Back to Classes!

Vacation is over and we started classes again on Tuesday.  Yesterday was my roommate Gabi's birthday so we had a really special day planned for her.  Her friends from South Africa and Australia made her a party in their apartment the night of her birthday.  My other roommate, Hadassa and I bought her two cakes.  In the morning, Hadassa put balloons all over the room and I went to buy her ice coffee and a giant rugelach as a special breakfast treat.  For lunch, Hadassa and I bought her a salad and a bagel and the three of us just had a really chilled out lunch together in our dorm room.  After our last class she went out to a a cafe called Roladin where we bought her some more cake.  We also got flowers for her but we didn't know where to put them because we didn't have a vase to put them in.  So, I made my own vase by putting the flowers in a water bottle and then putting the water bottle in our little waste basket so it wouldn't fall over.  Gabi was so happy and she said that it was really one of the best birthdays she ever had.
Back to classes, I actually changed a few classes on my schedule.  If you check out my September post of my schedule, you'll know better what I'm talking about.  The first class I changed a while ago was on Sunday, Torah and Psychology with Rav Krengel to Pirkei Avot with Rav Bailey.  I realized that most of the people in the class already had a background because they took AP Psychology and I didn't and that's one of the reasons I was always confused in class.  I decided instead to take a class with Rav Bailey because in my opinion, you can't go wrong with him.  In Pirkei Avot, we analyze ethical teachings of the Rabbis.  I also switched out of the Wednesday class I have with Rav Krengel about the Yearly Calendar and into Refuah and Halacha with Yonah Fish which is about the Jewish laws of medical issues.  This class is similar to Medical Ethics that I take on Thursday, but better which is why I also switched out of that class.  Instead I'm taking Torat Haisha, the laws of women, with Judith Fogel, but I'm not really sure if I like that class so I might switch out of it.  The last change I made was the last class of the week, Hilchot Brachot with Judith Fogel, I switched to Rav Yonatan's Confronting Modernity class.  I switched into this class before vacation so I got to have it twice already and I really love this class.  In this class we are given a question usually accompanied by an article and we spend the entire class debating about this question.  An example of a question is, if children aren't allowed to watch inappropriate material on television, what makes it appropriate for adults.  We then branched off to ask, should children and even adults have a television in their house.  The last new thing that we have in our classes is The David Project.  This is an Israel Advocacy class which will teach us about international issues that come up about Israel and how to deal with them.  This will also help us when we get to college so that we will be able to speak to other students who don't know what we learned about Israel.
I was asked to write something about this week's parsha for our school's newspaper and I thought that I would share it with you.  One of the key characters in Parshat Noach who is rarely spoken about is Nimrod son of Cush, grandson of Ham, and great-grandson of Noach.  Nimrod was the mighty hunter who ruled over the דור ההפלגה  and gave them the idea to build מגדל בבל,  and the one who pushed Abraham and his brother into the כבשן האש.

The name Nimrod comes from the root .מ.ר.ד  meaning to rebel. Nimrod always thought of himself as greater than god.  In perek ‘י pasuk ‘ט it says “הוא היה גבור ציד לפני ‘ה.” Rashi says that Nimrod intentionally provoked god to his face and misled other people to rebel against god too.  He convinced them that god had no right to keep the heavens to himself so they should build a tower to wage war against god.  When the people moved from the place where Noach’s ark rested  to שנער they decided to appoint Nimrod as king over all of humanity, says Sforno.  He then commanded them to build the tower to rebel against god.  

In perek י”א pasuk ‘ג it says “ונשרפה לשרפה.” The Emek Davar tells us that this is a hint to כבשן האש.  The same oven that Nimrod threw Abraham into, he used to make the bricks for the tower.  The story of the כבשן האש is that one day Terach, Abraham’s father, left Abraham to tend to his idols.  While his father was gone, Abraham smashed all of the idols and when his father returned, Abraham said that the idols got mad and killed each other.  Terach was so angry that he decided to hand his son over to Nimrod.  After a debate about the gods, Nimrod throws Abraham into an oven to see if his god would save him from burning.  When everyone saw that he was saved, Abraham’s brother, Haran, who said that he would take the side of the winner, then took Abraham’s side, at which point Nimrod threw him into the oven and he was burned.  This oven that was originally used by Nimrod for the sin of building the tower to rebel against god, now turned against him to save Abraham.  

