentration, in a stroke of luck, the electricity in the English room is malfunctioning, and although the ceiling lights work perfectly, the computers do not function.  Some of the students are in denial about this, but it is easier to convince them to sit still and pay attention to their English lesson.

I am learning to be a disciplinarian, which is not fun for me.  Marsha, my ITF supervisor, watched me conduct some classes on Monday, and gave me some advice.  She told me that the students here expect to be yelled at and told what to do, and that I should worry less about individual students bearing grudges against me for being strict with them.  If it helps, she told me, I should imagine that I am playing the part of a strict teacher; the way I act towards misbehaving students does not existentially define who I am.  Moshe and Chani's supervisor, who visited last week, told me almost exactly the same thing, when she saw me offer no resistance to a group of boys who ran in during a break between classes, in order to play on the English Room computers.  She told me that I need to learn to "wear my Spiderman suit," and put on a tough exterior with students at the school, or else they'll walk all over me.  Once on Wednesday, and once on Thursday, I needed to act stricter than I really was.  On Wednesday, I was playing basketball with a group of boys outside, trying to teach them basketball terms, and, with time, get them to speak to each other in English when on the court (they found that saying "back," as in "[pass the ball] back [to me]" is preferable to the Hebrew equivalent).  Another boy, who arrived late to school, walked over, and insisted on playing with us.  He is one of the more severely learning-disabled students in 8th-grade (which is saying something); I suspect Aspergers syndrome, based on the way he interacts with others.  After a couple of minutes, I managed to convince him to leave.  My Hebrew isn't great, which I know hinders my ability to get my point across.  I felt the same feeling of frustration at my own lousy Hebrew, a few minutes later, when one of the students punted the basketball over the barbed-wire fence surrounding the school; after we had managed to get it back, I tried to tell him, clearly, that although I wasn't angry with him at the moment, if he or any other student ever do that again, they will never play basketball with me again.

My second time enforcing discipline this week involved a very disrespectful girl whom neither TZ nor I had ever taught before.  She was acting incredibly rude towards us both, and actively trying to distract other students.  So I told her, emphatically, in Hebrew, to leave, and to return to the teacher.  She pretended at first that she couldn't understand my accent (How hard is "צאי" pronounced "tzei'i," to understand, given my tone?), but within a minute, she stomped back to the classroom.  I didn't know whether to feel as if I had successfully encouraged an atmosphere conducive to learning through discipline, of if I had just acted as a complete bully.  After the fact, both Moshe and TZ told me that I had done the right thing in sending her back to her classroom; learning in the English room with the two of us is a very special privilege, in theory; we don't have time to teach everyone, and, therefore, we should not take students who are going to be disruptive in class.  That, anyway, is how I justify my actions.

I've unfortunately had a rather frustrating weekend.  TZ left school early on Thursday, following which my Ulpan was cancelled.  I had a good Chevruta session with Rachel, but on Friday morning, I realized that my wallet had gone missing.  I believe that I lost in on the bus home on Thursday (the last time I saw it was when I got on, and I was a bit agitated when I boarded), which is very frustrating.  All of my ID cards other than my passport, including my drivers' license, Cornell Student ID, Sorbonne Student ID, Israel bus pass, Israel Klalit insurance card, American insurance card, credit card, debit cards, Red Cross donor card, bone marrow donor card, and TCAT bus pass, were all there, in addition to about ₪75 and $5.00.  This kept me from really being able to relax after Shabbat started, my mind was in such agitation.  Furthermore, I finally had the chance to Skype with my Mother for a short spell of time, and I was unsuccessful, because she has bought a new computer, and had not installed Skype on it, so we were unable to actually talk.  Except for a 10-minute session right after Sara's Bat Mitzvah that was cut short, I have not been able to speak at all to any members of my family back in the U.S.  I had set aside the entire afternoon to being at the computer at the right time, and accomplished exactly zero that day.  On Saturday, I hoped that I would be able to visit some friends and talk about something else, but I found that most of our conversation immediately returned to the missing wallet and my unsuccessful call with my Mother, and the complete mess in which I dunked myself.  The same goes for today.  I've been studying Hebrew, but my heart really isn't in it, because I had such a feeling of unfulfillment.  I just heard that the police stations of Ramla and Lod, as well as the bus station, have not found my wallet, and I'm fairly certain, by now, that it's not under a cushion somewhere in my house.  I'm just not myself right now, and hope that it doesn't adversely affect my teaching tomorrow.  Or today.  I'm about to walk over to Galit's house, and help Tamir.  I know that it's adversely affecting my writing -- this is not my usual style.  I was going to blog about my group's visit to the Rabin center on Wednesday, but I can't concentrate.  I need to settle down, as my Mother would say.

Also, here's some interesting news from the IDF, for those of you interested in Israel's minority populations...

Also, I thought that perhaps this might interest some of you, maybe you Drisha Institute folk...
"כִּי תָצוּר אֶל עִיר יָמִים רַבִּים לְהִלָּחֵם עָלֶיהָ לְתָפְשָׂהּ לֹא תַשְׁחִית אֶת עֵצָהּ לִנְדֹּחַ עָלָיו גַּרְזֶן כִּי מִמֶּנּוּ תֹאכֵל וְאֹתוֹ לֹא תִכְרֹת כִּי הָאָדָם עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה לָבֹא מִפָּנֶיךָ בַּמָּצוֹר"

~JD

Jerusalem Mountains Tour

Thursday, rather than teaching at Rambam as I ordinarily do, I visited the mountainous region around Jerusalem with the rest of the Oranim participants in Ramla.  This was actually not an Oranim-scheduled tour, but, rather, organized by the city of Ramla, and offered to Oranim for free.  For this reason, half of the people on the tour were Israelis from Ramla.  They were in their 50s and 60s, and I'm not exactly certain whether they constituted some sort of organized group, or whether they had individually signed up to participate in the tour.  The bus showed up around thirty minutes late, due to a general shortage of buses in Israel today, caused by the Hajj, I believe.  Anyway, the tour guide, Noam, switched between Hebrew and English when he spoke, doing his best to please both audiences.  I did my best, throughout the day, to understand what he said in Hebrew, although I'll admit that it wasn't always easy.  I thought back to France, again, where I could understand all of my lectures at the Sorbonne upon arrival -- it just isn't as easy, this time.  The two Alexes and I are all at about the same level of Hebrew proficiency, and we have all been grouped into a single Ulpan class.  The three of us worked on our homework together at the short rest stop.

Our hike was only about five kilometers long, but we stopped very frequently, so it felt as if we were walking for longer than we really were.  The sun was hot (this is a desert, remember), and I was glad that I had my hat, sunscreen, and water bottle.  The memories of a sunburn on a certain Lake George outing are, of course, still fresh in my mind, and I have no intention of repeating that affair.  Rabin Park, the location where we hiked, is an area controlled by the Jewish National Fund.  Throughout the day, we heard a fair amount about Rabin's past and legacy.  For better or for worse, I was already quasi-familiar with most of the story.  Rabin is a very polarized figure.  In historical memory, there is a certain category of historic leaders who are almost universally regarded as heroes (at least within a particular country): Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Sukarno, Gandhi, Kemal Ataturk, and Sun Yatsen are all examples of people with this legacy.  There is virtually no figure in Israel (or, for that matter, Russia), except maybe Chaim Weizmann, who has this kind of legacy.  Yitzchak Rabin belongs to a different class of leaders -- the kind that many remember fondly, but whose legacies are simply too controversial to transcend existing political boundaries.  Although I can't think of as many good examples of leaders who fall into this category, I'd say that maybe Winston Churchill and JFK fall into this category (sorry for my lack of females among these lists -- I'm doing my best, really).  Yitzchak Rabin falls into the latter category -- there is a political bumper sticker in Israel that reads פושעי אוסלו לדין, literally "[Bring the] Oslo criminals to justice," a reference to the Oslo Accords of 1994 that made peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and established Palestinian governing authority.  Then-Prime-Minister Rabin and PLO Chairman Yassar Arafat signed the agreement (you may recognize a certain famous photograph of the signing), and the next year, 1995, Rabin was assassinated while leaving a pro-peace political rally.  The assassin was an ultra-Orthodox Jew who, like many other religious Zionists, opposed surrendering any territory in the Holy Land in return for peace with the Palestinians.  It's still only 18 years after the assassination, and there are enough people who still consider Oslo to have been not just a mistake but a great sin and crime for Rabin to be universally loved and accepted by Israelis (not even taking Palestinians or foreigners into account).

