Day 122: taking some time to be less serious

November is almost over, and I for one could not be more excited. This weekend I was reading back over old journal entries from the past year, and I think it's safe to say that in a year full of difficult months, this has been one of the toughest. One of my friends jokingly suggested that I celebrate the arrival of December with a secular Rosh Chodesh celebration, but I think I'm actually going to do it. I'll buy a fancy coffee and take a shower with some nice shower gel and enjoy the fact that in 31 days 2009 will be over and I will never have to live through this year again.

For all of the difficulty, this year has also brought with it a tremendous amount of growth on my part, as well as an amazing group of friends and my current life in Israel, so all things considered it's turned out fairly well. It's taught me how to celebrate the little victories, like successfully baking a Pumpkin Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving, or reading through an entire Rashi commentary on a verse without using a dictionary (both of these things happened last week and deserve to be commemorated!), or even just celebrating that it's still warm enough that I can sit outside and eat my lunch, as long as I'm wearing a sweatshirt and socks.

I celebrated Thanksgiving last week at the apartment of my friends Amy, Esther, and Jessica. Miriam was there, as well as nine other people, most of whom are Pardes students and all of whom are lovely. It was a wonderful, wonderful dinner - Esther organized the whole thing and orchestrated the production of a massive quantity of food (including chocolate pecan pie - and I know it might be a betrayal of my plain pecan pie upbringing to say this, but that pie was really good). I was supposed to go to a protest on Saturday night, but I sat it out because of a really bad headache that wound up being the precursor to a rather nasty cold. I stayed home from school yesterday, and went in today for my morning classes. Tomorrow is a half day (as Tuesdays always are) and hopefully by Wednesday I will have fully recovered!

On a different note, I've gotten this question a few times over the last few weeks, and hopefully my answer doesn't come too late. If you were planning to send me things from the States (not that you should or need to, but if you happen to be doing it and would like to be well informed about what I desire), here are a couple of things I would enjoy:

• Good tea - I can buy Wissotzky everywhere, and it's fine, but I wouldn't mind something special.
  
• Burt's Bees Lip Balm
• Lush Rub Rub Rub shower scrub
• Books. Books in English. Books in English that have nothing to do with Jews, Judaism, or the Torah. Or Israel.
  
• A pair of these. Cute and comfy.

If I think of anything else, I will let you know.

Lots of love,
Naomi

Day 99: Not All Weeks Are Created Equal

This is another long one - mostly because this week has had some amazing ups and some distressing lows and it's hard to talk about either one briefly. Bear with me.

I have always enjoyed cooking and baking - when I was younger, I remember loving when I got to pull out the step stool in the kitchen so that I could see the counter tops and help cook dinner. I learned how to make all sorts of good food standing at that counter next to my mom - meatballs, spaghetti sauce, snickerdoodles, macaroni and cheese, steamed artichokes, a good grilled cheese and a great egg in a raft. And I distinctly remember when my father decided he wanted to learn how to bake - I learned right along with him, acting as sous chef and getting to do all of the fun things like crack eggs and dump flour into the mixer.

In the last two years, cooking and baking have become something of a stress-relief activity for me. I enjoy the process of finding a recipe, shopping for ingredients, preparing and assembling a great meal or a wonderful dessert. It's something concrete - the steps don't change, no matter what you're putting together. I also get a lot of joy out of providing food for others - it's such an easy way to make people happy, and I've found that my friends are always grateful when presented with a cookie or a cupcake or a really well made salad.

It makes me so happy to learn that this year at Pardes I'm gaining a little bit of a reputation as a baker - it's not something I purposefully attempted to do, but knowing that the things I've been putting effort into have been making people happy is a really great feeling. I love that in the past few weeks I've brought two different people over who wanted baking lessons (once for challah and once for cupcakes) and that both times, they've left with new knowledge, a good memory or two, and some delicious baked goods.

Another thing that I've always gotten a lot of joy out of is sewing and making clothing, a talent which has been a little underutilized since I came to Jerusalem because I left my sewing machine behind in Chicago. A few weeks ago, however, I was approached by a friend looking for some assistance with a clothing related project. In Numbers 15:38-40, God commands the Israelites to bind a fringe to the corners of their garments; this fringe is called tzitzit, and it's found on the corners of tallitot. In many observant communities, it is a custom for men to wear not just a tallit, but also a tallit katan (basically an undershirt with four distinct corners and tzitzit tied to each corner). It is becoming more and more common for women to take on this mitzvah as well, however, it isn't something that has hit the mainstream and so it is difficult for women to find tallitot katanot that fit them well.

