Well, it looks like I have some time to write today, since I took the day off.  That's what happens when you take a half gainer onto a cement floor.  No, no broken bones, no stitches, no concussion.  I walked out from behind my desk yesterday just before quitting time and somehow managed to catch my foot on the edge of a box we use to put mail in.  On my way down, my other foot got tangled in the cord from a floor fan that wasn't anywhere near my body.  Hah!  Nobody believes me when I say inanimate objects like tables and corners of walls and chairs jump out at me.  Well, here's proof!  And I had two witnesses who can vouch for me (or at least I tell myself that rather than face the humiliation of being klutzy in front of two co-workers).  Anyway, last night my right knee kept swelling to the point that I could barely walk on it so I made an appointment to see a doctor this morning.  When I woke up, however, the swelling seemed to be mostly gone and I could walk almost normally (bending my knees for Shemoneh Esrei, however, was a whole different ballgame), so I canceled the appointment.  There are about 40 steep steps leading up to my office and I had already called my boss last night about not coming in today, so it seemed that staying home was the right thing to do on this beautiful Monday morning.  Spike and Emma haven't let me out of their sight all morning, so it seems they're pretty happy to have my company.

Isn't strange how many things need to be done around the home when one doesn't leave it?  Dishes, laundry, cleaning - I know I should be keeping this leg elevated, but stuff just needs to be done.  Beside, if by some miracle I can get a mahj game together this afternoon, I wouldn't want to be embarrassed by the state of my apartment.

So, enough about mundane topics.  Let's get on to the real stuff of living in Eretz Yisrael!

Let me take you back exactly one week.  Last Monday David had his last ulpan class and wanted to celebrate.  He had asked me to meet him on Emek Refaim, which is a street that you might find in Clayton, for you St. Louis readers.  It's a long road filled with restaurants, funky stores, and lots of people roaming the streets.  I took the #4 bus there after work - it's been so long since I've taken buses anywhere in Yerushalayim!  When the bus got just to the beginning of Emek Refaim, it stopped.  I realized we were in the middle of a terrific traffic jam; I could see lots of flashing lights and loud music ahead of us.  To our right was Liberty Bell Park, so I assumed there was some kind of a fair going on and I debated whether to get off at the next bus stop to check it out, since I was a little early to meet David.  

When we started moving again, I realized that we were passing a van decorated four feet high with all kinds of flashing lights and the music was coming from the back.  The van was moving very slowly down the street, followed by a whole parade of people singing and dancing.  In their midst was a chupah help by four poles that people were carrying, and it was then that I saw a beautiful, new sefer Torah under the chupah.  I got off at the second bus stop which was completely hashgacha pratis (Divine providence), because the bus then turned at the next corner and I still needed to walk to the end of the street.  While waiting for David, I ducked into Jungle, a pet store chain.  The guy who worked there took a parrot I had been admiring out of its cage and was telling me about it (only 2500 NIS!), when I heard the music coming closer and closer.  I ran outside and there was the Hachnosas Sefer Torah procession approaching with a much larger crowd.  I followed the procession for about half a block, when it turned into a side street and stopped.  Two really tall guys dressed in white, with white turbans, started blowing into the longest shofars I'd ever seen.  It was so beautiful!  The music was playing, the shofars were blowing, people were holding babies up, clapping and dancing and it felt so special to be a part of it!  It was funny to see all the people holding their cell phones up to take pictures.  After a few minutes, the procession started up again, and I went to find David.

We strolled all the way down one side of Emek Refaim, and back up the other side, enjoying the cool breeze (finally!) and looking in all the windows.  It was hard to decide where to have dinner.  I had decided beforehand that this night would be for David; whatever he wanted to do and wherever he wanted to eat would be fine with me.  We ended up at an Israeli restaurant that was sort of open to the street, where we had shishlik (meat grilled on skewers).  The nights we go out are few and far between, so it was SO nice to have such a relaxing evening.  I hardly even thought about the dogs who had been home alone all day and who were probably sitting with their little noses pressed to the window looking down longingly at the parking lot waiting for us to alight from a car...

So now let's fast forward a few days to Shabbat.  You know, we're really stick-in-the-mud people who go to work every day, come home tired, and veg in front of our computer screens at night.  We rarely get invited out for Shabbat, although we love to have guests.  This past Shabbat, however, we were invited to stay with a family in Bat Ayin, an agricultural yishuv on a mountaintop about 20 minutes away from Ramat Beit Shemesh.  It was so much fun!

