(no subject)
friday last week mari, laura and i went to the shuk. it was a beautiful day. then at night ilana and i went to harambam which is a community that has this center that does a lot of things. there are classes and several community service things. the neighborhood is an orthodox neighborhood but people from all different areas of judaism come to help do tikkun. we put tangerines in bags to be sent to needy families in the community.
friday we woke up and got on a bus at 8:15 to go to Leo Baeck. first we sat around for a while and sarah and i performed the "Sarah and Jessica show" and then finally about 120 HUC students came. i thought it was just supposed to be education students buti was pleasantly surprised to see student rabbis and cantors which mean that elana, claire, neil, ben, and david! we toured and sat through interesting lectures. met the guy who founded leo baeck which was pretty cool. then we had 2 hours of free time where sarah yael hersch and i sat outside and read for an hour then we went inside and yael and i slept under the table. it was SO exciting. then we got dressed had services. both lunch and dinner were there and CATERED. yay. and at dinner we had an AWESOME song session lead by elana and her friend. HUC students are just big NFYTites thats why they are at HUC. at night claire, neil, me, yael, jenn, sarah,nathanial, ben and get this...RABBI GINGEY all went out to a hookah bar on the beach. it was so relaxing. after we learned a valuable lesson, dont walk in groups of girls.
saturday we went to services at Or Chadash which is a progressive synagogue very close to uhaifa. actually a few of your synagogues are sister synagogues with it. it was an alright service i didnt really feel spiritual though. but the food after was AMAZING. then we walked back to school. we had havdallah and then its was a mesibah. alexs cousin shalom came and then ben from netzer came and we had a LOT of pizza and chilled in the MO.then afterwards we went and chilled with the hookah for a bit.
sunday was a leo baeck day. but it was very sad cause it was also julis last day. so we hung around. had our normal classes. this guy yonaton came in and told us about when he made aliyah. he is a shnat netzer alum and he made making aliyah seem so easy. he was VERY lucky and very stealth. then we had a goodbye session for juli. it was very powerful. she gave us advice for the rest of the year and then we did the same. then i had a midterm meeting with shelley (the director of carmel) it was very pleasant. then we had another class and then it came time to say goodbye to juli. it was probably one of the hardest things ive had to do for a while. juli if youre reading this. i love you a lot and i hope everything works out. and expect phone calls when im home in 24 days.
monday was a normal day. we had hebrew and rabbinic lit. then we hung out with rob, andrew, the girls and ben. then rob and andrew left and me sarahh and laura hung out with mike and his roommate avid who is the COOLEST person ever. we chilled smoked some hookah did some hebrew homework. oh and there was a bombing in netanya. it wasnt as bad as it could have been but 5 are dead and over 50 are wounded. if you want to read more about it go to http://www.haaretz.com. but everyone we know and us ourselves are fine so try not to worry. it still amazes me though that people do things like that. and that its an actual religious thing. and that it just leads to more fighting fire with fire. but i still feel VERY safe in this country and i LOVE being here so if you have something to say otherwise..keep it to yourself.
today was a boring day. i had ulpan. then contemporary israel which was actually interesting today. then we had a VERY nice service that charley led. then jenn and i went for a walk to eskol tower which is a tower that you go up 30 floors and you can see ALL of haifa and on days that arent foggy you could probably see jordan. its crazy. and now here i am
when dina gets back we have to clean the entire apartment before our roommates yell at us.
i hope everyone is doing well. leave some comments or something. oh and im coming home and you should tell me if we could hang out.
love you all.