The other part of Yirzchak Rabin's career for which he is remembered, his role as the Israel Defense Force's Chief of Staff in Israel's lightning victory in the 1967 Six-Day War is somewhat less controversial among Israelis, but the territorial gains that Israel made in that war are too divisive on the world stage for that to completely uphold his legacy.  (The fact that Rabin was Ambassador to the U.S. in 1973 when Israel was hit so hard in the Yom Kippur War, and therefore had nothing to do with the greatest military loss Israel has ever suffered, protected his reputation as a first-rate general.)  Also, in an incident I didn't know about, Rabin got in big trouble with the ultra-Orthodox parties in his Knesset coalition, when a delivery of F-15 jets from the United States arrived during Shabbat.  This, compounded with the discovery that his wife had a bank account open in the United States, illegal at the time for Israeli citizens, forced his resignation as Prime Minister in 1976.  This might have been before I or any of my brothers were born, but it's still all recent history to my parents' generation.

One of the best parts of this trip was talking to Carmel along the hike.  I had saved up a few questions for my Ask-The-Sabra session, some socio-political, others linguistic.  I finally figured out, for instance, that I shouldn't say "מאשר" in my comparative sentences while talking on the street.  More importantly, though, I think that I got a slightly better handle on the Israeli political center than I had in the past.  When I was in 4th grade, and my (horrible) Hebrew School teacher had my class learn about the Israeli political parties.  I remember that the centrist party at the time was called גֶּשֶׁר, Gesher, being literally the "bridge" party between Labor and the Likud.  This party is since long gone, but there were a few more short-lived centrist parties, such as the Kadimah (קדימה‎) party of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, which won a plurality of Knesset seats in both the 2006 and 2009 Israeli elections.  Thank you, Carmel, for being awesome, and for answering all of my questions!

My roommate Ben's favorite part of the day was our visit to a small domed structure beside the cemetery in Rabin Park.  It was built as a non-denominational prayer structure for people of different beliefs, and several of my peers began to meditate inside.  Some of the Israelis from Ramla were Kohanim, and needed to skirt around the edge of the cemetery.  This prompted Veta to begin asking me about Kohanim, as well as the notion of טֻמְאָה, "ritual impurity," which I did my best to answer.  It's been a while since I first needed to wrap my head around this concept (what was it, Peninah, four years ago that you first explained that to me?  Gets me nostalgic).  How do you explain that there's no stigma to being טָמֵא, when you first begin by defining it as "impure?"  It evokes all sorts of ideas of Hindu untouchables, etc., when, in fact, everybody went through periods of being טָמֵא, until they took the opportunity to immerse themselves (or be sprinkled), therefore becoming טָהוֹר again.  Maimonides admits in his the introduction to his commentary to סֵדֶר טָהֳרוֹת that nobody really intuitively understood what טָמֵא and טָהוֹר meant, even in his time.  According to Eli, who can read Judeo-Arabic, following this is the best explanation of these tricky concepts.  As the ITF participant recognized as being observant, this is not the first time in which I have felt obligated to explain a difficult Jewish concept, that I myself don't know very well, to another, so as not to leave him or her wondering.  Again, I think that I left more questions than I did answers.  Shortly after this conversation, we arrived at a pavilion where a trio of Israel actors put on a very amusing 5-minute drama of Yitzchak Rabbin's life.  I learned some Hebrew words and idioms (there was no translation available), and a little bit more about Rabbin's life.  I also learned a little bit better about how Israelis think about (and recognize through his signature eyepatch) Moshe Dayan, another name in the Zionist canon.

Following this was a performance in honor of Rabin, put on by schoolchildren and IDF soldiers.  It was kind of like the one at Rambam, but better-rehearsed, and with better AV equipment.  We ended up waiting for maybe forty minutes for the setup, during which some of the ITF members and I discussed our opinions of our experiences so far.  I think that I'm enjoying myself more than most of the others, even though I'm not leaving Ramla as frequently to visit Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Rechovot, Chaifa, etc.  One of the others hasn't really enjoyed the enrichments so far (liking, incidentally, the only one that has bored me), and feels that they're a waste of time.  I feel again a little bit the way I felt when I was at EDUCO in Paris, where I suddenly realize that I have been obliviously enjoying myself, while many of the people around me are miserable or frustrated (later that day, another Oranim participant told me quite glibly "I hate Ramla").  I've always been into learning about hard-hitting politics, history, etc.  I really regret missing Harry's guided tour of the Tel Aviv museum, but my visit to the Israel Museum with Eli, or Stav's explanation of the economics of the Dead Sea, are exactly the kind of things that I really enjoy.  I slept through a portion of the performance, by the way, tired out by all the sun.  I think that I bumped into Alex's shoulder a few times.

We again had to wait uncomfortably long in the heat for our return bus, long after most of the school children (for whom this presentation was really designed) had left.  I was so buy helping Noah with Hebrew, that I didn't notice that Ben and Noach had gotten off of the bus at Yoseftal, and got off at the City Hall, instead.  I walked to my apartment, then to the campus, to help Noah again through Ulpan.  Then I had my own Ulpan class, with the two Alexes.  I swear, Coco is going to be teaching me Hebrew within more six weeks, he's learning so quickly.  Really, he has taken in the equivalent of at least a college semester's worth of Hebrew in just a scant six weeks.  I walked back to Yoseftal, took a run, and then had my weekly chevruta with Rachel.  I'm still thinking about the relation between אַבְנֵי קֶלַע and אַבְנֵי נֵזֶר, and about the versions of the Septuagint in which הָמוּ was apparently translated as if it were דָּם instead.

Also, since I know that several of my readers have a very deep interest in Iran-Israeli relations, I thought that I'd give quick summary on what I've read about the allegations that Turkey blew some Mosad agents' cover.  More than a year ago, back in 2012, around 10 Iranians working in Iran for Mosad agents had their cover blown, according to a story was recently published in the Washington Post, which cited "knowledgeable" (but unmentioned sources).  The Turkish foreign ministry initially made no comment, as did the Israeli government.  However, former Mosad chief Danny Yatom told the press that, if this report were correct, it would be a "despicable act" on behalf of the Turks.  Please note that, because the Turkish government has fairly good relations with both Israel and Iran, the Mosad runs many its Iranian activities from Turkey, which gives the Turkish government a greater capacity to monitor these espionage activities.  Yesterday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu denied that Turkey had ever committed such a breach of Israeli trust.  Journalists who suspect that Turkey is not being honest cite the Mavi Marmara incident of 2010, in which Israeli commandos boarding a blockade runner headed for Gaza became involved in a fight with passengers on board, killing nine, all of them Turkish citizens.  So far, it isn't certain whether the allegations against the Turkish government are true; there has been, to my knowledge, no official Israeli voice on this issue.  U.S.-Turkish relations, have been fairly cordial, and to my knowledge, the blockade runner incident didn't do any lasting harm to them; I can't say whether the same holds true for Turkish-Israeli relations.  Let's wait and see for more facts to materialize.

