As I mentioned in my pre-Chag post, my whole program spent
Chag in Ramat Bet Shemesh and made Rabbi Bryks’ house our home-base. The first night I ate with my madricha and
one of my friends at this super awesome English family’s house. We had great food, and great company. After much conversation the woman told me
that she went to seminary at Michlalah, and we discovered that she was actually
there the same year as Mrs. Margolese—crazy!! I totally didn’t believe it, and
I’m super excited to call her and let her know.
After dinner we headed to Rabbi Bryks’ house, where we met everyone
else, and we all stayed up until 1ish or so playing board games and such. That was definitely way too late for me,
haha, but I had a really good time. My
friend and I walked back to the house where we were staying at, and fell asleep
within five minutes. I didn’t have an
alarm set for the next morning, so I kept waking up throughout the night to
check if I was late for synagogue. Thank
G-d I got to synagogue, and had plenty of time to catch up to where they were
and also shake the lulav and etrog.
Tefilah was Ashkenazik, though, so I didn’t totally get what was going
on, or have an overwhelmingly positive prayer experience. But, we made it work. I had lunch at the Bryks’, which was suuuuper
great. The food rocked, the company was
fun, and the atmosphere in general was comfortable. Also, I had a good time talking to Mrs. Bryks
and hanging with their kids. Everyone
else slowly made their way through the Bryks’ door, and we all spent the
afternoon together playing games again like the night before. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the puzzle
game Perplexus, but it’s basically a hamster ball thing with a maze made out of
plastic pieces inside. The object of the
game is to navigate this little ball through the maze without the ball falling
off. Anyways, I spent a large chunk of
the afternoon working on the game. I got
to level 96 out of 100, so I felt pretty accomplished. But I definitely need to finish that up the
next time I’m either at the Bryks’ or somewhere with that game.
We walked across the street to the synagogue for Mincha then
came back for some quality time in the Succah.
We sat around a table, and each took a turn sharing a highlight of the
Early Start program thus far. We also
did the classic NCSY sing-after-an-inspirational-story thing, but that was to
be expected. Haha. Afterwards we said
Arvit, then Rabbi Bryks made havdalah for everyone except the three people who
were keeping two days of Chag. Even I
needed to hear havdalah, because part of doing the 1.5 day thing is making
havdalah after the first day. Then
everyone but the three boys and myself went back to their respective host
families’ houses, and met back at Rabbi Bryks’ to go home. The four of us stayed at the Bryks’ because
that’s where we were going to have dinner, and we cleaned up, played games with
their kids, and just hung out. An hour
or two later we had dinner, which Rabbi Bryks so kindly joined us for, and it
was a super relaxed meal. Afterwards
they all walked me home, and I was in bed before 10 PM… Totally awesome.
I was again worried about missing synagogue, so I woke up
every couple of hours. I also got an
abnormally large number of hours of sleep, which my body was not used to, so
that didn’t contribute positively to the waking up thing. But I still managed to sneak in over eleven
hours of sleep, which was great. I woke
up and took my time getting ready, then headed to the synagogue across the
street from the Bryks’ to check on how far along the second day minyan
was. They were nearing the end of Musaf,
but I didn’t see the three boys in the mens’ section, so I walked to the
Bryks. Mrs. Bryks answered the door and
told me that two of them were still sleeping, so she knocked on the door to
wake them up and soon enough the one boy who went to synagogue came back. Around the same time, the two boys emerged
from their man cave. After a few quality
rounds of this GREAT game called Jungle Speed, the four of us headed to the
place where we’d be eating for lunch.
The reason we were eating there is because they were already having
people who were keeping two days of chag, so they could host us also. It was a super nice meal, and there were a
lot of people there so it kind of felt like that was one of the few houses to
be at for second day Chag. Regardless,
it was a totally great meal. It ended at
about 1:45, and the four of us went back to the Bryks’ to spend the afternoon
together. The Bryks had already left for
the day, but they left games and snacks out for us. So nice of them! Adiel, Yechiel, Noam, and I spent the
remaining 4.5 hours of Chag playing many intense games of Jungle Speed, a quick
(for Noam and I) game of Monopoly, and some Uno. It was definitely a great afternoon!
When Chag ended, I went back to where I stayed to get my
things together and headed back to the Bryks’ after ten minutes. The four of us got mounted up and walked in search
of the appropriate bus stop. We found
it, and our bus came within five minutes.
We were the only ones on the bus, so we all just sat in seats near each
other in the middle of the bus. Pause:
let me note that the bus we were on travels between Ramat Beit Shemesh and B’nei
Brak. Un-pause. About four stops into the bus ride, after the
bus had amazingly already become 80% full, this woman approached me in my
seat. She started speaking Hebrew at a
rate of something like 5000 words per minute, which obviously I couldn’t understand. So I said “Huh?!” Then I understood from her
that she was saying something about moving my suitcases and women. And, at the end she said “come sit by me.” So I looked up to find that this particular
bus that we were sitting on apparently non-coincidentally had all of the women
in the back and all of the men in the front… Awkwardly for quite some time I was
very much in the men’s section. Ha! I
would be. So I left my suitcase and lulav with Adiel, and headed to the back
with my backpack. I guess it’s all part
of the adventure…
A couple things I’d like to note:
1) This Chag I really came to appreciate a good number of
persons-number of bathrooms rate. Let me
tell you why… The house that I stayed at had a large number of people in
it. From what I understood, however,
there only exists within it one bathroom.
That twenty-five square-foot area with the door that doesn’t actually
lock was absolutely the most sought after space I’ve ever seen. Any and every time I needed to brush my
teeth, wash my hands, or use the bathroom over the past two days, the bathroom
was in use. After a while it became kind
of amazing to me as opposed to just annoying and unappreciated. But the serious annoyance that I found it to
be gave me a real appreciation for the number of bathrooms that have been
available to me throughout my whole life.
2) It’s crazy how I’ve been here for so little time and yet I’ve
already gotten used to so many things which are unique to this country. One such thing which I am referring to is the
fact that on Shabbat/Chag there is absolutely no transit movement in religious
neighborhoods. It’s so cool to not have
to look both ways before crossing the street (though I of course do it
anyways), and that all the kids can just play at will in the streets. But today when it wasn’t Chag for the
majority of the neighborhood everyone was hustling and bustling yet again, and
it was super weird to see all of these clearly religious people driving cars
and talking on their cell phones as I was (kind of) keeping Chag.
3) You know your bus driver is new to Israeli bus driving when
he (a) waits for you to sit down before he starts moving the bus, and (b) asks
you, the passenger, for directions. Not
so comforting. In other news: this guy
drove completely and totally over traffic circles, and he went waaaaaaay too
fast over the many many speed bumps which we came across. Let’s just say that I was legitimately
worried for the safety of my computer as this guy was exiting Beit
Shemesh.
4) I have one word, and one word only, to describe what I felt
when our taxi driver took about three to four minutes to open his trunk
(because he didn’t know how to open it) which contained all of our belongings
in it: unsettling. Thankfully, though,
he figured it out.
5) I don’t know what happened to Shonda Rhimes (writer of Grey’s
Anatomy and Private Practice) but she created the most oddly structured
episodes of season-opening television that I have ever seen… Though I of course
enjoyed watching, and I’m so happy to have both of those shows back, I’m for
sure looking forward to the second episodes.
For now I must say Lila Tov, because it is almost 2 AM in
this country. I have no scheduled plans
for the morrow, but I’d like to be up at a decent hour so that I can figure
something out.
Shavua Tov to ye who are in Seattle.
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