The Rebbetzin who invited us runs a midrasha (Jewish institute for women's studies) there, and we had been emailing each other all week.  She and her husband and 14 year old son live on a house (a real house!) on the edge of a mountain, with a garden in front, a chicken coop full of chickens on the side, and a gorgeous view of nearby hills (mountains) in the back.  

There were 24 of us for Friday night dinner, all women except for David, the Rabbi and his son, and it was a fast-paced evening.  These young girls are so curious, and intelligent, and eager to learn everything about Yiddishkeit.  Most were from the US, but there were a few Israelis and one from Germany.  The discussions were lively as everyone had input on every topic.  Shabbat was Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan (beginning of the new month of Cheshvan), a month where there are no other holidays.  Each person talked about what they wanted to bring with them from Succot and Yom Kippur, and also, because Cheshvan has something to do with "smells", we all told what smell has meaning for us.  Everyone said things like the esrog from Succot, or different spices.  I said baby powder which made everyone laugh, especially when I said there's nothing more delicious than a baby's tushy.  I was really, really missing my grandchildren, and how I missed out on the time they were babies.  (My twin granddaughters are 20 months old already.)  David said that the smell of the chicken coop brought back memories for him of visiting relative's farms in Minnesota when he was growing up.

Lunch the next day was just us and the family.  David liked the Chabad he attended with the Rabbi.  I had gone Friday night (awesome Lecha Dodi when the women spontaneously pushed all the tables aside and started dancing as happily as the men), but it wasn't my nusach (style of prayer) and I couldn't really follow in my siddur (also, I never go on Friday night so I didn't really know the order of the davening).  But I totally enjoyed my davening at their home on Shabbat morning at my own pace, and including Hallel and Musaf in a leisurely and meaningful way.  After lunch, David and I walked around the yishuv, enjoying the donkey tied in front of one house, the dogs running around, the kids playing in the streets and parks (no cars drive through on Shabbat), and the views of nearby mountains.  

In the late afternoon, I went to the Midrasha with the Rebbetzin who was giving a class on Keshet (rainbows).  This weeks's parsha (Torah reading) was Noach, so the rainbow was particularly relevant.  We actually even had a little rain Friday night (at the exact moment the last guest stepped into the house for dinner), and again Shabbat morning while the sun was still shining.  We looked for a rainbow, but there didn't seem to be one.  After the talk, I waited for David on the road (there was a bench right in front of the house with the donkey) and then we went to a friend of my son (who is also the son of a friend) for the Third Meal.  He and his wife and adorable 2 year old and baby literally live at the edge of a cliff.  They rent a huge house (our apartment could probably fit into their salon) where they use two of their bedrooms for their home businesses.  He bottles his own root beer (a product surprisingly not found here in Israel) and wine, and some other products.  She sews colorful kipot and tzitzit.  On the hill behind their house they grow all their own vegetables, and in front of their house are the herbs they planted.  We watched the sun set through their window as it dipped behind the mountains far away.  It was probably the most incredible sunset I've ever seen.  The children were fed goat's milk that was fresh from a goat on the yishuv; the bread was made from wheat flour that they'd bought directly from the guy who grinds it on the yishuv.  It would be such a perfect place to live if we had friends who lived there and if we spoke fluent Hebrew.  It's a small place and there are many Americans who live there, but they probably all speak Hebrew as well.  One day we'll be in that category, or at least, David will!

I'd better make some calls to see if a mahj game is in the cards (tiles?) for today.

It's almost a little embarrassing to show up here again after a hiatus of a year and a half.  David has been encouraging me to write again and truth be told - I've missed it.  But how do I catch up on all the changes that have occurred since the last post?  I guess I'll just do the best I can.


We've been back in RBS about 18 months.  I've been going to the same shul we started at, sort of Young Israeli-ish - dati and Zionist.  David just can't seem to find his place.  He's been trying out shul after shul, but nothing is the right fit.  I think a large part of the problem is that we just don't have a Rav that we can talk to and hold by.  It seems to be a pervasive problem for olim in Israel, from what I hear.  It's a challenge we're trying to deal with.