Congratulations to my cousin Sara on her Bat Mitzvah, this week, reading Pareshat Vayeira!  I wish I could be in Silver Spring with you, and help you celebrate!

Thank you, also, Raymond, for your sweet comment on my last post!  I am a very big fan of yours <3.

Also, for those of you with the time to read it, recent news might completely change the story of human evolution, at least as I learned about it in school.

~JD

Birthday Weekend in Ramla

As those of you who have been reading my blog for a while may have realized, the tightness of my schedule is indirectly proportional to the amount of time that I devote to writing about my experiences on my blog.  Therefore, I hope that you'll realize that the reason I haven't spent time blogging daily about my experiences in the Rambam school in Lod is not because I have nothing interesting to say, but rather, because I have a very busy schedule.  In addition to my position at Rambam, which is an 8:00-2:30 school day Monday through Thursday for me, I am participating in various supplementary volunteering opportunities, enrichment activities, and Hebrew lessons.  Also, to round out my Wednesday and Thursday nights, I am continuing chevrutot with two particularly cool people, and hope to have a third, very soon.

My job is, I'll admit, quite hard.  I have virtually no experience teaching, and I'm experiencing mixed results.  Part of this is due to my inexperience, part of it is due to the fact that my students and I share no language in common in which we can both fluently communicate, and part of it is due to the inherent difficulty of teaching.  I am teaching grade levels from 2nd to 8th grades, and many of the students are Special Ed (although none as severely so as some of the children with whom I have worked in the past).  I am not, as one of my close acquaintances suggested I would become if I became a teacher, simply a babysitter, although my job does border on this during a few of my classes with young Special Ed students.  Sometimes, I am in control of what I teach my students.  For instance, with one 6th-grade student, who is about eleven years old, I am essentially a private English tutor, and teach him what he wants to learn.  I had the idea of teaching him to tell time, and quickly realized that he had not learned the names of the numbers beyond ten.  So I set about teaching him eleven through twenty, and he showed remarkably good learning skills (this is after we set aside the textbook reading exercise about the Tower of London, interesting as this was).  While excellent at math, especially given the fact that I am quizzing him in a foreign language, this same student is almost illiterate.  When I played Memory with him the other day (in which he had to match the card with the English word to the card with the picture on it), he could actually remember the English word when he saw the picture cards than when he saw the English word cards, even though the words that he was trying to pronounce were printed on their backs.  Moreh Moshe, obviously, wants me to teach him to read, and I'm hoping to simultaneously do this, while also teaching him what he wants to learn.  To give another example, I have been trying to teach a group of 7th-grade girls how to distinguish between "same" and "different," and teaching them a lot of adjectives (big/little, light/heavy, hot/cold, sweet/salty, happy/sad), trying to get them to practice speaking aloud, and giving them the opportunity to draw the things that we are talking about on the whiteboard (this is a greater reward than I initially would have thought).  However, no matter how many times I repeat, and they repeat (willingly -- they're quite well-behaved, and genuinely interested in learning), they cannot yet either consistently correctly pronounce the words "same" and "different," or even remember which of these terms correspond to the Hebrew equivalents, דּוֹמֶה and שׁוֹנֶה.  However, they told me that they would very much like to learn the lyrics to a One Direction song (yes, Lani, you read that correctly!), so tomorrow, TZ will be teaching them a One Direction song of her choosing.  To give another example, on Monday, first thing in the morning, I sat down with an 8th-grade girl, and walked her through a worksheet on the present simple.  In the process, I needed to re-teach her how to conjugate and pronounce verbs "to be" and "to do" in English.  I think that she made enormous progress, but it was simply with the assigned textbook work.  Meanwhile, with the Special Ed 4th-grade class, TZ and I taught the English words for colors by playing Memory, and although by the end of the game, most of them could accurately identify the words and match them to the correct pictures, I am not certain if one such session per week is really enough to let such lessons sink in.  There is another 6th-grade boy who loves World of Worldcraft, and I am hoping to be able to craft some sort of game for him, in order to allow his interest in fantasy games to propel forward his studies in English.  I taught him a few words that I thought he would like to know, such as "magic," "wizard," and "fire."  He tried to ask me to define words like "Paladin" and "Worg," and I did my best to explain.  In all of these examples, I'm doing my best to try to find the best ways to teach students in ways to which they will be receptive. 

In all of this, TZ, my teaching partner, is absolutely integral.  When I was placed with her, I really, really felt as if I had won the ITF lottery.  TZ is one of only two participants with prior experience in teaching, is very sweet, very hard-working, and is the kind of person to whom young children will easily form a strong emotional attachment.  Every day when I see one particular 8th-grade boy during tefillat hashachar, he asks me, in the best English that he can muster, "TZ, she is coming today?"  Likewise, yesterday, when I was leaving the school, one of the Special Ed girls who had grown particularly fond of TZ asked me "איפה המורה, where is the [female] teacher?"  Really, TZ is phenomenal, and can control students much, much better than I can.  My Hebrew is slightly better than hers, at the moment, but in a few weeks, we'll both be equally capable of communicating with the students.

In fact, my slight advantage in (archaic) Hebrew is sometimes a disadvantage.  The students know that they can "cheat" with me, and slide into Hebrew to get their points across.  7th-graders habitually respond to my questions, posed in either language, entirely in Hebrew, and don't seem to understand that I am trying to get them to become used to pronouncing English words, not simply understanding my translations, and moving on.  The 8th-graders mostly haven't discovered my secret, but it's no secret among the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders, whom I realize would understand nothing of what I try to tell them, if I just spoke to them in untranslated, natural English.  When my Hebrew falls short with the 3rd graders, though, there really isn't anything I can do; how can I expect a student still learning the Roman alphabet to be able to understand the details of an activity?  Nevertheless, I feel deeply unsatisfied when, after a class, I realize that I have really just been speaking Hebrew until my face turns blue, without giving the students the actual benefits of having a native English speaker as their instructor. 

I am encountering several additional problems.  One of the greatest of my recurring dilemmas is preventing students from being distracted by the computers in the English Room.  As someone who was once a preteen boy, I understand how incredibly captivating electronic games are (I still remember my first, magically-hypnotic glimpse of Super Mario 64).  In my opinion, trying to teach the students English with the computers in the room is like trying to get a young child to eat his vegetables (again, been in that position), while in the same room is a large batch of freshly-baked cookies, by promising him that he may have one cookie (and only one) after, and only after, he eats all of his vegetables.  Some children like vegetables, so this isn't an issue.  But others will simply ignore me (I have no disciplinary powers, remember), and, figuratively speaking, eat the entire plate of cookies.  I have tried to tell students that they may not play with the computers until after they are finished with their work, and the result is that they become infuriated with me, and begin shouting at me in Hebrew that I can't understand.  I tried hiding the computer mice, and, as a result two of the students figured out how to open game applications using only the computer, while another (Special Ed) student went absolutely berserk, TZ tells me, when I was out of the room.  TZ convinced me to put the mice back, and, at the end of the day, exactly the same thing occurred; students ignored me and their work, and played games, for the entire class period.  When I try to show them English-language sites, they immediately close the windows, and head straight to YouTube, Facebook, or, most commonly, gaming sites.  I have yet to find a way to solve this problem.  I am being lenient with students, because this is the beginning of the year, and if they decide now that they hate me, I won't be able to redeem myself, and be able to be an effective teacher.  I've already, despite all of my efforts to never show the slightest hint of meanness, anger, or annoyance, had one student call me a Nazi.  I just don't know what I've done wrong.  I even tried to correct his swearing (all students know the terms "F--k, M----rf----r, sh--, and b--ch, even if they can't spell their names; I blame the pervasive venomous cruelty of American culture for this), but even that didn't interest him.

