Hello dear ones!
As you probably know, the Jewish New Year - Rosh HaShana - is quickly approaching and I wanted to share some things that the impending new year has brought up for me.
First is a reminder that despite my ongoing Hebrew frustrations, I really am learning a new language. This became evident to me when I realized that until this year I knew that Rosh HaShana (pronounced Rush-uh-shun-uh by my friends and family) was the new year, but I did not know that in Hebrew Rosh means "head", Sha means "year" and Ha means "the" - Head (beginning) of The Year! This is obviously just a small example, but I'm starting to see it everywhere. Another example: my iTunes library was on Shuffle the other day and an old Hebrew camp song came on. In the place of the foreign sounds that I used to mimic from hearing the song over and over again were actual words that I understood! Pretty exciting.
The second thing has more to do with the meaning and traditions of Rosh HaShana:
The past month that I've been here I've been participating in a Jewish learning program that consists of lectures and one hour learning sessions with a partner. It is organized by a lovely Orthodox couple and they basically pay you to come learn Judaism. Now I know that this likely sends up the "Brainwashing Potential" red flag for a lot of you, but I'll remind you that my atheist upbringing has created a veeerryy thick wall of skepticism, and that my private school education has instilled in me the importance of critical thinking. So fear not, I am simply trying to learn more about Judaism while I live here in the Jewish homeland.
So. Last week we had a lecture about Rosh HaShana, and I learned some new and interesting things. Forgive me for the lesson on Talmud that follows, but it is essential in order for me to explain what I am thinking about regarding the new year. Important note: I do not claim to be an expert on Jewish text or interpretations of the Torah. What follows is my best effort at paraphrasing what this particular woman taught in her lecture, which I'm sure is one understanding of many. Okay. The lecture started out with the teacher explaining that Rosh HaShana is not only considered the first day of the new year, but also the first day of all of creation. This is to say that the Earth is created over again every year on this day. Insert skepticism here. Anyway Rosh HaShana also happens to be the day on which G-d passes judgment on all people. This leads us to the baffling question: "On what can we be judged on the first day of the year and of creation? We haven't done anything yet!" And the question: "Why is the first day of the new year BEFORE we repent for our wrongdoings of the last year (Yom Kippur)? Isn't that backwards?!" The lecturer explained that on this day G-d is not judging us on what we've done in the past year, but rather on what we plan to do in the coming year. She explained that on Rosh HaShana G-d asks us to momentarily put aside the wrongs that we committed in the last year and start with a fresh planning slate. She said that this is important because if you go to the planning stage with the burden of your various failures from the past year, you'll think to yourself, "Well I clearly screwed it all up last year, I'm obviously a loser, what's the point in making a wonderful plan this year if there's no way I can succeed?!" I like this idea. Put aside your failures for a minute, give yourself the benefit of the doubt, and allow yourself to think about who you want to be, how you want to behave, what goals you want to reach in the next year. Then, in the days between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur, pick up your bag of wrongdoings and repent, apologize, make good on your mistakes. Kinda neat.
The problem with this particular lecturer is that she wanted us to plan our entire lives. She asked us to think about where we want to be in 5, 10, 15, 20 years and analyze whether or not our current actions are helping us get closer to those goals. To me, that's nuts. My lovely mother prohibits me from planning too far in advance, she says it makes us anxious to do this and prevents us from being present in the here and now. I think my mother a very wise woman, and try not to let every daily decision be dictated by how I think it will effect my life in the next 5 years. However. I do think it's cool to think about your goals and whether or not the way you're living is helping to bring you closer to them or farther away from them. So this is what I plan to do, and encourage you to do if you're so moved, in the days leading up to Rosh HaShana:
Make a list of goals. They don't have to be the Big Goals, but they could be. Beneath each goal, write the simple things that you could be doing to help move towards the desired outcome. Then evaluate whether or not you're doing those things. This doesn't necessarily mean that you have to change your behavior and do all of the things you think of on your list, I just think it would be pretty neat to be intentional and informed about what I'd like to do and who I'd like to be in the coming year.
If I feel so inclined, maybe I'll share my list with you when it's completed!
שנה טובה לכל אחד וחג שמח!!!!! (happy new year to everyone and happy holiday!)
Lots of Love
Kate
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Everyday Happenings and Brand New Hobbies
Greetings from J-ru! J-lem? Jru seems to be the more popular with folks around here.
