The last day of school

Shalom with his Rebbe.

Shalom with his Rebbe.

Today was Shalom Gershon’s last day of school here, and the last day of my own zman (term) in yeshiva. Although I may be able to pop in a bit when seder resumes in Elul, that will be our last week here and there will be a lot of packing, etc., keeping me from really getting back into it. So, for all intents and purposes, this marks the end of my sojourn this year as an avreich (full-time adult yeshiva student).

There’s a tefillah that we say when leaving the beis medrash (study hall) after a day of learning:

…מודה אני לפניך ה’ אלוקי ואלוקי אבותי ששמת חלקי מיושבי בית המדרש ולא שמת חלקי קרנות

“Thank you, Hashem, my G-d and G-d of my fathers, for placing my portion among those who sit in the study hall, and not placing my portion among those who hang around on corners…” (loosely translated)

Leaving the beis medrash today, I had a really hard time saying the tefillah. I have a first-rate job, and a terrific life, waiting back in Chicago. It’s not exactly hanging out on street corners. But having my portion among those in the beis medrash

This entire year, I’ve been intending to write up some discussion of what learning in yeshiva is like. I keep putting it off because it’s easier to write about other things. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to capture its essence, and there are aspects to many of the subject matters we’ve been learning that people might find distracting and cause them to miss the point. But I do need to try, since it has been the central point of our little adventure. B’li neder, I’ll try to put something together. (I also plan to put together a post on how the boys’ year in school has been.)

But I’m feeling the pain of leaving full-time learning behind on a lot of levels. It isn’t just that I’m going to have to massively cut back on an activity that I’ve come to enjoy so viscerally. Nor is it just (“just!”) the fact that we consider Torah learning to be the pinnacle activity for personal development and reward. There’s also the fact that, as a latecomer to observant Judaism, I’m so far behind in the skills and knowledge necessary to be part of the learning community – which is to say the mainstream. After a year, on top of what I have been able to cobble together in the past few years, I feel like I’m on the entrance ramp. I have basic abilities, though my language skills are still lacking. It seems like a little more work and the world of Jewish texts would really open up to me.

I knew that, whatever progress I made this year, I wouldn’t be satisfied with it. I’m sure if I’d gotten even further, I still would feel like I just need a little more. Satisfaction is always just out of reach, and I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing. So the question now is how much I’ll be able to close the gap back in Chicago, when I’m back in the regular routine. Of course, now matter how much it is, it won’t be enough.

 

Catching up with friends

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one posts it on FB, did it happen? (Now that I’m not cross-posting these to Facebook, I don’t know if anyone is even going to read them anymore, but I’m going to keep going…)

We’re spending this Shabbos in Har Nof, to see our friends, the Maslins, who made aliyah from Chicago a few years ago. The funny thing is that, aside from a couple of chance bump-ins, this is the first time we’re really seeing the Maslins since we got here nearly a year ago. Other friends from the “Old Country” have fared similarly – we’ve seen the Goldblatts in nearby Ma’ale Adumim once (a great Shabbos!), the Burstyns in Ramat Bet Shemesh a couple of times, Rachel Tzipporah Avrahami a handful of times, the Doroviches once (another great Shabbos!) plus a bump-in, etc. Only the yeshiva-aged children of friends, who come to us, have we seen more regularly.

I’m not sure whether this is because we’re so busy (which we are), locked into our schedules (ditto), car-less, slowed by having small children, or what. We definitely have issues getting out & about, though. About 6 months ago, we decided we needed to establish a regular “date night.” We went out a grand total of once. And brought Mordechai. Hmmmm.

So, apologies to all of our friends. It’s not you – it’s us.

Why I left Facebook

You can probably guess the reasons. It was not a productive use of my time, yet seemed to take up a lot of it. I was also having to hide a lot of inappropriate posts. Social networking is often at odds with frum sensibilities. Plus, I felt like I was seeing less and less by way of nice stuff from friends with whom I want to stay in touch, and more and more of people’s political/social turf wars, including my own. As tends to be the case on the internet, the “discourse” is little more than snapping talking points at each other and, for my own mental health, I really just need less of that in my life. There’s plenty of unavoidable machlokes (especially for a lawyer) without adding it as a recreational sport.