That, anyway, are the joys and frustrations of teaching, as of right now.  Ulpan has finally begun, and, if we can convince the instructor to allow Coco and Veta to participate in the Advanced course, I will be at ease. The truth of the matter is, everyone gives me far too much credit for understanding Hebrew; I'm completely out of my league here in Ramla, and am struggling just to get by.  Obviously, this is the best situation (short of having Israeli roommates), but everyone around me seems to think that I'm some kind of Hebrew expert when, in fact, I can scarcely explain to a 2nd-grader how to fill out a simple English exercise.  It looks as if I'll need to re-learn how to make adjectives comparative and superlative, as well as the pi'el binyan.  And learn all five remaining binyanim while I'm at it.  Oh, man; I wish I were as good at this stuff as Peninah, or Avital, or Eli, or Lani, or Ilan, or Julian, or -- someone.

On the brighter side, for those of you in the U.S., my Oranim friends made a real effort to give me an enjoyable birthday party on Saturday night, after Shabbat had ended.  I had thought that there would be some low-key hanging out at the house on Haveradim, and that would be all; in fact, my roommate Ben, and the folks at Gil'ad, did a first-rate job of fooling me into coming to Gil'ad first, on the pretext that they needed me to walk them over to Haveradim.  So, in fact, the party was at the house on Gil'ad all along!  Noah had followed my date-buying instructions that I gave him during our recent outing to Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea, and the entire group had pitched in to buy me -- you guessed it -- about three kilos of dates.  I love these fat, chewy, flavorful Israeli dates, along with the rest of Israeli produce, and finished them tonight (I did share a lot with the others on the first night, but I still destroyed them incredibly quickly).  Devin even put birthday candles in a couple of the dates.  I had thought that that was all, but, later, my housemate Ben showed up with a (pareve) chocolate birthday cake!  Who would have guessed it?  There was dancing, etc., and nobody got sick (happy about this last one).  Some super-cool people who had been in Tel Aviv and elsewhere during Shabbat even showed up in time, which was wonderful!

The next day, Carmel and a local Ramla tour guide led us on a tour of notable tourist cites in Ramla, including the Ramla museum, the Pool of Arches, and the White Tower.  I had an enjoyable time, and only wish that I could give a fuller description; however, I took too long, and the memories are no longer so fresh in my memory...  The important thing is that I learned more about Ramla, and that Carmel continues to keep us all happy.  I want to see more of the museum, though; I only really saw a very small portion of the exhibits.

Also, Becky gave me a fantastic haircut on Friday afternoon, just in time for my birthday.  The students at Rambam admired it enough that they managed to tell me that they thought that it was a "good haircut" in English!  Great job, Becky!  Another person who deserves a special shoutout here is Carmel, who helped me overcome some upsetting incidents that occurred last Monday.  I'm really grateful, and think that I'm entirely back on track now, back in harness.

Thinking of you all!

~JD

Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea

I have overslept enough in the past year or so to have learned the trick of setting two alarms on mornings on which I need to rise early -- one for the time I would like to get up, and one for 15-20 minutes earlier.  This got me up just in time on Sunday morning to arrive at the campus, to meet the bus, at 6:55 am.  Noach and I were the first to arrive, and, soon after, the rest of the Oranim residents (with a few noticeable, unfortunate absences) from Ramla showed up.  We boarded the bus, picked up our ITF friends from Ashdod, and were on our way southeast for the Dead Sea region.  I sat next to Noah (from Haveradim), and, given the time we had gotten up that morning, talked a surprising amount about athletics, sports nutrition, Hebrew, history, and other common interests.  I had my Mishneh Torah with me (I'm up to Temidin u'Musafin) on my Kindle, but, what can I say, Noah is just more exciting, frequently.

We had a much better tour guide than the guide on our previous excursion.  Stav spoke absolutely flawless English, was a great storyteller, knew a lot about the regions we were visiting, and was even taller than my older brother Andrew!  I think that the other participants liked him, too.  Our first destination of the day (other than a quick stop at a tourist trap-rest area, where the only significant event was Noach sitting on a camel) was the Ein Gedi oasis.  We first visited the ruin of an ancient synagogue that dated back to the 3rd or 4th century C.E. -- the Rabbinic era, during which the conversations that were later redacted into the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds took place.  The floor plan had was almost entirely intact, thanks to some painstaking archaeological digging and reconstruction.  There was a motif of birds (peacocks and quails?) and flowers.  I have to admit, I was surprised to see the animal imagery; I think that I would have guessed that there would have been hesitation among these ancient Jews to depict any living creature.  Not that this would have been any sort of violation; I know from the Mishneh Torah that "the images of animals and other living beings - with the exception of men - and similarly, the images of trees, grasses, and the like may be fashioned. This applies even to images which protrude" (Avodah Zarah 3:11).  Anyway, the synagogue would have been quite small; there's no way anyone would have been able to have held any serious all-day Yom Kippur service in there!  Still, the structure was familiar, with designated spaces for the ark containing the Torah scroll, and for the table where the scroll was read.  The local Jews manufactured what was probably some kind of perfume that they called "Aparsimon" (coincidentally, the modern Hebrew word for "persimmon"), which the Romans mispronounced to get the word "balsam."  Did you get that, Lani?  The etymology of "persimmon" is, in fact, Algonquin, and the word אפרסימונים in the Gemara was only given in modern Hebrew to a New World fruit with a similar-sounding name.  Now we've finally solved that mystery [insert shomer-pet-on-head]!  Anyway, the community was extremely protective of its method of extraction of resin from the balsam plant, and inscribed on the floor of the synagogue is a curse, in Aramaic (the vernacular of the day), pronouncing a curse of exile and infertility upon anyone who reveals the town's secret (recipe).  This was, of course, the livelihood of the entire town; just imagine the kind of the disaster that would have occurred, had they lost the secret.

Following the visit to the ancient synagogue at Ein Gedi, we took a short hike through the oasis.  Ein Gedi is actually huge, and it would take days to explore the entire reserve, but we nevertheless had a very enjoyable time.  We wore our swimsuits, and were able to splash around a little bit in the cataracts, much to my delight (speaking of delight, still thinking of מַה יָּפִית וּמַה נָּעַמְתְּ אַהֲבָה בַּתַּעֲנוּגִים זֹאת קוֹמָתֵךְ דָּמְתָה לְתָמָר).  We saw some wildlife, including hyraxes and ibexes.  Ibexes look rather like gazelles, and are amazing at climbing mountains; the males have very long, decorative curled horns.  Hyraxes look like prairie dogs or groundhogs of some sort, but they're apparently not even rodents, and their closest relatives are, in fact, elephants!  Hyraxes and elephants are apparently unique among mammals in that their genitalia are internal and concealed.  There are also golden spiny mice, bee eaters, and Tristram's starlings that live in Ein Gedi, although I didn't spot any.  Ein Gedi has a couple of Biblical connections; hearing Shir Hashirim every week at the Sepharadi synagogues, I remembered the name Ein Gedi from the verse "אֶשְׁכֹּל הַכֹּפֶר | דּוֹדִי לִי בְּכַרְמֵי עֵין גֶּדִי."  Stav, the Israeli guide, also reminded us that this is one of the places where David hid out, in a cave, from angry King Saul, who was trying to kill him.  According to the narrative, David stole Sha'ul's water bottle and spear in the middle of the night, in order to show that, although he was capable, he would not kill Sha'ul.  (Hey, didn't I learn that with some Cool People during my senior year of college?)