At any rate, hello! I have been getting asked (more like bugged!) a bunch about when this new blog post was gonna hit the cyberwaves, so here it finally is. Up until now I have been waiting for exciting, noteworthy things to happen so that I would have something "important" to blog about. The problem is, as I'm sure you all know well, usually life is kinda mundane, and when the routine takes over it might be weeks before anything unique occurs. So I've decided to change my tactic and use this blog as a place to write thoughts and feelings that arise while I'm living here in Jerusalem as well as the standard travel blog. Sound good? I hope so.
As for what's been going on lately:
Ulpan is ulpan. It's going well, I'm learning a ton, and my Hebrew seems to be improving every day. The only problem is that it's painfully boring and tedious.
I will interrupt this paragraph of complaints to say one thing that has struck me as quite interesting in my Ulpan experience: My Ulpan class has 7 Arab Israeli students who grew up in Jerusalem, and make up about 1/3 of the class. They have lived in Jerusalem all of their lives and for the most part understand Hebrew perfectly, but they are in Ulpan in order to improve their reading/writing skills so that they can go to Israeli universities. I didn't expect this to be the case, but our Ulpan book is full of texts and stories about Judaism, both Biblical and contemporary. We've read about the sacrifice of Isaac, different rituals of the Ultra Orthodox in Israel, and many other similar things. Maybe this shouldn't surprise me, after all I am living in a Theocracy, but somehow I didn't expect that a textbook so full of religious studies would have found such a welcome at Hebrew University, the nation's most prestigious academic institution. Then again I guess I understand that it is in the best interest of the State to include Jewish education when it comes to teaching new immigrants, the majority of Ulpan students. Aaaanyway, I can imagine that if I were one of the Arab Israeli students it might strike me as a bit strange. In addition, our teachers always ask these students to tell something about Islam when we read about Judaism. This is a great idea because it shows that they're trying to be inclusive and sensitive. The only problem is, all but one of them are Christian. For some reason none of them have chosen to tell the teachers that, and nearly every day we have awkward moments of our teacher asking, "So how is the Ramadan fast going?" and the students looking at her with blank faces. This is just a small example of the incredibly complicated, interesting dynamics of this region.
Okay, back to the complaining: While I'm certainly emotionally invested in learning Hebrew, the act of learning it all day every day is not the most spiritually stimulating of tasks. This situation along with the fact that the "oh man I'm living in a new place and everything is so exciting!" feeling was quickly turning into the "oh yeah, this is where I live" feeling were kinda getting me down. I was feeling a bit bored and very antsy, so I decided that I needed a new hobby! On the evening of a day when I had been feeling particularly glum about the routine, I found myself singing in the shower and feeling happier than I had in days (I think I really missed being able to sing all summer because I wasn't able to work at Camp Tawonga this year) and thought it time to finally take up guitar. Let's be honest with ourselves here. Who HASN'T dreamed of sitting in the grass under beautiful oak trees playing their favorite (insert famous classic rock band here) song? So I was walking around mulling this idea over when I ran into my friend Aucher after a long day of Ulpan. Aucher (pronounced Oh-Share) grew up in L.A. the daughter of Israeli parents, and is simply my kinda girl. It turned out that she was on her way to, you guessed it, a guitar lesson! She had stumbled upon a jam session in a basement coffee shop in downtown Jerusalem and asked one of the guys if he would teach her to play. When she found out that I had been thinking of picking up the guitar that very same day she invited me to come along, and I went! The guitar lesson was held on the roof of Daniel's (the hippie bohemian Israeli dude) apartment, and it was conducted IN HEBREW. AND I UNDERSTOOD IT!! This, my friends, was a big deal. So now it looks like I'm picking up a new, fun hobby and getting additional Hebrew practice out of it as well as fun time with a new friend. I must say I am rather pleased. In general I've realized that I need to start being more proactive about hanging out with the friends I've made at school because I don't live with them, and I think this is a good start.
In other news, it is finally starting to cool down in Jerusalem! For this I am very thankful. Matan and I had a lovely picnic yesterday and there were (gasp!) clouds in the sky and (oooh!) a nice breeze. I really can't wait for Fall to begin.
Ah, I have just heard the lovely call from the kitchen that dinner is ready, so I must bid you farewell. Like I said, I think you can expect more frequent but probably shorter blog posts about the smaller goings on here in Israel.
Love to you all,
Kate
P.S. If anyone could Express Mail over a Gordo's burrito that would be great. Thanks.
Here are the photos for your enjoyment:
beautiful day at the park - clouds!
log rolls are harder than they first appear
yeeeee!