I’m going to miss many of the updates from friends, especially old friends who live far away, but I hope this forum and email can take up some of the slack. In the end, for me, the downside of Facebook came to predominate.

 

Pesach Part IV: the rest of it

Egged Pesach kv"s

You know you're doing it right when you get that Apollo 11 feel.

You’re doing it right when you get that Apollo 11 look.

Notwithstanding our ill-timed trip down south, we managed to get done what needed to get done to get ready for the chag, without undue bloodshed. Pesach is when frum Jews achieve a whole new level of OCD in our religious fanaticism. Lawyers are often accused, correctly, of a tendency to belt-and-suspenders over-cautiousness. Orthodox Jews at Pesach take more of a put-a-belt-and-suspenders-on-a-jumpsuit-then-burn-the-jumpsuit-and-wrap-yourself-in-plastic-and-duct-tape-inside-aluminum-foil approach.

Chametz signYou can find lots of good explanations out there why we do this. “At Pesach time, chametz is compared to the yetzer hara (evil inclination), and we want to be utterly rid of it.” “We were saved from Egypt by virtue of chumras (stringencies), so we commemorate this by piling on the chumras in our Pesach observance.” “Halachically, eating any quantity of chametz – no matter how small – is a violation.” But, of course the real reason is bragging rights. (“Oh, you only triple-wrap your countertops? This is why we don’t mish.”)

 

 

Hagalas keilim. As you can imagine, kids don't find this interesting at all.

Hagalas keilim. As you can see, kids don’t find this interesting at all.

Another great thing about Pesach preparations is that fire is prominently involved. If there are cooking utensils that you want to use for Pesach but have been used for chametz, you have to clean them thoroughly, then do hagala (dunk them in boiling water). Oven racks are heated red-hot with a blowtorch. In Chicago, they set up a place to do this at one of the yeshivos as part of a pre-Pesach fair. In Jerusalem, you’ll see dudes with barrels of boiling-hot water on the street corners.

Here in the Rova, they set up shop in front of the community center. You had to wade through the spectator children to get there. One could cynically observe that they don’t have television… and I guess I just did. But it is really thrilling how the kids get so invested in the excitement of the holiday. For literally thousands of years, Jewish children have been caught up in watching hagala, helping to clean, gathering chametz to be burned, learning to say Mah Nishtanah (the Four Questions), etc., etc. As with pretty much everything, they take their cues from us. Our enthusiasm for Pesach becomes their enthusiasm. And their children’s enthusiasm. And their children’s. And so on, for over 3,300 years.

It is very likely that one of these people had the phone number of the fire department.

It is very likely that one of these people had the phone number of the fire department.

Anyway, back to fire. The day before Pesach, we go through our houses at nightfall, looking for any chametz we may have overlooked (this is called “bedikas chametz“). The next morning, we take all of our remaining chometz and burn it in a giant community bonfire. In the U.S., these fires are closely supervised by local firemen, with at least one fire truck present and ready for action. Here… well, not so much. I’m sure you’re wondering “why burn the chametz instead of just throwing it in the garbage?” To which I say, “what part of ‘giant community bonfire’ don’t you understand?”

Smoke over YerushalayimThe community fire for bi’ur chametz (destruction of chametz) was set up near Sha’ar Tzion (the Zion Gate), adjacent to the Kirk Douglas Sports Area. It’s a walk down the hill from the parking lot. The smoke from the burning chametz was wafting over the city walls, and it brought to mind all the kinds of smoke that have risen over Jerusalem. There were the mighty clouds of the korbanos, the ketores, and the Shechinah… and then the billowing black smoke of the burning Batei Mikdashim, and the whole city ablaze at the hands of rampaging Roman legions. To paraphrase the tefillah we say at the conclusion of learning, “we burn and they burn…” but ours should be for the sake of olam habah.

You thought I was kidding about the Kirk Douglas Sports Area, didn't you?

You thought I was kidding about the Kirk Douglas Sports Area, didn’t you?

Shalom Gershon in his kittel, ready for the seder.

Shalom Gershon in his kittel, ready for the seder.