Since last December, we have been the proud parents of not one, but two adorable dogs.  Spike (not named by me!) came to us about nine months ago.  He was a small puppy when his original owners decided they couldn't keep him any more.  I was actually in St. Louis to see my family when David called me to ask, "Remember when we talked about getting Emma a puppy to play with?"  Spike was four months old and a real puppy in every sense of the word.  Not only wasn't he house-trained yet, but he chewed everything and anything he could sink his teeth into, including four pairs of shoes (one of each pair), a chair cushion, my dining room table pads and various vases of flowers (he overturned the vases which were on the dining room table and the flowers were found strewn all over the table, chairs, couches and floor).  But we persevered, and he's turning into a very affectionate pet.  He and Emma play together, which gives them lots of exercise when we leave them for up to 10 hours a day during the work week.  It does, however, make for very crowded sleeping conditions at night when I have to sleep on the very edge of the bed because they're both stretched out across the middle!


David got a nice surprise a year ago when, after two and a half years at Intel, he was finally hired to be a "blue badge"; a regular employee instead of a contractor.  It's made a huge difference in our lives.  There are all kinds of added benefits (most of which we know nothing about because it's all in Hebrew), including being able to lease a car at a very reduced cost.  So we've been driving a brand-new 2010 Mazda 3 and thoroughly enjoying it.  The leasing company services it, licenses it, and even washes it once a month - David just drops off the keys in the morning (the company is housed at Intel), and they return the keys to him at the end of the day.  We pay for gasoline along with our lease payment, so when we go to the gas station, we just put the pump in, it reads something in the car, and after it's filled we just drive away.  It's so convenient!  Of course, we don't get a break on the cost of gas, but it's just nice not to have to have cash or put in on the already overworked credit card.


And what happened to the car we bought when we moved to Kochav Yaakov 3 1/2 years ago?  Just sitting.  In the parking lot behind our apartment building.  Gathering dust.  At the moment, it's not running, but that's a result of our not having started it much in the last year.  We really, really have to get it going and sell it.  Really, we do.


On a happier note, I made a really good friend who, together with her two adult daughters, became my new mahj partners.  For awhile.  Then Bracha just up and got married and moved to the Old City.  But that still left Linda and Chava and we kind of got in a groove playing on Thursday mornings until everyone's work schedules got in the way, and then on Shabbos afternoons.  Then they moved waaaay down to the bottom of the Rama (hill) and I walked down there every (hot) Shabbos afternoon.  Until just before Rosh Hashana when my friend Linda took a job out of the country and moved away for 10 months!  I couldn't believe she left me!  I really miss her, and not necessarily because of mahj - she was someone I really connected with.  But life's about changes, right?


Lately I've been meeting a lot of single women; some new olim and some who have been here for awhile.  It's so amazing to hear people's stories - how they came to yiddishkeit, and to Israel, what their past lives were like.  This past Succos was amazing.  I spent time with many new friends, and with others that I've had the pleasure to get to know over the past year.  On one night of chold hamoed, there was a women's entertainment program here in RBS that over 700 women attended.  It was in a gymnasium with (chairs on the) bleachers on one side and a stage on the other side of the room.  We heard singers, guitarists, comediennes, actresses, and watched tap dancers and modern dancers and ballet dancers (I couldn't help but think how much my mother would have enjoyed being there!).  The talent was awesome.  The last woman who sang brought tears to my eyes.  She sang a beautiful rendition of "Hodu L'Hashem ki tov, ki l'olam chasdo (give thanks to Hashem for He is good; his kindness endures forever)" and by the end many of us were on the floor dancing as if our lives depended upon it.  I can't tell you how uplifting it was!


The next evening was the Beit Shemesh Concert.  Well-known singers and bands came from all over the country to play at a huge outdoor field with a bandstand.  Two friends and I brought lawn chairs and nosh and settled in for the evening.  Before the concert, Nuchi decided at the last minute to BBQ and supplied us with hot dogs from Rumania in Chicago and lots of other goodies.  There we were, under clear skies studded with stars listening to inspiring, spiritual Jewish rock music (sometimes a little too loud even for my taste!) and thanking Hashem for the great blessing of being in Eretz Yisrael for the chagim (holidays).