We drove from Ein Gedi to the shore of the Dead Sea.  On the way, Stav described the dangerous flash floods that strike the region annually, during the wintertime (the rainy season).  I didn't mention it, but I have personally experienced these floods while on Birthright in January 2012, and they are quite frightening.  They also prevented me from actually entering the Dead Sea itself, although I did take a dip in the nearby sulfurous hot springs.  When we stopped by the seashore, my housemate Ben was extremely happy to see that there was an Aroma (ארומה), which is a very large Israeli café chain, somewhat like the Israeli equivalent of Starbucks, at least in terms of its ubiquity.  Ramla really doesn't have a lot to recommend it in terms of cafés and restaurants, and doesn't have an ארומה.  I ran almost straight into the water.  It was pleasantly warm, and, of course, very buoyant.  I floated on my back, careful to keep my face out of the toxic liquid.  Stav, an 80-trip Birthright veteran, told us the story of a boy who had made a bet that he could swallow a whole cup of Dead Sea water; by the time he reached a hospital, he was already in a near-critical condition.  The Dead Sea, despite the fairly recent discovery of natural gas, is still probably Israel's most valuable natural resource, producing all sorts of different valuable salts, when processed properly.  Israel is on the edge of a tectonic plate, and the Dead Sea, the lowest region in the world, soaks up all sorts of chemicals from the Earth's mantle that have breached the surface (I think).  Eventually, the others joined me, and we swam around.  Jordan got quite far out ("almost to Jordan," several people made the joke).  I really enjoyed paddling around, and helped Gabby join the group, including Hannah, my roommate Ben, Max, and Jordan, that had swam out the farthest.  After I did, though, I admit that I took one glance at the distance to the shore, and became slightly spooked by my distance.  Worried that I might tire out, I quickly paddled back, and felt very relieved that I did.  Jordan was a total gentleman, and gave Gabbie a ride back to shore when she felt similar concerns.  We stayed for over two hours, and I was quite tired by the time we loaded back onto the bus.  On the drive back, Stav told TZ and some others about the countryside we passed through, pointing out all of the trees planted by the JNF, and also telling an interesting Bedouin tale.  Noah gave me life advice.

By the way, before I conclude this tale, I'd like to take a moment to address the passing yesterday, at age 93, of Rav Ovadya Yosef, ז"ל.  I first heard about the news over the loudspeakers at the Rambam school (I work at a Sepharadi religious school), although, earlier in the day, Rav Yosef had lead some students in reciting Shir Hama'alot Tehillim for the sake of the very ill former Chief Rabbi (it's a tradition to recite psalms for the gravely ill and injured).  His funeral, the same day, was the most widely-attended funeral in Israel's history, with estimates of attendance ranging from 700,000 to nearly 850,000 (that's around 10% of the population of this tiny country, remember).  My friend Eli attended.  This man was extraordinarily controversial in his politics, especially regarding his hardline stance towards the Arabs; he is on record as having made several statements that many consider to be racist (although earlier in his career, he was apparently singular among the Israeli Rabbinate in his insistence on peace, but later changed his position).  He was undoubtedly one of the most influential Rabbis, anywhere in the world, of our generation, and among the most Torah-learned people in the world at the time of his teach.  In his memory, I will pass on two rulings that I distinctly remember of his.  The first (which I learned with Eliana) involved the question of women publicly reading Megillat Esther on Purim, and thereby fulfill the obligation of male and female audience members to hear the Megillah read.  Although the Babylonian Talmud is very insistent that women's obligation is equal, there is a Tosefta passage stating otherwise, and, stronger than halakhah, is the tradition for women not to read.  Rav Ovadya ruled that women do indeed fulfill men's obligations, although his response seemed to indicate that such a scenario would only occur in the absence of fully competent male readers.  I hasten to add that Cornell University, in some years past, lacked competent male student readers, which is why Peninah read Megillah for us, as well as for the TBE Hebrew Schoolers on Purim morning this past year.  In the second Rabbinic response that I remember, which I read in a book by Judy's Rabbi, Rav Ovadya ruled that praying minchah gedolah is preferable to praying minchah katanah, in opposition to both Maimonides and Yosef Karo.  He cited a whole pile of medieval sources, and even argued that, had Yosef Karo (compiler of the famous Shulchan Arukh code of Jewish law, which most Sepharadim accept as authoritative in almost all instances) been aware of all of these opinions, he would have agreed, and rejected Maimonides's ruling.  I plan to be praying minchah gedolah rather frequently in the near future, as noon occurs earlier and earlier in the day.

I'm having a good week, by the way, at Rambam!  I'll blog about it soon!  I love you all!  Especially you, Josefin; welcome home to Israel!

~JD

Official Day 2 of Teaching in Lod

I completely left off from my previous post one of the highlights of my week thus far, my study session with Eli on Wednesday night!  We almost finished the first chapter of Mishlei, but then the Skype call dropped.  It's very hard, reading in Hebrew, but the repetitive structure of the verses makes it easier to infer the meanings of certain words.   It turns out that if you see the word ""סופה in Biblical Hebrew, it should be translated as "strong wind;" in modern Israeli Hebrew, "סופה" means "sofa" (a word with of Arabic origin).  So much for all of my Torah study being of any help in understanding this language.

The bus was absolutely jam-packed on Thursday morning, in a way that would be breaking several Federal transportation regulations if ever done in the United States (not that the Federal government is actually capable of enforcing anything right now -- how is it that I was outside of North America not just for this shutdown, but also for the Occupy Movement in 2011?).  Anyway, I attended the boys' minyan in the morning (I was late, but it didn't matter, because there was a minyan), and, afterwards, met up with Chani (the only other English teacher other than Moshe) and TZ.  Our first class of the day to teach was the 2nd-graders.  These kids were adorable, and so, so excited!  I really mean this; Chani has an entire song-and-dance to start the day, playing them a repetitious English-language CD meant to repeat in their ears such phrases as "good morning" and "big," "little," and "tiny."  This took up the first 10 or so minutes of class.  Personally, I think that it was excellent.  I still remember the songs in my first year of French class that allowed me to memorize how to conjugate aller (to go), avoir (to have), etc.  A certain quantity of memorization is necessary and unavoidable in the learning of a language, and better that the difficult, foundational aspects of a language be hammered in as early as possible.  A certain Cool Person, later that evening, told me that she, too remembers a lot of these French-language mnemonic tools, vindicating my position.  Anyway, TZ and I walked around the class, and tried to help the students learn the lesson of the day, the letter C, how to write it, etc.  Anglophones of course know that C is one of the most difficult letters in language, on account of it sometimes sounding like K, and sometimes like S.  There are not separate lowercase/capital letters in Hebrew, and this was a major part of the lesson.  There are very good, colorful books for these younger grades, which allowed them to see a few sample words beginning with each letter of the alphabet.  I think, however, that the publisher could have chosen better "C" words to choose than "clown" and "cactus."  Wouldn't "cup," "coat," and "can" all have been much better nouns?  Regardless, I noticed one little boy who didn't have his books, and who also, when it was time for students to take out their snacks for the day, didn't have any food (the others had sandwiches, fruit, etc.).  I wonder what sort of home he is in?  The students' families here are responsible for purchasing their books; the joint lack of books and lack of food worries me, but what could I do?  I had run out of the apartment without any peaches, because I had forgotten to throw them in my backpack before leaving to catch the bus.  I see this kids, and worry.

