A week in review

There is a hard decision that must be made when it comes to blogging. I know what my plans are for a certain period of time and I know what needs to be blogged about. So, when not a lot happens, I can put off the blogging for a while, for the sake of a better blog. This time, I put it off too long, but I assure you, my loyal blog readers, that you will not be disappointed. While it is true I did not blog for an entire week, let me assure you that the following blog will be very comprehensive in it's reporting of all that went on since my last entry. You might even have to take a break and come back. Well here goes.

We leave off as Ari is about to try and take his fan back to HomeCenter…

…Oh who am I kidding with this 3^rd person garbage…

Ok, so I was went to HomeCenter, well first I got a ride and did some errands in order to secure that ride with one of the YU staff members, Doni. We drove around town and had some good discussions, and when we finally got to Malcha Mall, I was ready to get that fan returned. We walked into HomeCenter ready to fight to the death for our right to get a working fan. Luckily, the nice woman behind the counter didn’t really care to fight, and said, just go take a new one. She didn’t even plug in my fan to see if I was telling the truth. She asked when it was purchased and if I had a receipt, which I didn’t, but it didn’t much matter. I’d say I am pretty satisfied with my new acquisition. The only problem is now I have a one week old fan that I am dying to get rid of for no apparent reason. I am planning on posting a listing on a popular email list in Jerusalem, who knows if I’ll get any takers. I might look crazy writing I bought a fan a week ago and I need to sell it in the next week because I’m leaving the country! I probably shouldn’t tell them it was a replacement for a fan that broke, that wouldn’t help my cause of saying its in great condition!

On Monday night we had our weekly dinner and presentation with an added bonus. One of the Yavneh guys was finishing all of Gemara Kiddushin and since it was the 9 days, we got to have some meat after the siyum. Let me first say, they went back and forth about having the meat, some saying that really only his friends should be able to participate in his simcha but finally in the end they ordered us deli sandwiches (which were honestly pretty bad) and we heard a presentation from Maaglei Tzedek. Maaglei Tzedek does various chessed projects around Yerushalyim, one of which I almost participated in during my year in Yeshiva, volunteering to tutor very underprivileged kids whose grades are slipping, but it never panned out. They also do a traveling coffee shop for people who can’t get out and go to a real coffee shop. Their newest project is called the Tav Chevrati or social seal. It’s basically a moral teudah (hechsher) for restaurants. It is offered for free for restaurants in Israel that ensure that their workers are getting what they are legally entitled to, like minimum wage, overtime extra pay, and a bus pass. Also the restaurant has to be wheelchair accessible. They encourage people to only eat in places with the Tav and tell owners why they are leaving if its not there. The restaurant doesn’t have to be kosher for it to get a Tav. More information here.

On Wednesday, Erev Tisha B’Av, I basically just ate as much as I could. For my pre-fast meal, I had pita with peanut butter as an appetizer, pasta with cheese sauce (ok its sounds good but I didn’t really do a good job of making it…) and a bowl of life cereal. By the end of my meal, I was stuffed, I could barely finish the cereal! We had eicha together in the YU Beit Midrash, followed by a short shiur by our madrich Rafi. I went to sleep early, since there’s really not much else you can do. We had late davening in the morning (8:30 AM) and then we had kinnot. Before every kina, Rabbi Bednarsh, one of the YU rabbis gave a 5-15 minute introduction/shiur on it, and it was very well done. Kinnot lasted until 12:30 PM. After that, I went to Yad Vashem. I had been to Yad Vashem last year with Yeshiva but a few weeks after, they opened the new museum. We spent about an hour there, but because it was a fast day, I clearly couldn’t pay as much attention as I would have been able to on a normal day. There is so much to see there, hours and hours worth of videos and well, it’s really well done.

After that we walked over to Har Herzl, the military cemetery, for Michael Levine’s funeral. Michael was a chayal boded meaning he moved to Israel and did the army with no parents (in Israel). He served as a paratrooper as was actually at home on vacation in Philadelphia when the war broke out. Read more about Michael here. I was very moved by the amount of people in attendance, probably only a small fraction of them actually knew Michael. There were many soldiers in attendance and it was a very emotional funeral. Following that I jumped on a bus and headed for the Old City. We arrived just in time for Mincha (with tefillin). I had to scour the area for a minyan that was just beginning, I was a tad late, most people had started about 10 minutes before I got there. I ran into the Eretz HaTzvi guys finishing up and eventually found a bunch of guys getting ready to start.