The two things that Nimrod was mainly known for was his large kingdom and his desire to rebel against god in every way possible.  He lost his kingdom after god scattered all the people during the building of מגדל בבל and he was shown how wrong his ideas about god were when Abraham survived against every one’s expectations.

I hope everyone enjoyed this story and will share it with others. I miss everyone but my time is going by here so quickly and I am loving every day. Shalom V'lehitraot!

Succot Part 2!

Sunday morning, the first day of chol hamoed, I woke up early to go to a massive Birkat Kohanim at the kotel.  Whenever there's something big going on at the kotel, I prefer not to get too close.  Instead, I find a spot higher up where I can see everything that's going on.  I had no real plans for that day so I kinda just hung  around until my friend Noga, who goes to Nishmat, called me and said that I should come visit her.  So, I went there to hang out for a few hours.  There were a bunch of people there and we decided to go check out some museum.  In this "museum" were a bunch of model succot that people made and we were able to vote for the one that we liked the best.  After a few hours, I went back to my dorm and then my friend Giselle and I went to Sha'alvim where we were staying for the night.  I stayed in my friend Penina's dorm and Giselle stayed in her friend Ariella's dorm.
We woke up the next morning and got ready to go to Bet Shemesh for the day. In Bet Shemesh we met up with a bunch of people from Moshava and then went on a hike.  A few people didn't want to go on the hike and since it was a pretty short hike, we left them behind.  We started out with about fifteen people going on the hike at about 3:30.  We were hiking up a mountain and the higher we went, the more people decided that they were too tired so they began hiking back.  At the end of the hike only seven of us were left.  At the top of the mountain was this huge monastery, but we couldn't stay long because there was only about half an hour left of sunlight.  We basically had to run down this mountain that we just hiked up so we wouldn't get caught stranded in darkness.  After we rested for a few minutes, we then went to the Shemesh Festival.  At the Shemesh Fest there were lots of bands playing and a bunch of different stands with food.  We were there really early so we got to see my friend's brother play in one of the first bands that were up.  As I was walking around the festival, I saw so many people that I knew.  I was really excited because I got to see some people that I haven't seen in a few years.  Almost every person that I knew in seminary was at this festival which was a lot of fun.  Finally, at the end of the night, Moshav, the band that everybody was waiting for began to play.  Once they finished everyone started going home.  There was only one main bus out of Bet Shemesh, the 417, that hundreds of people needed to get on.  We were "lucky" and got on the third bus that came, but even that bus was packed with people.  I went with my friend, Brenda, to go sleep at her dorm in Nishmat.  She had a bunch of people sleeping over because they all went to the Shemesh Fest but we pretty much all fell asleep right when we got there.
The next morning, I was the first one up and since they didn't have any milk in their fridge for my cereal, I went down the block to go buy some.  Nishmat is one of the schools that each dorm has their own kitchen.  Harova dorms don't even get a fridge, but we don't have to make our own meals like the Nishmat girls do. After I finished my cereal, I went back to sleep.  When I woke up again, it was lunch time and since the Nishmat girls don't seem to actually cook in their kitchen, I decided to make macaroni and cheese for them which they all appreciated very much.  That night everyone in Harova split up into about six groups and each group went to visit a different teacher's succah.  It was a really nice get together and everyone really enjoyed being together again.
The next day, Wednesday, I went with Penina to her aunt's house for the end of Succot and Shabbat. Her aunt and uncle live with two out of her eight kids in an apartment in Jerusalem.  The first night that we were there, we went to Yeshivat Mercaz Harav to see the men dancing with the torahs.  Most shuls have the women's section in a balcony that way we could see everything that was happening.  It was really nice to see everybody so happy and dancing together.  The days that we were there were very relaxing.  We didn't do much and we slept a lot.  On Friday I found out that they had the first Harry Potter book... in Hebrew.  It was my first time reading a real Hebrew book and I finished it in two days.  It was really hard to get through and I only figured out what some of the words meant because I had already read the book in English, but I was very proud of myself when I finished the book Saturday afternoon.  Reading it took up most of my time, but we weren't really doing much else anyway.
Now that Succot is over, hopefully the Rova will quiet down a bit and we won't have as many tourist groups passing through.  Classes start again soon so there won't be as many adventures for a while.  Shalom V'lehitraot!