TZ and I also accompanied Chani when she taught 3rd graders in the morning.  The two of us were sent to help a couple of the more motivated students.  I helped two little girls practice their Roman alphabet penmanship.  I spoke to them almost entirely in Hebrew; what else am I supposed to do?  These students aren't the main subjects of my teaching, here, and I can't just expect them to understand all of the English that comes out of my mouth.  Rather, I chose to have them understand me.  These two were a lot of fun, loved what they were doing, cared a lot about doing it right, and found me very interesting.

The last class with which we helped Chani was the 5th-grade class.  There were some motivated students among these, and also some cutups.  There is no seeming pattern relating talent to interest in learning, from my initial observation -- some of the students with least knowledge of English are the most engaged, as are some with the most.  In this case, I had a group of three boys, while TZ had a group of three or four boys and girls.  Things got a little bit harder when a fourth boy entered the English room to join my group, and all three of my original students insisted that he stay.  This is something that I've noticed is the norm in the Rambam school -- curious students (almost always from the younger grades) leaving their classrooms to follow TZ and me around.  Anyway, I did my best to try to teach the days of the week, but after a few repetitions, the students had started running around too wildly, pushing each other over, hitting each other, walking over to students from TZ's group to talk to them, etc., that it became impossible to continue.  I'm honestly not certain whether I managed to teach these students anything (surprisingly, my 4th student was the best-behaved of the four, and was seriously annoyed with the others for being so disruptive).  Also, I needed to act as Hebrew-English go-between for TZ's students, trying to explain to them for instance, that there is no equivalent of the Hebrew preposition "את" in English.  TZ is currently a much better teacher than I am, even in spite of my slightly greater experience with Hebrew, and I realize that, after a few weeks of Ulpan, she's going to be even more effective.  We aren't competing, thank goodness, and I'm glad for her sake, and her students' sake, that she'll be even better, given a little bit of Hebrew practice.

At noon, Moshe arrived, and after a short break, we helped him teach the 8th graders, who, as always, are the hardest of any group.  Two of the students who are usually inseparable friends were having a fight today, and it made most of the class intolerable.  It also made me realize just how much of the negative side of American culture these students have managed to absorb.  There's a particularly pithy mishnah from Pirkei Avot which I think conveys the point rather succinctly:

ארבע מדות ביושבים לפני חכמים: ספוג, ומשפך, משמרת, ונפה.

ספוג, שהוא סופג את הכל. משפך, שמכניס בזו ומוציא בזו. משמרת, שמוציאה את היין וקולטת את השמרים. ונפה, שמוציאה את הקמח וקולטת את הסלת

Or, in English "There are four types among those who sit before the sages: the sponge, the funnel, the strainer and the sieve. The sponge absorbs all. The funnel takes in at one end and lets it out the other. The strainer rejects the wine and retains the sediment. The sieve rejects the coarse flour and retains the fine flour."

I think that the message is rather clear here: some students retain only the dirt.  It was for this reason that these two 8th-grade boys knew how to give each other the finger, knew how to call each other "big dicks," and, most painfully of all, said to each other's faces "F--k you, my ni---h."  I almost don't know how sad it makes me that all that we Americans have managed to do for these Israeli boys is to give them new ways to say cruel things to each other.  They have no idea how much pain and history is bound up in that 6-letter slang term that they throw at one another with such ferocity.  Needless to say, I could do absolutely nothing to help these students, and any credibility that I might have had with them previously, on account of being American, had vanished like ice in the Negev.  I do not blame these students as individuals; I don't think that they have two living parents between them, and I see them, rather, of victims of very cruel circumstance.  Still, they're going to grow up with that as the extent of their English, and won't be able to obtain any of the jobs that require working knowledge of English.  I did manage to work with one somewhat docile, struggling student, and made good progress helping him with his writing.  He inadvertently taught me never to write a lower-case "t" the way I am used to.  In Israel, their + signs and t's are formed slightly differently from similar signs throughout the rest of the world, in order to prevent them from resembling crosses.  When I wrote a lowercase "t" for my student as an example, he thought that I was drawing a Christian symbol in his notebook, in pen.  I did my best to explain that the letter has no Christian significance, and that, throughout the Anglophone word, this is the proper formation of the letter.  I hope that he believed me.  I might end up giving this student private English lessons, pending his aunt speaking with Moshe.  I'd be willing to -- if he wants to learn, why shouldn't I spend time helping him?  That's why I came all the way to Israel, isn't it?  To teach Israelis English?  Even as I helped him, though, I looked at his hands, and saw that they had several large warts on them.  Just what kind of nutrition is this 14-year old receiving at home?  What is his healthcare situation?  Healthcare isn't as drastically expensive as it is in the United States, but, still, I see this as just another sign of the poverty in the community in which I'm working.

After school was out (early), TZ, Moshe, Chani and I had a brief meeting, then TZ and I took the bus back to Ramla.  I scarfed down some food, ran off to the shuk to buy some dried dates (I was flat out), and then headed off to Galit and Micha'el's house to help their son Tamir with his English.  Unfortunately, I later saw that Galit had sent me an e-mail telling me to try next week instead, because Tamir was going to be tired from coming back from school late.  So, I showed up, and, from 5:00 until 6:00, sat with him, and spoke (mostly) in English to him.  I did my best to speak to him about things that might interest him -- i.e. basketball.  I didn't do a great job -- I give myself a C+ as a tutor, and just wish that I could think of something fun that we could do together, some game that would engage him, and give him practice speaking.  Afterwards, I returned to my apartment, inadvertently fell asleep for an hour (much to my embarrassment), took a run, and then picked up studying Zecharyah with Rachel Silverman where last we left our hero a couple of months ago.  We read all of Chapter 8 in Hebrew!  I'm really amazed, although I'll say that my modern Hebrew isn't really helping.  Rachel is a total champion, though, and I'm glad to hear that she and Jonathan Klus are trying to continue Shabbat Lunch-and-Learn, which Sarah Greenberg and I officially led last year, but which would have been very far from the success that it was without Rachel (as well as Rabbi Brian and Aileen).  Simultaneous to my meeting with Rachel (as well as my dinner) was a party at Samir's, which I missed.  Even though I would have been unable to pay the entrance fee (I'm really running short on cash) in the first place, I later learned that 1) not a lot of people in my program ended up attending, 2) there was a really disgusting leak of sewage water, and 3) the tobacco smoke was kind of overwhelming.  Although I'm sorry that I missed the opportunity to socialize with some of my friends, I don't feel particularly asocial for not having attended this event.

Friday was my housemate Noach's birthday.  It was also my day off, so I left in the morning to run some errands, so that I would be around to help him celebrate.  At the Haveradim house that afternoon, we got together almost all of the Oranim participants in Ramla, had cake, and just hung out.  I left in late afternoon so that I would have enough time to send off a few e-mails before Shabbat.  I walked to the Sepharadi synagogue on Rechov Bar-Ilan, Zer'a Yitzchak, and arrived in time for Shir Hashirim (מַה יָּפִית וּמַה נָּעַמְתְּ אַהֲבָה בַּתַּעֲנוּגִים זֹאת קוֹמָתֵךְ דָּמְתָה לְתָמָר).  Afterwards, I walked to the house on Haveradim, and spent a very long time speaking with Devin, with whom I realize I share a lot in common (except maybe maturity and experience).

