As the week flies by...

Thanks for standing by, loyal readers! Our internet was out, but we finally got it back this afternoon thanks to the nice oleh (immigrant) from California who lives above us. The days have been passing by much faster this week than they did last week, now that I've gotten settled. I've learned how to do my laundry with the incomprehensible washer, turn on the AC in the bedrooms, clean my disgustingly black feet with the pumice stone that Natalie recommended I bring (thanks!!), and continually reapply hydrocortizone to the growing number of GIANT bug bites on my arms and legs - it's like camp! I don't know what kind of bugs these are, but they're a menace.

I've also been having amazing food.... burekas at "Burekas Ima" (Momma's Burekas, or at least that's what they'd call it in the south....), pizza w/ pitriot (mushrooms - and a pizza pie is called mishpachtot, i think - from the word for family!), falafel, of course, and Tim Tams - these chocolate covered cookies. There's a park right near my apartment, so I'm gonna see if I can go running at some point to negate the effects.

So by the end of June, I'll be the kashrut pro.... we started learning about the prohibitions of meat with milk today, and that's what we're going to be doing for the next two weeks. If you ever have milk vapors get into your meat, or a drop of milk fall into your cholent (stew) pot, or any issue of dairy and meat products that may inadvertently mix.... I'm your girl. In two weeks.

Also, I'm becoming an expert on Talmudic arguments about lost and abandoned property - very very serious issue. If you leave behind your grain at the threshing floor, please be advised that if it's a density of "kav b'arba amot" (24 eggs worth in 4 cubits) or more, it's not worth going back to get, so someone else is just gonna take it - sorry! However, if it's sesame seeds, they're a pain to collect but super valuable, and if they're pomegranates or dates, they're not so hard to collect but not really worth going back to get. In the end, after a page of rambling, the Talmud calls it "teiko" - a draw, with no definitive answer. The best part, however, is Rabbi Yirmiya. He was known in the Gemara for asking very nitpicky questions, many of which are thought to subvert the authority of the rabbis who liked to offer nice formulaic responses (i.e., "kav b'arba amot" - a specfic density formula for figuring out if the property's worth going back for). He would ask questions that would break down the formulas and point out situations where they could no longer be applicable. In a passage from another tractate, Bava Batra, Rabbi Yirmiya is prominently featured for this very tendency. The Gemara discusses the situation of a baby bird that has fallen from its birdhouse and cannot fly, and therefore has to hobble around. If you come across it, you return it to the closest property within 50 cubits, because that's as far as the bird could hobble. Rabbi Yirmiya asks, "What if the bird is found with one foot inside one person's property and one foot inside another?" and the rabbis say, "And for that, Rabbi Yirmiya was kicked out of the beit midrash (house of study)!"

Well, it's 11, so I'm headed to bed. Last day of classes for the week tomorrow - it's hard to believe! - and then I'm going to try to make it to the Book Week Fair (how I'm going to fit these books into my suitcase, I don't know...) and the light festival in the old city. Then time for Shabbat once more!

-Lauren