24 hours in the life of Lauren

24 hours in the life of Lauren, Motzei Shabbat (after Shabbat ends) to Sunday evening:

5:28pm:  Shabbat is over, too early as always.  I make Havdalah with Evelyn and her friend Susan from New York, reconnect with the wider world of email and cell phones, and head home to shower and scrounge up dinner.

6:00pm:  Call from Miriam - time to plan something for the evening.  They'll provide me with dinner (soy tofu!!) if I can bring a vegetable.  Can't be too hard, right?  This should be a good time to plan the family's week in Israel at the end of December, catch up on some knitting, and generally relax.

7:03pm:  After speedily showering and cleaning up, I head up the road toward Miriam and Naomi's, by way of Super Deal, which I think is my favorite grocery store here.  And of course, it's closed.  Time for plan B.

7:15pm:  Run into liquor store to see if they have vegetables - no.  Stop by ATM, reach for wallet, open it up to find... no bank card.  This is not good.  Maybe I left it where I had coffee on Friday morning?  I remember taking it with me though... (panic panic panic)... maybe I'll call the person I had coffee with and see if he remembers.  Nope, don't have his number.  Wait a second... I put it in my pocket when I went shopping on Friday afternoon because I didn't want to carry a purse... and I'm wearing the same pants!  Reach into pocket, find card, Halleluyah!

7:30pm:  Arrive at makolet - small grocery/convenience store.  The search for a vegetable that isn't sprouting things commences.  After twisting around corners, arrive at veggie section which is blocked by all of the coolers that would normally be outside during the day.  Green beans - success!  Ask store owner to climb over cooler to get the beans, which look edible.

7:32pm:  Woman approaches me in makolet, asking for 10 shekels (about $2.50).  Instinct is to say that I don't have money, but the words don't come out, and I realize my instinct is wrong.  I reach for my change purse, pull out the coins, and hand them to her, with a tired smile.  She smiles back, almost deviously, and puts her finger to her lips in a "shhh! don't tell!" motion.

7:36pm:  As I approach the counter to pay (for green beans, muffin mix, muffin papers, and a bar of chocolate, of course), the same store owner says, "Want some advice?  Don't give her money.  She's a pest."  I see the woman on the street now, still looking devious.

7:45pm:  Arrive at Miriam and Naomi's.  Drink wine.  Knit and plan interesting things to do in Jerusalem for the next few weeks.  Bake blueberry muffins for the egal minyanaires to surprise them for arriving on time to minyan in the morning.

10:30pm:  Start to head home.  Get call from Evelyn saying that my laundry's done (since I don't have a washer of my own and have to rely on the generosity of others) and I should come fold it.

11:15pm:  Leave Evelyn's, very sleepy.  So much for 10:00pm bedtime - oh well.  Start to get ready for bed, chat with roommate about her Shabbat at a Hasidic teacher's house.

12:00pm:  Sleep.

5:00am:  Wake.  Contactsbrushteethrunningclothesputuphairfindwarmjacketfindkeys and out the door.

5:34am:  Run with Dan, while listening to Blur and Nada Surf and trying to keep up.  Slow run, but I feel amazing.

6:15am:  On the way back to my apartment, I look up at the sky - apart from the sunset, I think the sky is the most beautiful at this time of day.  It's a gorgeous cornflower blue (that's what Crayola would have called it), and I see a huge wispy cloud that looks like a butterfly with a broken wing.  What does it mean?

6:17am:  As I stretch after the run (my favorite part of the day), a huge dog on a leash comes up behind me, wanting to be scratched.  I give him a good scratch behind the ears, and the three of us (me, dog, and owner) are much happier.

7:25am:  Minyan.  I write the following line from Masechet Brachot of the Talmud (19B) up on the board:     Come and learn:  Human dignity is so important that it supercedes even a Biblical prohibition.  Think about it.
I lead Pesukei D'zimra, singing a couple of the psalms and switching up the Hebrew with English a bit, to keep people on their toes.

8:10am:  Minyanaires get their muffins, we congratulate Marcie on her first time leading Shacharit, and I rush around making breakfast and getting my books so I can be on time for class.

8:30am:  Gemara.  What are we discussing again?  Oh right - whether there can be shlichut (appointing someone else to do a religious task for you) in the case of an averah (a general category of sins and misdeeds).  Through a complex series of logic, rabbinic proofs and formulations, we indeed establish that shlichut is NOT possible in the case of an averah - so don't go around trying to tell people to burn down barns for you, because they're just going to get in trouble.

12:00pm:  Biblical Hebrew Grammar.  Compensatory lengthening, dagesh kal, and something about the letter nun that makes the dagesh kal appear in the final letter of the word.

1:00pm:  Announcements and Mincha - Carra leads Mincha for the first time.

1:30pm:  Burekas Ima for lunch - zatar pita, tomato pita, and cheesy burekas.  Not the most healthy of lunches, but it's hard to beat the price - 8 shekels!! ($2!)  Plus a chocolate/butterscotch muffin from our wonderful chef.

2:00pm:  Trip to the Israel Free Loan Association with Social Justice Track. As Eliezer Jaffe, the founding director, put it: 

•  This is Jewish microlending, not tzedakah (charity).  We don't charge interest, period.
•  We can't save the whole world - only half.  Our work is target at those who make more than 3,000 NIS (New Israeli Shekel) a month but less than 13,000, because then they'd be able to get a loan from the banks.
• Only 0.2% of the recipients of loans end up defaulting on them.
• We're not crazy - it's Jewish!