We were invited out for the seder (another experience for us chutzniks – just one seder!), and we held a family meeting to decide whether to stay home and make our own. Given our usual practice of spending Pesach with family, and friends in the years before that, we’ve never actually made our own seder. We unanimously decided to take this opportunity. In honor of our location, I prepped with the haggadah of Rav Avigdor Nebenzahl, shlita, and the boys came to the seder loaded for bear with their questions.

You would have thought that, with a table of just the four of us (Mordechai was soon off to his crib), things would have gone pretty fast. But the boys were really into it (the candy rewards for questions didn’t hurt), and appreciated the extra attention, and we were still hard-pressed to eat the afikomen before chatzos (halachic midnight, which was at 11:45 p.m. seder night).

As I was sitting at the head of the table, in my kittel, making the yom tov kiddush, it occurred to me that this was the first time anyone in my family had made a seder in Jerusalem in approximately 2,000 years. It was suddenly very difficult to get through shehechiyanu.

Pesach Part III: Eilat!

Yitzi Red SeaAs mentioned previously, cleaning for Pesach is a serious job, one we were not used to because we usually go away for the holiday. Even in this relatively small apartment, we had our hands full. The job was further complicated by the fact that someone in the family had the bright idea that the week before Pesach was the ideal time for a 3-day trip to Eilat.

Hey, look who we found!

Hey, look who we found!

Truth is, we hadn’t anticipated visiting Eilat on this trip. Shopping and sunbathing aren’t high on the list of preferred activities for frum Jews. But the boys had been asking to go see fish in the ocean, and Eilat is definitely the best bet for that. I — er, the person whose idea this trip was — figured that it would be better to go earlier in the season, before it got too hot, crowded, and expensive. The trip itself was very nice. The aquarium there, with an underwater viewing room of the coral reef, is excellent. It was warm enough to be comfortable, but there wasn’t yet a sea of bikinis surrounding us (yes, I know we’re considered weird for seeing this as a benefit). The boys had a good time, other than not having as much time as they wanted at the beach (BTW, they have a very nice separate-gender beach there). And we did manage to get Pesach cleaning done… without getting divorced.

Y&S boat

 

Shalom eggYitzi turtle

Pesach Part II: matzah baking

Finished productI’m not a lazy blogger – I’m abating the tendency of blogs to push media into hyper-speed. I’m giving time to allow events to be put in historical perspective. I am a pioneer. A hero.

Anyway, with the luxury of time and perspective, I now feel free to share my experience in matzah baking.

Matzah halacha sederThe yeshivah organized a group trip to bake handmade matzah together, at the bakery in the basement of the massive Belz synagogue. In order to go, you had to take time in the prior weeks learning (and being tested on) selected halachos (laws) of making matzah. The law in this area is very detailed, and is primarily designed to ensure that the matzah definitely contains no chametz. The precautions taken to prevent it from leavening include taking no more than 18 minutes from the time the flour is mixed with water until the matzah is finished; constantly working the dough (kneading it, rolling it, etc.) before baking; rolling it very thin; and cooking in an extremely-hot, wood-fired oven.

YYS with the woodI brought Yitzi along for the experience, and he was thrilled. I didn’t actually see much of him, though, at the bakery because I had the boring job of working the dough while waiting for the rollers to be ready to start on it. He spent most of his time by the oven, which also included getting to sample the matzos that were invalidated for use on Pesach for one reason or another.

It was a pretty tiring, intense experience actually. The dough would start coming out, and we’d work frantically, working it and cranking out matzos for 18 minutes, trying to keep up with the pace of dough coming to the table. At 18 minutes, we’d stop, and switch to the other tables that guys had been scrubbing clean during the previous shift. Notably, the important jobs (e.g., doing the final rolling and getting the matzos into and out of the oven) were done by ringers. It also wasn’t cheap, as we had to rent the bakery and hire the ringers. But I was able to make my seder with matzos I’d helped make. Pretty cool. Here are some more pics & video:

Before we started, we even cut our nails to make sure no dough would get stuck under there and make our matzos chometz.

Before we started, we even cut our nails to make sure no dough would get stuck under there and make our matzos chometz.

Ready, set... go!

Ready, set… go!

The assembly line.

The assembly line.

Scrubbing the tables clean between shifts.

Scrubbing the tables clean between shifts.

Cleaning the rollers while we work feverishly in the background.