My friend asked me for assistance in converting some of her form fitting tank tops into tallitot katanot - a process that involved opening up the side seams to create four distinct corners and sewing a buttonhole into each corner so that the tzitzit would have a finished hole to be tied through. We spent a really lovely evening together figuring out the logistics of completing this project, both in terms of the halacha involved and the construction steps necessary. I was really glad to be able to help her take this step on her Jewish journey, and also really enjoyed getting back into the simple rhythm of using a needle and thread.

And now for the not so great stuff. On Tuesday of this past week, I woke up to the news that my maternal grandfather had gone off of dialysis. In conjunction with this came the realization that my mother had a major surgery scheduled for Wednesday which could not be rescheduled. My grandfather passed away on Friday, and the funeral will be tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon.

It's really difficult to be away from my family during this time. I want to be there for my mom, and my grandmother, and to be with my dad and my brothers and my extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins. We're taking great advantage of Skype and cell phones and gchats but it's not the same as getting and giving a real life hug or being able to hold someone's hand.

My friends here have been amazing - calling to check up on me, offering hugs and condolences and prayers. So many people have asked if I needed anything, and simply been present when I've needed a shoulder to lean on or a friendly face. The same goes for my friends in the States - offering up words of wisdom and listening to me talk about my Grandpa Max.

I have a lot of really complicated thoughts about everything that's going on with my family. Suffice it to say, this has been a very difficult year, and while I appreciate the lessons I've learned in stress management, resiliency, and grieving, I would also really appreciate a few months where nothing crazy happens in my life. I wish that I were able to go home, and I struggle with the fact that I was pretty sure I was going to face this situation before I left the States. Mostly, though, I'm just really sad, and while I know it will get better in the long run, it's not so easy right now.

Day 88: Israel is a very small place

It's been a little while since I've updated - all sorts of things have been happening here! A few quick highlights include:

• Ulpan classes are in full swing and are going very well! Hebrew is flooding back into my brain, which is a great feeling.
• I've started writing for the new Pardes student blog (along with seven or so other students), which you can read here.
• Tofu! Pardes has a tofu co-op which I am currently organizing (taking orders from students, placing the order with Simcha-the-tofu-lady and dealing with sorting out the delivery). I get a free kilo of tofu with every order, so it's pretty worthwhile for me.
• Vegetables! Miriam and Sarah and I joined a CSA called ח'ביזה עלי (alay chubeza - I don't actually know what it means) and now a lovely box of vegetables gets delivered to my apartment every week. It's fantastic. Last week there were eggplants, sweet potatoes, a big piece of squash, corn, lettuce, rocket greens, scallions, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and radishes. And cilantro. I'm in vegetable heaven.

I have a lot of stories from the last two weeks, but here are two particularly good ones. The first one starts on the Friday night before Simchat Torah (October 9th, for those playing the home game). Miriam and Sara (Gunning) and I all went to our friend Jessica and Amy's apartment for Shabbat dinner. We had a really wonderful evening - one of the other guests was actually someone that Sara taught with at Beth Emet, which was a nice surprise. While we were there, Amy asked us if we had met her friend Jeremy yet - he works for Btselem, a human rights organization here in Israel. The answer was no - or at least, not yet.

The next day, Sara and I went to Nava Tehila for Simchat Torah services - Nava Tehila is a Renewal minyan here in Jerusalem, which mostly means that there's a lot of really beautiful singing. The service was very spiritual and joyful, and at one point we unrolled the whole Torah scroll and held it up in a circle with our tallitot. Sara was standing on one side of me, and there was a gentleman I'd never met before on my right, so I introduced myself and started chatting. His name is Jeremy, and it turns out that he works for Btselem, and knows Amy and Jessica... Small world, right?

Jeremy is also a central figure in the second story, because it's actually mostly his story. Jeremy's father is Israeli by birth, but his family moved out of Israel when Jeremy's father was two years old. Jeremy came to Jerusalem to work for Btselem, which is a great human rights organization that doesn't have the best relationship with the Israeli government, for a lot of reasons. Anyway, after Jeremy got here, he went to apply for a work visa, and was asked where his parents were born. Upon mentioning that his father was born in Israel, Jeremy was informed that he couldn't apply for a work visa because he's actually an Israeli citizen, and so what he needed to do was make aliyah.

