A long day - A good day

Today I spent 15 hours at Pardes (from 7 AM to 10 PM). I plan to continue this ritual every Monday.
On "regular days" classes run from 8:30 to 5, but I try to come to shacharit which starts between 7 and 7:30 (so far, I have a perfect attendance record!*) .
So normally, I'm there for around 10 hours - which is already plenty long.

Today was the first day of "night seder", which is when you can choose to stay late and learn a topic of your choice with your chevruta (study partner).

Night seder runs from 7:30 to 9:45ish, so most people who are going to come take a break between 5:00 and 7:30.

Being the eager learner that I am (at least for now), I decided to fill that "free" time slot with an optional class on Jewish ethics that Pardes offers from 5:45 to 7:30...

Needless to say, it was a very intense day.
Amazingly, however, I left Pardes at night with much more energy than when I had entered the building 15 hours earlier.

In fact, I was somewhat sad to leave the beit midrash.

I was very excited by what I learned today.

Although I can't promise that I'll keep up this pace, I'm really looking forward to spending the next 9 months studying at Pardes.
I think that I made a good choice to come to Israel for a year instead of starting work right away at my accounting firm.


On a lighter note, I made a bit of an ass of myself today in one of my classes.

The class was full, so I ended up sitting in the back corner.
At one point, my mind began to wander and I started doodling in my notebook.
That is the setting for the following story:

We were learning about Rosh Hashana, and the teacher wanted to point out that it can be understood as not just a holiday for the Jewish people, but rather one for all the nations of the world.
To back up this theory, she tried to explain that we celebrate it on the day that the world was created and not on the first day of "Jewish peoplehood".

At the moment where I made an ass of myself, the above point had become clear to everyone although it had not yet been spelled out explicitly.

So, just to firm things up, the teacher said "On Rosh Hashana, we celebrate the birthday of the world, and not the birthday of..."
Instead of piping in "the Jewish people", or "Judaism" (or even not saying anything at all), somehow the word "Jesus" slipped out of my mouth - and it came out much louder than I had intended (I said it as a joke, but it was intended for my neighbour and not the whole class -and especially not the teacher).
It was pretty embarrassed, but at least it got a laugh (partially laughing with me and partially laughing at me).

(I have no idea if this story makes sense in writing, and even if it does, you probably don't think its funny. I'll pre-empt your criticism and say "I guess you had to be there").



*This is less impressive than it sounds, because school has only been running for a week

I have a home!

As you may have already heard, my prayers for a new home were recently answered.
After searching for a month and a half and coming up empty handed, I finally ran into some luck.

About a week ago, I was eating dinner with some third cousins of mine who live in Israel (I only met these cousins a couple of years ago - we are certainly not very close). The topic of my imminent homelessness quickly came up (because it was pretty much the only thing on my mind at the time). After a brief discussion, one cousin mentioned that her roommate might be moving out so she might have a room available in her place - she told me that she would have to get back to me.
I immediately jumped on the opportunity and asked when I could move in (at that point I wasn't really sure if she was serious in her offer or if she was just trying to be nice and didn't expect me to be interested, but I didn't really care. If an offer was made, I was going to take it).

The next day she called and told me that it was a go.
Thank the good Lord.

The apartment is beautiful and is in a great location. I am happy.

Looking back at the apartment hunt, there were certain things that were either hilarious, terribly frustrating or both. I'll list a couple here.

1. Through mutual friends, I found a potential roommate who happened to be a girl. We looked at a lot of places together. On several occasions when we thought that we were close to signing a lease, the landlord looked at us and said "actually, I don't rent to co-ed roommates". Normally it was because the landlord was religious and just didn't feel comfortable with the idea.
In one instance, the landlord was not so religious, but she knew that most of the tenants in the building were and she was worried that they would be upset.
She told us that she would consider renting the apartment to us so long as we agreed to pretend that we were cousins.
(Another man told us that he asked his rabbi, and was told that he could rent his place to us so long as only one of our names was on the lease. "I don't want to know what's happening in the apartment. If your girlfriend moves in, don't tell me").

2. I don't know if it's slang, or proper Hebrew, but when I was told by Israelis that their apartment was no longer available they would say "zeh lo actuali".
I quickly began to hate those words as I heard them over and over and over again.

3. Because there were so few apartments and so many people looking, I would run into the same people all the time at "open houses". At first nobody was really nice to each other, but eventually we bonded over our mutual frustration and began to share info.
It was actually nice.

4. Israelis have a knack for advertising apartments in "creative" manners.
For example, "partially furnished" sometimes means "there is absolutely no furniture, nor a stove nor an oven, but there is a broken bookshelf in the hallway that we are too lazy to throw out".
Or "studio apartment with kitchenette and private entrance" means "a small hole in the wall under our apartment which has enough space for a bed. The kitchenette is actually a sink. The private entrance is actually a rickety wooden ladder which is accessed through a very sketchy field".

Anyway, I'm glad that the ordeal is over.

I would say that my new place is perfect, but that would be a lie.
At the moment, there is a small drawback.
Being the month of Elul, Jews are obligated to hear the sound of the shofar every morning (to get us to start thinking of repentance etc).

My apartment happens to be next to a shul.

The shul happens to blow shofar at 5:30 in the morning (and it seems to me that they blow shofar every 5 minutes for an hour).
I must admit that my first thought when being woken up by this awful noise is not "I must repent for my sins" but rather "I'd like to take that shofar and ram it..." (yes, pun intended).

Oh well. Its a small price to pay.

I almost forgot, I promised to explain the photos from my previous post.

A couple of weeks ago I attended 3 weddings in 3 nights.

1 was a modern orthodox ceremony (I went to McGill with the bride).
1 was a HUGE Chassidic wedding (Son of the Machnifca Rebbe marrying the daughter of the Biala Rebbe). Some other cousins of mine (not related to the one that I'm living with) invited me to come with them.
It was crazy.
1 was a fully egalitarian ceremony. (I went on an Israel advocacy trip with the bride a few years ago).

Your job is to match the wedding descriptions with the pictures.

The last 2 pictures are from a tiyul (a small trip) that I went on with a visiting friend of mine and her Israeli friend.
Her friend suggested that we hike to a great ma'ayan (a spring).
The idea sounded nice, especially given the heat.

After a very long journey to the beginning of the trail (which required some serious fence climbing skills), and after getting lost for a little while, we finally reached the ma'ayan. The only problem is that the ma'ayan was actually a large concrete silo which was filled with smelly dirty water. During the winter the silo is presumably fed by a spring SOMEWHERE ELSE through a rubber tube.

Now, I understand that there are many natural springs that are turned into "man made" swimming areas.
This one was just hysterical.

Israelis are so desperate for water they'll take it in any form.

Here is a quick comparison of natural springs turned into man made swimming areas.

Example 1















Hot Springs outside of Jasper, AB (country road trip - May 2006)

Example 2















"Ma'ayan" outside of Jerusalem, Israel (August, 2006).


As you can see, they're basically the same.


Ok, it's late.

I should go to bed.

Oh, I started Pardes on Monday.
Classes have been good so far.