Cleaning the rollers while we work feverishly in the background.

Into the oven.

Into the oven.

The final touches to the baked matzos.

The final touches to the baked matzos.

The crew kicks back after a job well done.

The crew kicks back after a job well done.

Major adjustments ahead

I was downstairs this morning, getting ready to go to shacharis, when I heard the front door open. That was puzzling, since I knew Debbie was upstairs. It turns out it was Yitzi, coming back from the makolet (!). Debbie had sent him to pick up a few things.

This was yet another reminder, as we enter the stretch run here, that there are going to be some jarring adjustments when we get back to Chicago. Yitzi is not going to be strolling to the store alone to pick up pudding and yogurt. Nor will he be walking himself to school, or often seeing Debbie or me walking through the square when he comes out for recess. School itself is going to be very different for him; we’re just now beginning to understand just how far ahead he’s going to be in limud hakodesh (nonsecular subjects). He has been learning Sefer Bereshis (the Book of Genesis) and Shoftim (Judges), in Hebrew, with enough comprehension to ask questions that stump not just his rebbe, but also the principal (major nachas for us, by the way).

It is going to be really strange to be back in Chicago. Driving all over the place will be weird. We’ve gotten used to much less living space – we’re going to be lost in our house. (Frankly, if not for the love of our neighbors and the pain of moving, I’d be tempted to sell our house and move into something smaller upon our return.) There won’t be any jukim[1] (yay!) but also no lizards on the porch (boo!).

Of course, going back to the office, and tucking in an hour of Torah learning here and there when I can, is going to be a massive change from the luxury of learning all day. Not to mention being surrounded by others who are doing the same.

It will be strange not to be in a place full of Jews, where being observant is routine.

I won’t constantly feel guilty about the lameness of my Hebrew, but I won’t constantly have the opportunity to work on it.

It is going to be very weird.

Almost another day in Israel

It was 10 am – still in my pj’s because I wasn’t feeling so well –  and trying to get Mo to take a nap. The siren blares. Oh yeah, it would be that siren. The same one that warned us of incoming rockets last fall and not the siren that ushers in Shabbat that I can barely hear most weeks.

My first thought is about the boys at school and wishing I had warned them and told them about Yom HaShoah. I hoped that they weren’t feeling panicked and wondered what their rebbes were telling them. The siren continued to blare loudly from above our patio.

Like most Americans, I usually have a hard time connecting to civil memorial days. I dutifully try to read an article in the paper about Memorial Day to remind me what the day is about. Otherwise I join the rest the country by focusing on barbecues and parades. I like the parades. I enjoy watching the soldiers marching and I can even feel a certain solemnity when I see them.

As the siren continued to blare, I realized this was different. This siren and all the cars stopped on the road right now had something to do with me. I was connected to them because we were all mourning our families. Our bubbes and zeides, great aunts and great uncles, cousins we would never know. This was my family’s story too.

The siren stops and I rock Mo to sleep. I need to get dressed and do more laundry. Life moves on as it must. While nothing dramatic has happened another brush stroke has been added to my connection to this crazy place.

Pesach, Part I: Preparation

Getting ready for Pesach is challenging under any circumstances. You have clean the house thoroughly for chametz, going room-by-room, and then take measures to prevent re-contamination. You have to do a tremendous amount of shopping, essentially re-stocking your food supply in its entirely, since everything has to be certified kosher-for-Pesach and cannot have been opened (for fear that it was contaminated with chametz), not to mention all of the food needed for the holiday (and Shabbos chol hamoed) meals. Oh, and you’ll need candy to give the children for good questions & answers at the seder, which really keeps them interested. All the laundry and dry cleaning needs to get done, because (except for kids’ clothes), you can’t do it even on chol hamoed. This is also a traditional time to get new clothes – in honor of the holiday, and because shopping for other-than-holiday needs also can’t be done on chol hamoed. You’ll also want to get presents (toys and books) for the kids before Pesach. Then there’s all the cooking, which can’t be done until at least part of the kitchen is cleaned and prepped to make it free of chametz.

Manifestly unbreakable if it can withstand a pre-Pesach shutdown of Jerusalem.

Manifestly unbreakable if it can withstand a pre-Pesach shutdown of Jerusalem.