Succot in Ma'ale Adumim

For the first days of Succot, I went to Ma'ale Adumim which is a town right outside of Jerusalem with my friend Melissa, my roommate Hadassa, and a girl who was there for her second year Libby.  This town is actually surrounded by the desert.  You can walk probably walk the width in about 5 minutes and the length in about 30 minutes and you will see the mountains of desert on every side.  It was actually a very nice landscape and the sky was always clear.  The weather was really nice in the morning, it got pretty hot around the afternoon, and at night it was very windy and a bit chilly.  Most of the people that live there are people who recently moved to Israel from America so we found that the majority of the people spoke English and they taught their kids English too.
On holidays and Fridays, Israeli buses stop running about an hour before the holiday starts.  We were running pretty late and we actually caught the last bus that was running that day. We were staying with the Krakauer family.  They all spoke English because they made aliyah six years ago.  They were actually originally from New York and they lived in Brooklyn near Marine Park.
They have 8 kids.  Tova, the oldest went to Harova when they first made aliyah.  Uriel still lives in Brooklyn.  Max was really quiet and he didn't really talk to us much.  Chaim was our age and he also had a friend of his over from Brooklyn, Netanel.  David is 15 and just liked hanging around and talking to us.  Yoni is a crazy kid who thinks he's so cool and funny like all other 13 year old boys do.  Shuli was a little bit obsessed with us and liked to follow us around wherever we went.  Sarah Devora was the youngest who was born right before they moved to Israel.  They all loved playing chess. I played against Chaim once and I lost.  I played Yoni once and I won.  I played Shuli three times, twice I won and once was a stalemate.
For the first night of succot, they had over 30 people in their succah.  Nine of the people were the family itself, nine were people sleeping over because there was also another four girls sleeping over that we didn't know, and the rest were friends from the neighborhood.  The next day, we had lunch with one of our Rabbis in school who lived in this town, Rab Susman.  It was just his family and us in their succah.  Him and his wife are very American but their kids are so Israeli.  They mostly spoke Hebrew at the table but I was basically able to understand most of it.  The food they served was also typical food that you would see in a Jewish American's home as opposed to the food that I've been eating at other Israeli's houses.
That night, when we got back to the house, the holiday was over for the family but we still weren't allowed to do anything.  They are also a very musical family so we were listening to them play the piano and the guitar.  We had pizza for dinner and then just hung out and talked for the rest of the night.  We didn't do much the next day either.  We sat around reading for a little bit and then we went for a walk around the neighborhood.  Shabbat started at 4:30 so we didn't have much time to do anything on Friday.  For Friday night dinner we split up.  Hadassa and Libby went to one of our counselor's houses and Melissa and I went to her friend's house, the Zenilman's.  It turns out that they are cousins with my friend, Dodi.
The next day, I woke up really late to two little girls screaming at me to wake up.  I kinda started laughing a little bit and then Libby was kind enough to get them away from me.  For lunch we split up again and Melissa and I went to the Foyer family for lunch.  They also had another family over and I found out that the mother of the family lived in Brooklyn and went to Flatbush.  For almost the whole meal we were talking about Flatbush and what it used to be like and how much it changed from when she used to go.  When we got back to the house we played some games like Apples to Apples and by the time we finished  Shabbat was over.  We ate a light dinner afterwards of Honey Nut Cheerios and then we went back to school.  It's been a crazy vacation so far with so many new people and experiences and many more to come. Shalom V'lehitraot!

Pre- Succot Tiyul!