Following a brief break and Maariv, I met a bunch of guys and girls from Yavneh and we broke our fast in the Kotel Plaza on bagels. We sat there for 15 minutes eating and talking and then we decided we needed more food so we debated for a while whether to go to Ben Yehuda or Emek Refaim. Ben Yehuda won out and we slowly made our way there. I grabbed a piece of pizza and headed back to my apartment shortly after because I had been out all day and also I had some stuff to do.

For shabbat, I helped another girl on Yavneh organize a semi-improptu shabbaton in Kochav HaShachar (ok, I'll be honest, she did most of the work...). Kochav HaShachar is a beautiful Yishuv north of Yerushalyim. One of the YU staff members lives there and invited as many people that wanted to come for shabbat. We had 19 people coming and we organized transportation and housing for everyone. Everyone was set up to sleep at a family there and that was also the Friday night meal, for Shabbat lunch we ate at Doni’s, where the food was catered, and seudah shlishit was food that we bought.

On Friday morning after davening, I went to the shuk with 2 girls to do the seudah shlishit shopping. We had a budget of around 250 shekel to spend on everyone and of course a shopping list. It was a lot of fun looking around for the best deal, and especially carrying everything, including a huge watermelon (which I dropped only 20 seconds after buying it…). After we got back to YU, I had only about a ½ hour to get ready, because then I was going to go with Doni to pick up the catered lunch and get a ride directly there with him. I rushed back and was ready and we did some errands quickly and got to the caterer. We spent a whole lot of money on lunch and bought almost all of the meat they had left. There was a buffet when we got there of many types of meat, let’s just say when we left they were ready to close, even though they probably would have closed anyway since it was getting late. We shlepped the food back to Doni’s car and then we were on our way. The scenery once you leave Yerushalyim is unbelievable. Doni noted that there is only one arab village on the way, and the rest is either empty hills or yishuvim. The arab village happens to be quite large but once you are through that the views are unbelievable on the curvy two lane highway through the mountains. We got to Kochav HaShachar and unloaded all the food and then I went to my host’s house.

My hosts were very cool, the husband was Australian, and very hippy-ish, Reb Nachman kinda guy, and the wife was originally from Riverdale. The kids didn’t speak a word of English, which is weird because normally in Israel, English speaking parents speak and teach their kids English, but to each his own. After dinner we hung out together near the shul and talked with all the Yavneh people, and then went to sleep. Shabbat morning was nice, we missed the early (8 am) minyan because our host forgot to wake us, but he woke us for the late (8:45 am) one that had no air conditioning. Sitting next to me was this man and his son, who I knew I recognized, but I couldn’t figure it out. I asked the kid from my family if he knew them and he told me they were guests. Then later I heard them speaking in English, so I decided it was time to go in and find out who they were. I had suspicion I recognized them from maybe him doing shlichut in Detroit as part of Kollel Torah Mitzion maybe, but I was wrong. The minute he told me who he was, I remembered and it was great. They were the directors of Pittsburgh NCSY (Yariv and Aviva Aharon) when I was there and I also recognized his son from shabbatonim. What was even more ironic was that Yariv was Doni’s brother-in-law (and he was staying at Doni's for shabbat, clearly...).

The rest of Shabbat was uneventful, I played a game of Risk with some people which we couldn’t finish. Doni gave us a very informative tour of parts of the Yishuv before mincha to see how the yishuv has grown over the years. On a clear day you can see the Dead Sea from the lookout point and you can also see Yericho in the distance. After Shabbat we had a bonfire. Here are some pictures:

Photo credits: Monica and Vicky

On motzaei Shabbat, after we got back to Yerushalyim, we found out that our Madrich, Rafi, had been called up for reserves. He'll be just replacing another unit that is either going to get some rest, or head up for real duty in the North, he's not sure yet. He expects to be doing basic work in the Galil at checkpoints and nothing too hard. He wrote us a very heartfelt email and we will miss him in our last week.

Last night, I tried again to make pasta with cheese sauce. It tasted ok, but apparently the pot liked the sauce as much as I did and tried to keep the sauce stuck there, it was really hard to get it off. Someone recommended using a knife to scrape it off, which worked, but let me tell you scrubbing it with a sponge for 20 minutes did nothing at all!

Also, as you now know, this is my last week here, so if anyone has any shopping requests, let me know. I'll be back home next Monday night :( .