Here in Jeruslaem, basically the entire city (probably the entire country) is out shopping en masse for the weeks leading up to Pesach. So, of course, this was the perfect time for a street-closing, traffic-jamming, city-paralyzing visit from the President of the United States! To be clear, on the whole, Israelis were and are glad for the trip (and many of his remarks were well-received). But there was a lot of grumbling about the timing. Case in point, I heard a woman on the bus refer sardonically to the upcoming Tuesday as “Yom Slishi, Erev Obama” (“Tuesday, ‘Obama Eve'”).

Obama: flagsThe President steered clear of the Old City, and we planned shopping locations around his visit, so we were largely unaffected. We did come back a bit early from our own ill-timed trip to Eilat (post coming) so that we could return the rental car to our local Hertz, right next to the King David Hotel where Obama stayed, before they closed down the street. The only other evidence of his trip for us were a lot of loud helicopter overflights for those few days. I tried to convince the boys that we were going to invite Obama over, since he’d be glad to hang out with some Chicagoans all the way over here, but they have become wise to my deceptions.

Jonathan Pollard has become a major cause célèbre here, and there were signs all over pushing for his pardon. I really don’t want this blog to get political (and I’m not putting up with any comment wars!) but, FWIW, my thoughts on the topic jibe fairly well with this.

Obama: Yes You CanObama: Shelach Et Achi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those of us in the Rova, Pesach preparations were further complicated by a music festival whose timing and necessity were highly questionable. And, to my great amusement, both were indeed questioned in the English version of a notice to Rova residents from the police deparment. The Hebrew side of the notice seemed to play it straight, so I’m assuming that they asked some Anglo Rova resident to do the English version, with this result:

Rova parking notice

Although we managed to work around these complications, Pesach prep was an intensive experience. Being that this was our only Pesach here, we had no sets of dishes, cookware, or appliances for use on Pesach. We usually go to our cousins in New Jersey for the holiday, so we hadn’t had to do a complete house cleaning, including flipping the kitchen, in years. We also had to learn the ropes in terms of all of the extra kashrus issues there are here in Israel on Pesach.

In fact, Pesach shopping here was far more difficult than in Chicago. Lots of otherwise kosher-for-Pesach products here contain kitniyos (grain-like and legume products that are prohibited during Pesach to Ashkenazic Jews, for reasons described at the link), which Sephardim can eat. Given that half of Israeli Jews (and probably more than half of kosher-keeping Israeli Jews) are Sephardim, I understand the prevalence of kitniyos products. But why in the world do they put kitniyos in products – like macaroons – that no self-respecting Sephardi would eat?

Pesach hechsher madnessEven aside from the kitniyos issue, the mehadrin (higher level) hashgachos (kosher supervision/certification) here went crazy for Pesach. For example, on a tremendous number of products under the supervision of the (mehadrin) Eida Charedis, its hashgacha specifically excluded Pesach. This left them under Rabbanut supervision alone, which we don’t rely upon. In a few situations, it seems the reason was a halachic difference of opinion, such as with diet pop, because the Israeli mehadrin hashgacha considers aspartame to be kitniyos while the Rabbanut (and American hashgachos) do not. But there were other situations (like that pictured at right) where the Eida Charedis excluded Pesach, while a different mehadrin hashgacha (here, Chasam Sofer) did certify for Pesach, including that there were no kitniyos. Why the Eida Charedis said “no” is a mystery.

Between all of the kitniyos and mehadrin hashgacha issues, we never were able to find any margarine, pickles, olives, salad dressing, or non-beet horseradish. We found almost no cookies or macaroons (who would have thought that I’d ever be complaining about trouble finding macaroons?). Only at the last minute did I find candy to hand out at the seder. I don’t think we found any spreads, other than date spread, to put on matzah. All of this despite the fact that I even went up to shop at the big American-style Yesh supermarket in Ramat Eshkol.

By contrast, in Chicago (or NJ) I would readily have found all of this, and more. I’m certainly not complaining about spending Pesach here – to the contrary, it was wonderful – but the kashrus situation in Israel is ridiculous, and beyond ridiculous when it comes to Pesach and Ashkenazim.

Well, that sure was a whiny post… Pesach positivity to come soon in future Parts, IY”H!