3:00pm:  Back to class.  Discussion about the Agriprocessors kosher meat packing plant scandal and the Jewish obligation to follow the law of the land.

4:30pm:  Still discussing with my group, but starting to get sleepy, and very distracted by the gorgeous sunset out the window of the Beit Midrash.  I'll take pictures next time.

5:00pm:  Maariv - I lead, and pull in some slow melodies to help people wind down after a long day.

5:17pm:  Done... or at least I could be.  But I choose to stick around and attend a shiur (lesson) given by a friend on "Can G-d Change His Mind (Or did we change ours?)" and end up being part of a great discussion on reward and punishment in the Tanakh and rabbinic literature.

And that, my friends, is 24 hours in the life of me.

LIVE: Challah Baking!

Watch the challah-baking process unfold!

Of course, it all starts with a mess....

It's pretty cold in my apartment and I couldn't find a warm place to put the dough so that it would rise, so I got out the platta - to keep foods warm on Shabbat - and rigged a system with a pot lid so my dough could benefit from the heat without being directly on the heating element.  And sure enough... it rose!

Next:  the braiding.

Batch #1:  Four-stranded braids.

Batch #2:  Six-stranded braids!

In the (toaster) oven they go!

Here's how the four-stranded braids turned out.  They probably could have gotten a little browner on top, but I was worried about the underside getting burnt.  Not too shabby!

The six stranded ones are out of the oven! 

Shabbat shalom!

Home

In the past week, fall has abruptly arrived in Jerusalem.  One day I was wearing a t-shirt and skirt, and the next, I was bundled up in all my winter gear.  I'm putting extra blankets on my bed, getting up early to turn the hot water on for the shower, and finding lots of soup and chili recipes.

The onset of fall makes me a bit wistful, nostalgic, and sometimes homesick.  I was reflecting today on this time of year in years past - during the last four years in Houston, fall hasn't really existed.  It's like one long summer that goes until Thanksgiving, then gets cold and rainy, then turns to summer again in late February.  I missed REAL fall - leaves changing colors, football games, Boy Scout popcorn...  Jerusalem fall is a little bit closer to South Carolina fall than Houston fall, in that it's colder here, but it's not the same feeling.

I was thinking of particular fall memories today... like wearing a turtleneck to school and having to hold onto the cuff of the sleeve when putting on a jacket or sweater over it so that the sleeve doesn't bunch up on your arm.  More memories rushed in when I got an email from my mom:

"I just saw that it is Sesame Street's 40th anniversary so thought you might like to sing a few old favorites like “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz”   or “put down the duckie”

It's the little things... Don't worry though, I'm not homesick.  I'm just enjoying the contrasts, the change in season, and the memories.

Volunteering

(Note:  I'm blogging for Pardes now, and I just put this post on their blog as well.  If you want to read it on there, as well as the contributions of other students, go to theseandthose.pardes.org)

On Tuesday afternoons a number of Pardes students volunteer with organizations throughout the Jerusalem area, and I’m working with a community called Yotzer Or.  Yotzer Or is composed of mostly immigrant families, many from Ethiopia, who are living in housing projects in the neighborhood of Talpiot directly across from the wealthy neighborhood.  They come to Yotzer Or for community, for help finding jobs, for after-school care for their kids, for bar mitzvah tutoring, for Jewish holidays, and much more – it’s really hard to label them as a synagogue in the traditional sense, but the rabbi, Uri Ayalon, is presenting a vision for how expansive Jewish community can really be.

Anyway, all of that background is to tell you about my particular experience today at Yotzer Or.  We’re tutoring kids ages 6-16 in English, one-on-one, and my student’s name is Batel (or Betty, as she likes to be called).  She and her four siblings are from Ethiopia, and they’re all involved in the tutoring program.  Many of the kids in the program have pretty minimal English speaking skills, but Batel’s English is amazing – she’s 12, and more or less fluent.  I help her with her homework (which she breezes through), and then we talk – about boys, music, annoying teachers in school, and of course, boys.

Today Batel asked me if I had ever been in the army, or if I would ever be.  When I told her that in America, high school grads aren’t required to join the army like they are in Israel, she was a bit shocked – how did they get people to serve if they weren’t required to?  I asked her if she would join the army one day, and she said “Of course!” and already knows what unit she wants to serve in – מגבניקות, or border patrol.  She’s already learning Arabic (in addition to her Hebrew, English, and Amharic), which she’ll have to master in order to serve in that capacity.  I thought back to the 12 year-olds that I know in America, and I’m not sure if I could find one with these same kinds of life experiences and questions.

Later on, Batel asked me what I was going to do when I got back to America.  I should be used to this question now – I’ve been getting it practically every day since I arrived here – but still, I stalled:

“Well, I’ll go see my family, of course…”
“And then?”
“And then…I’m going to start studying to be a rabbi.”
“A what?”
“You know, a rav.”
“Ohhh, you mean a rabbanit!  So wait…will you wear pants?”
(I was wearing pants today – it was pretty cold.  I do wear a lot of skirts though, here and at home.  But of course, I deflected with a question.)
“Do you think I should?”
“Well, I know a rabbanit who wears pants… but she knows EVERYTHING about the Torah, and can answer any question I ask her.  I think it’s more about the person you are on the inside, and if you’re true to yourself, that’s what matters.”

I’m beginning to think that I’ll be learning much more from her this year than she’ll be learning from me.