On Monday morning, after only four  hours of sleep, I woke up at seven am to start getting ready for our pre- succot trip.  I took my overnight bag, my new Kipling knapsack that I just bought the day before, and a sleeping bag borrowed from my roommate, and I went downstairs for breakfast.  At breakfast we also made our lunches.
We walked to the bus that would take us to our first destination of the day.  At the end of our two hour bus ride, we arrived at Chof Dor.  There we were going to learn about tekhelet, the blue dye that they used to and are starting again to use for tzitzis.  First we saw a 20 minute video about this blue dye and then we went to go make it.  We all sat outside at picnic tables with our little tekhelet kits.  The blue dye is primarily made of  this special snail.  For hundreds of years they didn't know which snail made this dye but a few years ago they discovered the snail and how to make the dye.  So in our little kits there was bits of the snail that we poured into a beaker. We then poured some acid into the beaker, some boiling water, some other chemical, and a base to neutralize it.  This concoction was bright yellow and smelled terrible.  Then, we had a piece of cotton which we dipped into the solution and then left it in the sun.  After a few minutes, we took out the cotton, poured cold water on it, and it turned bright blue! That was the educational part of our trip.
Next, we went down to the beach to actually look for the snail.  They gave us masks and snorkels and we went into the sea to start searching.  It took us a while to figure out what it looked like because there were so many different types of shells at the bottom of the sea, but after awhile, some people began to find them.  I found one of the shells, but it turned out that the snail moved out and a hermit crab moved in, which was also cool. After that we ate lunch, changed out of our wet clothes and went back on the bus.
Our next stop was at Mount Carmel for our first hike.  The hike was decently easy and mostly uphill.  We also saw some of the parts that got burnt in the fire last year.  At the end of the hike we reached a big cave.  We rested at the entrance and then, the people who wanted to, went into the inner chamber.  Some of us brought flashlights so we would be able to see and surprisingly, phones gave off a good amount of light too.  We reached the edge of the inner chamber and everyone sat down.  We all turned off our phones/ flashlights and it was pitch black.  We sat there in silence for about a minute and then turned around to go back.  As we were leaving the cave, I slipped on some rocks and fell on my butt and I got a huge bruise which makes it kinda hurt to sit and I have to sit in like awkward positions.
Anyway, after that we went to a boy's school, which happened to be the first Bnei Akiva school ever, which was where we were staying for the night.  We made rooms of 4-5 people and then went to dinner.  After dinner, we played Harova Taboo, and after that everyone was exhausted from the day so most of us went to sleep.
We started out early again to today's hiking spot.  Today we hiked in a different part of the Carmel, but today's hike was downhill and much harder.  We had to take three liters of water with us and our group had two extra jerry cans filled with water in case someone ran out which we each had to carry for around 15 minutes. I had the first shift with the jerry can which is always the best because you're not tired yet.  The hike was really hard because the entire path was filled with rocks.  Sometimes there were small rocks which were really slippery because when you would step on them, they would roll out from under your feet.  There were medium size rocks which were okay because you could either step on them or over them.  There were big rocks which you would have to climb over, and sometimes there were huge rocks that you would be walking on the same rock for over a minute, which is also very slippery.  I must've slipped and caught myself more then twenty times, but I never completely fell.  We also had to climb down some pretty sheer walls which only had just enough hand holds for you not to fall.  There was one time when my friend Alona actually fell a good few feet off of a cliff, but she was okay.  Most of the time we had to walk in single file because the paths were narrow.  Sometimes the paths were a little wider or there was more than one way to get down a particular cliff so people would try to get ahead to the front.  The front of the group is always better because you get the longest breaks when waiting for everyone else.  It was always the same group of people who were in front and I was one of them.  On this hike I drank more than two liters of water and twice I had to go to the bathroom in the woods (not fun) but it wasn't so bad.  At the end of the hike we had to walk up this really steep hill in the blazing heat for about ten minutes.  By the time we got to the top, I had drops of sweat running down my face into my eyes and mouth which was kinda gross and my hat and shirt were pretty wet.  The last bit was downhill again but very straightforward without having to climb down cliffs.  We finished what was supposed to be a six hour hike in four hours.  We got back on the bus and I fell asleep almost right away.  We all felt so accomplished when we finished the hike but happy to get back on the bus to go back home.  It was a great way to start off our vacation.  Shalom V'lehitraot!

Yom Kippur

4:40- Candle Lighting
I had a good beginning to Yom Kippur because I finally learned how to light a match.  The first time I lit it, I was so surprised that I dropped it... but luckily I dropped it into water.
4:45- Kol Nidrei
Our minyan was made up of ten men (one kohen), and 200 women.120 of the women were students in the school, and the rest were teachers' families and alumni.
8:30- Shani Taragin
We were very privileged to have Shani Taragin come speak to us. She spoke about the work that the kohen gadol does on Yom Kippur and where we see that in our tefilah.
9:30- Bedtime
There were other speakers afterwards but I was too tired to stay to listen to any more.  There was one other Rabbi who spoke and then Rav Milston, the head of our school, taught until around 11:30. My roommate, Hadassa, actually went down to the kotel and she said that there people who were actually sleeping there.