At any rate, hello! I have been getting asked (more like bugged!) a bunch about when this new blog post was gonna hit the cyberwaves, so here it finally is. Up until now I have been waiting for exciting, noteworthy things to happen so that I would have something "important" to blog about. The problem is, as I'm sure you all know well, usually life is kinda mundane, and when the routine takes over it might be weeks before anything unique occurs. So I've decided to change my tactic and use this blog as a place to write thoughts and feelings that arise while I'm living here in Jerusalem as well as the standard travel blog. Sound good? I hope so.
As for what's been going on lately:
Ulpan is ulpan. It's going well, I'm learning a ton, and my Hebrew seems to be improving every day. The only problem is that it's painfully boring and tedious.
I will interrupt this paragraph of complaints to say one thing that has struck me as quite interesting in my Ulpan experience: My Ulpan class has 7 Arab Israeli students who grew up in Jerusalem, and make up about 1/3 of the class. They have lived in Jerusalem all of their lives and for the most part understand Hebrew perfectly, but they are in Ulpan in order to improve their reading/writing skills so that they can go to Israeli universities. I didn't expect this to be the case, but our Ulpan book is full of texts and stories about Judaism, both Biblical and contemporary. We've read about the sacrifice of Isaac, different rituals of the Ultra Orthodox in Israel, and many other similar things. Maybe this shouldn't surprise me, after all I am living in a Theocracy, but somehow I didn't expect that a textbook so full of religious studies would have found such a welcome at Hebrew University, the nation's most prestigious academic institution. Then again I guess I understand that it is in the best interest of the State to include Jewish education when it comes to teaching new immigrants, the majority of Ulpan students. Aaaanyway, I can imagine that if I were one of the Arab Israeli students it might strike me as a bit strange. In addition, our teachers always ask these students to tell something about Islam when we read about Judaism. This is a great idea because it shows that they're trying to be inclusive and sensitive. The only problem is, all but one of them are Christian. For some reason none of them have chosen to tell the teachers that, and nearly every day we have awkward moments of our teacher asking, "So how is the Ramadan fast going?" and the students looking at her with blank faces. This is just a small example of the incredibly complicated, interesting dynamics of this region.
Okay, back to the complaining: While I'm certainly emotionally invested in learning Hebrew, the act of learning it all day every day is not the most spiritually stimulating of tasks. This situation along with the fact that the "oh man I'm living in a new place and everything is so exciting!" feeling was quickly turning into the "oh yeah, this is where I live" feeling were kinda getting me down. I was feeling a bit bored and very antsy, so I decided that I needed a new hobby! On the evening of a day when I had been feeling particularly glum about the routine, I found myself singing in the shower and feeling happier than I had in days (I think I really missed being able to sing all summer because I wasn't able to work at Camp Tawonga this year) and thought it time to finally take up guitar. Let's be honest with ourselves here. Who HASN'T dreamed of sitting in the grass under beautiful oak trees playing their favorite (insert famous classic rock band here) song? So I was walking around mulling this idea over when I ran into my friend Aucher after a long day of Ulpan. Aucher (pronounced Oh-Share) grew up in L.A. the daughter of Israeli parents, and is simply my kinda girl. It turned out that she was on her way to, you guessed it, a guitar lesson! She had stumbled upon a jam session in a basement coffee shop in downtown Jerusalem and asked one of the guys if he would teach her to play. When she found out that I had been thinking of picking up the guitar that very same day she invited me to come along, and I went! The guitar lesson was held on the roof of Daniel's (the hippie bohemian Israeli dude) apartment, and it was conducted IN HEBREW. AND I UNDERSTOOD IT!! This, my friends, was a big deal. So now it looks like I'm picking up a new, fun hobby and getting additional Hebrew practice out of it as well as fun time with a new friend. I must say I am rather pleased. In general I've realized that I need to start being more proactive about hanging out with the friends I've made at school because I don't live with them, and I think this is a good start.
In other news, it is finally starting to cool down in Jerusalem! For this I am very thankful. Matan and I had a lovely picnic yesterday and there were (gasp!) clouds in the sky and (oooh!) a nice breeze. I really can't wait for Fall to begin.
Ah, I have just heard the lovely call from the kitchen that dinner is ready, so I must bid you farewell. Like I said, I think you can expect more frequent but probably shorter blog posts about the smaller goings on here in Israel.
Love to you all,
Kate
P.S. If anyone could Express Mail over a Gordo's burrito that would be great. Thanks.
Here are the photos for your enjoyment:
beautiful day at the park - clouds!
log rolls are harder than they first appear
yeeeee!
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