Saturday was incredibly uneventful; I went back to sleep at noon, read a little bit, visited Haveradim only to find that Harry was the only person home, and made Havdallah shortly after 7:00 pm (Shabbat officially ended at 6:57 pm -- so early!).  However, I had a really excellent workout in the park afterwards.  I didn't get to bed nearly early enough that night; unfortunate, because I needed to be up at 6:00 am the next day, all ready for Oranim's visit to the Dead Sea!

Love to you all from Israel!

~JD

Back to School in Lod -- First Official Day

The Chagim are finally over, and the school year now begins in earnest, here in Israel.  Since I didn't blog about it, I'll just mention that Sukkot ended uneventfully, and that the coming of Simchat Torah has motivated me to try to re-dedicate myself in Talmud Torah.  Since then, I've picked up the Mishneh Torah where I last left it (I've finished the first three or four books of Philo of Alexandria, which feels like enough for now), and begun Issurei Mizbei'ach.  Not the most practical or relevant part of the law, but, nevertheless, part of halakhah.  Did I mention, by the way, that TZ's father studies Megillat Kohelet?!

Back to our present topic, though: my first day back to school.  Yesterday, TZand I had an adventure (we were the only Ramla ITF people to have the day off, because of Moreh Moshe's schedule).  I picked up fruits and vegetables from the shuk, and got passport photos from a store in the mall in order to renew my travel visa, and each of us got a rav-kal (rechargeable bus pass) from the bus station.  Our Israeli friend Asher, who works for the HOT Mobile store in the mall, gave us a few pointers, and, thanks entirely to him, everything worked out entirely.  In the shuk, I'm getting used to the concept of seasonal produce, just as I did when living in France.  Two weeks ago, there was a glut of dates, and you could buy a kilo of the best, freshest, sweetest dates for ₪4.  Now, there's only one vendor with any dates at all, and they aren't particularly appetizing.  Figs, too, have nearly all vanished.  In the meantime, though, persimmons (אפרסימונים) are in high supply, and going for just ₪5 or ₪6 per kilo.  Guess what I purchased during my shopping trip, in addition to onions and bell peppers?

Following the shopping trip, the entire ITF group began Ulpan in the afternoon.  It's been more than a month since they arrived in Israel, and none of my classmates have received absolutely any formal instruction in Hebrew.  Alex and I have helped a little bit here and there, but very frequently when I visit the house on Havaradim in order to try to help out, and people are just too busy to be able to sit down for the extended period of time necessary to learn how to conjugate a pa'al verb in the present tense, or how to name all of the fruits and vegetables in the supermarket, or how to explain possession.  There's just so much to learn, and some of my friends never had the benefit of the seven or so years of Hebrew school that I had, Shalom in college, all of my awesome Hebrew-reading/-speaking friends at the CJL, and my month at Drisha Institute.  Yes, I am completely spoiled.  But, unfortunately, I have a much harder time remembering the word for "shower" (מִקְלַחַת)  than "altar" (מִזְבֵּחַ).  Ironically, when I was trying to read אגרות משה with my favorite fluffy (former) Freshman, I kept on remarking how much more influenced by modern Israeli Hebrew my Hebrew was than was the Hebrew of Rav Moshe, who was much more influenced by Yiddish and Aramaic (my friend Eli, by the way, has the amazing ability to triangulate between Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic).  Sometimes, I feel as awkward as a yeshiva bokher trying to use Aramaic pickup lines in a Tel Aviv discotheque.  How was I supposed to know, for instance, that Israelis use the term "מַדְרֵגָה" for a staircase, rather than "מַּעֲלוֹת," which I know from singing שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת at so many Shabbat dinners?  Or that, contrary to the common Mishnaic phraseology, nobody actually says "יודע לי אין" anymore?  Some words haven't changed, thank goodness for me.  It didn't matter at this particular Ulpan session, though, because it was entirely foundations.  The instructor didn't even start with the alphabet, and just wrote transliterations on the board, which made no sense to me.  When I studied Ancient Greek, by the second day of class, I was expected to know the entire Greek alphabet; during Drisha, Abbie taught me how to read Rashi script in about 10 minutes (although I admit that I can't read it as quickly as I can read ordinary Hebrew script).  I don't know why there is so much hesitation to push beginners in Ulpan.  I'm nevertheless going to defer to the instructor, who has infinitely more experience teaching Hebrew than I do.  After class, Alex, Alex, Becky, Veta, and I approached our instructor, and asked, in varying tones of request/demand, for more advanced Ulpan.  Afterwards, Carmel, with incredible sincerity, promised us.  I was very amazed, given the fact that one of the first things that I learned upon arrival here was that Oranim refused to give my housemate Ben any further Ulpan classes.  Alex was less surprised than I was, and expected to get a class with less of a struggle (which barely felt at all like a struggle to me), but, then again, he isn't housemates with Ben.  Nevertheless, I'm pleasantly surprised, and very grateful to Carmel, for making this possible.  Afterwards, we had Hebrew club, during which I'm not certain that I learned very much.  I did not take a run that evening.

Wednesday was my first day back at Rambam.  I boarded Bus 13, and successfully communicated to the driver my desire to charge my card for all of October.  Unfortunately, TZ hadn't managed to explain this to the driver, as I learned on our drive back.  I felt somewhat guilty; I feel a very great responsibility for our continued success as a team.  TZ has all of the brains, and all of the sweetness, and all of the teaching expertise and general life experience; the least I can do is pitch in my meager Hebrew skills to help her buy a one-month pass.  TZ and I stepped off the bus with Perrin and Natalie, and, once past the security guard ("אנחנו המתנדבים החדשים"), I headed for the little synagogue building behind the school, and TZ walked straight on to class.  The building is meant, I think, to double as some sort of a shelter; I can't think of any other reason for it to be built as it is, like a bunker.  Some of the students were excited to see me back.  After we had finished, the Rabbi began to explain the importance of tefillin, and of having a clean body (גוף נקי) when placing on one's tefillin.  It seems to me so strange at times like this that this is a school, and that the importance of tefillin is being taught to these boys in the same way that such values as compassion and respect were taught to me.  I guess I'm still a very far way away from the Orthodox mindset.  Can I see myself ever explaining to any son or daughter of mine the importance of tefillin in the same stern, earnest, passionate tone that the Rabbi used?  Probably not, should I ever be lucky enough to be in such a situation.

Our first class of the day was the 8th graders.  As I've mentioned before, the 8th graders are struggling very hard.  Although there are several bright pupils, and several others who have the patience to complete an exercise, there are several other students who not only don't want to learn, but don't want the others to learn, either, and actually hit them and throw things at them in order to distract them.  Although I would never dream of using corporal punishment, even if it were legal, I can easily see how teachers with short fuses came up with the idea of striking students in order to discipline them.  I know, almost for a fact, that there is one student who, no matter what I say, will not listen to me.  Discipline is not my responsibility, much to my relief, but this leaves me with absolutely no way to get her to learn anything; for the record, this is the same girl whom I mentioned last time, who continually tells me to shut up, accuses me of being a liar, a homosexual (negative connotations in a religious school, another upsetting fact), etc.  Anything to get a rise out of me.  I know bullies, and I know that, ultimately, this is just what they want.  Although I can ignore her, jabs, I cannot get the entire class to ignore her; as I've said before, she physically attacks other students.  I wonder how the other teachers handle her?  As I've mentioned before, I don't have the authority to discipline, but I have no idea what Israeli teachers typically do with such a student.