5:45-Alarm Went Off
I didn't actually get up then, but I got up about 15 minutes later when it went off again. I woke up my other roommates because for some reason they didn't hear the alarm, got dressed and then went to shul.
6:30- Shacharit
I was surprised and happy to see that more than half of the girls showed up on time. Almost everyone else came within the hour. It was amazing! The davening was really nice because there was so much singing.  It was also really nice that even though there were girls from all around the world, we all still knew most of the tunes.  Everyone was really into it and the atmosphere  was very spiritual.
11:30- Mussaf
Rav Milston was the chazzan and at one point, right in the middle of praying, he started singing a random song.  Everyone joined in together and we all sang the song over and over again.  After a while, he started another song, and we all just sang for over 15 minutes.
2:45- Mincha
Nope, we didn't get a break... but it wasn't so bad because it went by very quickly and it didn't feel like time was dragging on. I was also happy because almost every other year, I miss when they read Sefer Yonah, and this year I got to hear it.
4:30- Ne'ilah
Everyone was still going strong in the last hour of Yom Kippur.  There was this feeling in the air of everyone being there, just standing there together, saying the same words, wanting the same things.
5:40- End of Fast
We all ran/ walked very quickly to the dining room to get food.  When we got there.. there was food, but very little.  There was just some cookies and some grapes.  We got over it quickly though because we just had such a great day.
Yom Kippur in Israel, in Midreshet Harova is very different then at home.  I can't really say that it was so much better here because there is a little part of me that does miss the routine back at home, but I am having the best time here.  Shalom V'lehitraot!

Wordsworth and the Two Goats

I hope everyone had a good Rosh Hashana and an easy and meaningful fast. I know I did.

Rav Bailey taught a class on Tzom Gedalia that helped us learn about Yom Kippur and forgiveness through poetry that I'd like to share with you.

Vayikra 16:2-3 "Speak unto Aaron thy brother that he come not at all times into the holy place...Herewith shall Aaron come into the holy place"
Vayikra 16:8 "And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for Azazel."

In the first sentence we see a contradiction.  First it says that Aaron should never go into the holy place, and then it says that he should. How does this make sense? If he is supposed to go in, why does it say beforehand that he shouldn't go in?
In the second sentence, we see the practice of taking two goats and randomly choosing by lottery which will be a sacrifice for god, and which will be the scapegoat to be thrown off a cliff with all of the sins of Israel.
Let's take a look at Part V of William Wordsworth's poem Ode: Intimations of Immorality From Recollections of Early Childhood.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,	70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;	75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Similar to Shakespeare's "All the World's a Stage," we are talking about the stages of life in this poem, but here we are connecting life's stages to the stages of this soul that came from somewhere far away.

1. When an infant is born, the soul comes and unites with the body.

2. As the boy grows, there are limitations and restrictions that cause the soul to begin to sepearate BUT it can still be seenin glory and happiness which is where the soul initially came from.

3. The youth, who is a bit older, is even farther from the beginning and must work harder to be with the soul, STILL the divine can be seen in the physical world if he tries.

4. Then the man stands by and watches as it dies away because the soul has become insignificant to him. 

Summary: The older you get, the less spirituality is found because you're not making an effort.

If people knew what was right and what was wrong, they would obviously choose to do right. Then why do people do wrong, which causes the need for forgiveness? Some commandments do have specific right or wrong things to do. Sometimes the choice isn't so clear and people randomly choose, just as Aaron randomly chose one of the goats to be thrown off a cliff.  We learn from this that we shouldn't randomly be making decisions. Why do people need forgiveness? People need forgiveness because they chose wrong, and the wrong thing to do was the decision to do something bad.

This is further seen in the contradiction of the first sentence.  It basically says, "Don't do this, except during this specific time." When you have the negative and the positive, you need to not only not do the negative, you must also do the positive. 

Forgiveness has two parts, the asking and the forgiving.  I hope you all find it in your hearts to forgive one another and have a happy new year.  Shalom V'lehitraot!