For a lot of complicated reasons, and also some pretty simple and obvious ones, Jeremy didn't actually want to make aliyah, but it wound up being his only feasible option for the time being. And so on Friday I found myself hanging out on the Tayelet with Miriam, Sara, Jeremy, and Jeremy's friend Avital having a little mock-aliyah party, celebrating the insanity that is the Israeli government. And in another example of the world being small, it turns out that Avital, who went to Berkeley, knows Kelly (one of my AVODAH roommates and current good friend). Crazy!

Beyond the fact that the world is fairly small, I think Jeremy's story is really interesting because it highlights a weird part of being in Israel. I get the sense sometimes, both from Israelis and Americans, that in order to be a good Jew I have to want to live in Israel forever. Which, frankly, isn't something I think I'll ever want. I have far too much of a life in the United States to ever really be comfortable with the idea of moving to Israel, and that doesn't even begin to address the ideological problems I have with making aliyah. Anyway, talking with Jeremy about his situation has just reminded me how complicated living here actually is, and how far from home I really am. It's easy to forget you're living in a foreign country when you spend most of your time with other Americans, but it turns out that things are really different here! Who knew? :)

Day 36: Jerusalem

Lots of wonderful things have been happening here in Jerusalem over the past week. I opened an Israeli bank account with the aide of a lovely woman named Batsheva (for a more in-depth account, read Miriam's blog here), I went to two yoga classes at Pardes, had an amazing conversation about the mikveh with Will, went to a delicious dinner at Caffit with Miriam (Kelly - you were right, the salads are amazing!), ate falafel, studied the story of the casting out of Ishmael (did you know that Hagar actually fits the archetype of a patriarch rather than a matriarch? she talks directly to God [really an angel, but whatever] and finds a wife for her son), and had two great lessons on Martin Buber. Also, I went to Pomerantz, which is a great religious bookstore downtown and purchased some books for class and also a new siddur.

This past weekend was the first Pardes Shabbaton of the year. We left Pardes Thursday afternoon, and spent Shabbat at what used to be the home of Young Judaea YearCourse (not Beit Riklis - the new place) until Hadassah lost all of their money and had to sell their fancy new building, and is now the Judaea Youth Hostel. It was a beautiful Shabbat, full of singing and dancing and rest and relaxation. And, because it's Pardes, text study and shiurim (lessons). Lots and lots of text study and shiurim. We talked about teshuva, we talked about Jewish journeys, we talked about dealing with the diversity of the Pardes community, etc., etc. I had a really good time, which seems like an understatement to describe the weekend, because it's much more complex than that, but I'm tired and a little sick, and all I can think of right now is I had a really good time.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about teshuva lately - much of that is because of Pardes, and the fact that almost all of my classes are studying things related to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, but a lot of it is just because of me. I've had several conversations recently about what teshuva actually is - is it just repentance, or is it something more? I think the definition I've settled on for myself is that doing teshuva means taking stock of where I am and what I've done during the past year. It's not just reflecting on those things, though, because I think teshuva is also about taking action; it's about deciding what I'm happy and unhappy with about my life, and making changes based on those decisions. And definitely not treating my repentance in a superficial way, like when all of my friends posted Facebook status last year declaring "If I've done anything to hurt or offend you in the past year, I'm sorry," which I actually found very offensive, but that's another story...

One of the many text studies I did this weekend was about how to begin teshuva - that is, how it can seem overwhelming at the start, because it's a big task to ask that we repent for every little thing we've done wrong since last Yom Kippur. Yaffa Epstein, the teacher leading the shiur, brought us a text that told a story (which I'm paraphrasing) about a king and his son. The son had traveled far from home, and the king was asking him to return. The son says "It's too far - I am a hundred days distance from home." And the king replies "Go as far as you can, and I will meet you there." In case you weren't sure, in this story we are the son, and God is the king. I think it's an incredibly powerful statement - that during this time of teshuva, we should do as much work as we can, but we don't have to finish. God expects of us only what we are capable of doing and nothing more - we have to take the first step, but if that's the only step we can take than God will understand, and meet us there.

It's a philosophy that I think I want to apply to all of my religious life, and not just to teshuva - because there are times when I want to take on more mitzvot and there are times when the only mitzvot I can think about doing are the basic ones, like "don't steal" and "don't kill people." But God understands - God knows that I am tired, or frustrated, or overwhelmed by the things that have happened during this past year, and doesn't need me to do any more than that. It's a comforting thought.

The other thing I took away from the Shabbaton was a greater sense of belonging within the Pardes community. We needed some quality outside of class time together to get past some of the social awkwardness of meeting a new group of people, and it definitely worked. Yay for making new friends! And with that, I wish you all a lovely Monday.