Between classes, I had a twenty-minute break.  I found the Rabbi in the teachers' lounge, and I took a moment to introduce myself, as the new American English teacher.  His name is Yosef.  I'm not certain how much of my speech he understood; my anglophone accent is still very strong, and he looked rather puzzled.  Nevertheless, he understood and agreed with me assertion that I should attend communal tefillat hashachar each morning, so that the boys will see me, an American Ashkenazi Jew, tie on my tefillin and pray with them.  I not only want them to know that I am a fully participating member of their community, but also want to demonstrate that there are observant Jews who live outside of the Land of Israel.  (Speaking of American Jews, thank you, Harry and Marissa, for sharing this quite funny article with me.)  He was also quite glad that I had attended that morning; without me, we would not have had a minyan, a prayer quorum of ten adult (male -- the school is orthodox) Jews.  Maybe, at some point, I could teach a shiur on American Judaism, maybe talking about some famous American rabbis?  Or explain that such American Jewish traditions as adding extra paragraph of assorted pesukim to the end of שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת when they recite the ברכת המזון (the French Jews I met don't do this).  I wonder how orthodox I would need to remain in a religious school like this, if I were ever to teach such a lesson.  Oh, well, that's thought for another time.  Also, my peach was excellent, I'd like to say, much better, as far as I can tell, than Peninah's most recent apple, even though it was a disco apple.

Next, we taught the 6th-graders.  These kids were adorable, and Moreh Mosheh has very high confidence in this cohort, even though some of them suffer from the same sort of familial misfortune that is so common among the 8th graders.  Still, their level of motivation and attention was very high.  I had a group of four boys, and together, we learned some new vocabulary words ("baker," "fire," "stones," "build"), and then used those words in reading a story (told in a paneled comic) about the London Fire of 1666.  With these younger students, I am happy to let on that I know some Hebrew, to help them with some of the things with which they struggle.  I do my best to teach the entirely in English most of the time, but when we come to part about about rats making people sick, for instance, difficult to understand without some translation, I switched to Hebrew for a few sentences, to make absolutely certain that they understood (they did).

Of the four students with whom I was working, only two (who, interestingly enough, had the same name) wanted to learn the vocabulary and read the story; one of the others lost interest in me once he had asked me the typical gamut of questions -- where was I from; did I know American celebrities X, Y, and Z; was TZ my sister or my girlfriend; did I have a girlfriend; was I gay; did I know that I had a crack in the lens of my glasses.  These kids also had a few collectable soccer cards, and once it became apparent that I didn't know any players from the Barcelona or Qatar teams, there was nothing I could possibly have said or done to further reduce myself in their eyes.  They simply stopped paying attention to me, and I allowed myself to commit what I'll call the W.E.B. Mistake -- I allowed myself to concentrate only on the two pupils who showed interest in learning. We had a fantastic time, and several times, I saw the lightbulbs go off over their heads, as they understood some word or phrase that had been entirely opaque to them just a moment before.  As rewarding as this was, the other two students simply wandered off (literally), and I was unwilling to chase them down, and make them sit down for something that they didn't want to hear, probably to the detriment of the other two.  Did I do the wrong thing?  I really don't know.

School was out fairly early that day (shortly after noon), and, after class, Moshe, TZ, and I met to discuss more lesson ideas.  I still don't really know my work schedule, which I'm hoping will soon stabilize.  TZ and I took the bus back to Ramla, and met Harry and Hannah back on the way (Harry gave me an affectionate tap on the brim of my hat).  I hopped off the bus, and scarfed down some pita, chumus, zchug, and vegetables, and also got to work studying some Hebrew.  Carmel came by to speak with some of my housemates, and also collected my passport, in order to renew my visa for me.  Devin and TZ, not at all to my surprise, acquired their long-term visas back in the states (I had all of the paperwork prepared a week or so before I left for Israel, but heard that the NYC consulate was on a visa backlog, and was hesitant to be stuck again in Visa Limbo, as I had been back in summer 2011 with the captious French consulate).

At 5:00 pm, Carmel's copine Tanya led the Ramla Oranim participants in an enrichment program about the aliyot.  My roommate Ben and I had thought that we were going to be late, and jogged all the way to the apartment, laughing a fair amount along the way.  I had assumed that Tanya was going to be explaining the various historical waves of settlers in the Land of Israel, beginning with the First and Second Aliyot, of the late 19th century.  In fact, Tanya, who moved here when she was six, described the life of the million-strong wave of immigrants that arrived from former Soviet countries in the early 1990s.  This was intensely interesting.  The American phenomenon of each wave of immigrants laughing at the next wave, that I know so well, is faithfully reflected in this nation of immigrants.  Tanya and Carmel emphasized the continuing lower socio-economic status of Mizrachim, which continues to surprise me.  I had really thought that the fissures among Israeli Jews would be relatively small, given the fact that all Israeli Jews could look at Israeli Arabs, Druze, Samaritans, etc., as the Other.  Tanya argued, rather, that the Arab-Zionist conflict acts to exacerbate and accentuate, rather than to smooth over, internecine Jewish Israeli conflict.  As someone who's read Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, and is familiar with Marxist thinking, this argument seems rather familiar.  According to a Marxist reading of conflict in American History, every social fissure (most notably the color line between white and black) is an artificial distraction invented by the ruling classes in order to prevent working-class people everywhere from uniting against them, etc., etc.  (One of the best explanations of such a conflict appears at the beginning of Tony Morrison's novel A Mercy.)  Tanya spun the argument differently, but it had the same effect: because oppression and prejudice exists on such a massive scale in the form of the Arab-Jewish division, it contaminates the rest of society, creating an Ashkenazi-Mizrachi division, etc.  Mizrachim are severely under-represented in government and academics, although, in my own observations, they don't form the sort of squalid underclass that blacks and latinos do back in the United States.  You remember those two 6th-grade boys I mentioned, who were such good students?  One was Ethiopian, the other was Mizrachi.  The fact that the children don't significantly self-segregate, as they do in the U.S., makes me continue to think that none of the internal Jewish divisions are as severe in Israel as the color line is in the United States.  However, I'm not an economist, sociologist, or demographer, and you shouldn't take my word on anything.

Carmel shared his own story; his family has been here for more than a century.  One side was originally from Kurdisan (in Iraq), and rode here on donkeys; the other side is Ashkenazi.  Carmel was trying to say that he bridges the divide, to some extent; although he is a a sabra with an Ashkenazi name, he can look very Mizrachi.  When he was younger, with shorter hair and more chains, he was the kind of person who would be barred from entering certain nightclubs in Tel Aviv.  Also participating in our enrichment was an olah chadashah, who had just moved permanently to Israel on Monday.  She described her choice (last year, she had worked with Oranim in Ramla), and mentioned, as a part of it, her first job in Israel, as a bouncer in Tel Aviv, whose job was to keep out Arabs.  This whole situation is upsetting, and makes me feel slightly guilty for being Ashkenazi, a group of Jews which some Mizrachim in Israel grow up without ever encountering.  I just really want to be a good teacher here.

Finally, congratulations to my exceptionally talented and awesome Becky, of the Gil'ad house, who was just accepted by the grad school of her choice! חברתי הכבוד כל!  You will go on to do great things, cool person!

~JD