And the NEXT evening I had been invited to a new friend's apartment (very nice apartment, I might add, with a view that was breathtaking) for an evening of divrei Torah (words of Torah), singing, and of course, eating.  What made it interesting is that our hostess just made aliyah from "Joberg" (Johannesburg) in South Africa, and we American ladies were definitely in the minority that night.  I love the South African and British accents; they're so soft-spoken and genteel.  I actually felt I needed an interpreter for some of their words and we all enjoyed the diversity among us.


Yesterday morning, erev Shabbos, David and I went to a wonderful simcha - the bris of the children of good friends of ours from Kochav Yaakov.  The daughter of one family married the son from the other (the wedding almost two years ago was so fun since we knew both of the families), and this was the first grandchild for each family.  He's such a beautiful baby!  The new parents live with her family, at least temporarily, as well as the great-grandparents who are also our good friends (not much older than we are, actually) - so that's four generations living under the same roof.  Cool, huh?


So tomorrow we go back to life as we knew it before Rosh Hashana, almost 3 weeks ago.  Getting up at 6 a.m., walking the dogs, driving to work together.  Oh, that's something I haven't told you about yet!  Kvish Echat (highway 1) is the main Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem highway (or vice versa, obviously).  From Beit Shemesh, we drive up highway 38 and then enter on highway 1 going east to get to Jerusalem.  But there are other ways to get there and David, who loves to study maps and roam the countryside, found a route that traverses through beautiful hills.  Imagine, if you will, a twisty, windy, hilly 2-lane road with sheer drop-offs on one side and beautiful forested hills on the other.  Some mornings we drive through fog or see it floating in the valley below.  It's an incredible way to start the day!  In case you're wondering, it's not necessarily shorter than kvish echat, but we don't have to contend with rush hour traffic starting and stopping on the highway - although sometimes we do end up behind a timid driver (or a line of them), but it just gives us more time to enjoy the beauty around us.  Admittedly there are some mornings (I promise, only when David drives!) that my eyes are closed for much of the ride so I can get another half hour of rest.


David works longer days than I do, so he usually drops me off at work and I take a bus home.  Sometimes he knows he has a lot of phone conferences in the evening (his "team leader" at work is in California which is 10 hours behind our time, so he's on the phone a lot at night), so I drop him off at work and then we leave together in the afternoon.  It's a nice arrangement.


I'm still working for the tzedaka organization I started working at in April of 2008.  There have been a lot of bumps along the way, but I work with some wonderful women and we've gotten to be very close friends.  One of them is Rachel, one of the new grandmothers from Kochav Yaakov.  The other is Chaya, who lives in a town called Elazar in Gush Etzion, a block of communities just south of Yerushalayim.  Two nights ago, motzei Simchat Torah, Chaya called from her son's apartment just down the street from us; she and her husband and other kids had spent the holiday with her married son and his family.  They were going to be taking a bus home as soon as bus service started again, about 40 minutes later.  I was going to walk over to visit with her for a few minutes, but when I told David, he said, "Why don't we just take them home?"  You have to understand that we NEVER go anywhere at night; normally David is working or is tired from working so much.  It turned into a great evening!  We took Chaya and her husband and daughter, and her other two sons (in their early 20's) tremped a ride home.  Everyone "tremps" here.  There are "trempiadahs"; usually a bus stop or a corner on the edge of a town where people wait to get rides, and people with cars stop to pick them up.  It can be a little tricky because there have been some incidents with Arabs, but it's pretty much accepted practice here since at least half the population don't own cars.  Anyway, I let Avi, Chaya's husband, sit in the front seat with David and they seemed to hit it off.  When we got to their house in Elazar they invited us in.  Avi pushed some palm fronds off the top of their sukkah so we could sit out there and we visited for awhile.  Then we heard some really loud music and walked around the yishuv until we got to the shul where a live band was playing.  Apparently all over the country people were celebrating "Hakafos sheini", kind of a second day Simchat Torah.  Chaya and I danced over on the women's side for a few minutes and then we walked Chaya and Avi back to their home before we left.  It was such fun to do something spur-of-the-moment like taking them home and spending time getting to know them.


So you're probably thinking, "Well, Vickie's been living in Israel nearly 4 1/2 years, she's probably fluent in Hebrew by now."  Nope.  Not at all.


David, on the other hand, is learning by leaps and bounds.  Intel actually paid for him to take a pretty intensive ulpan; his last two classes are tomorrow and Monday.  It was in 3 parts - for one month he learned one-on-one with an instructor on the computer through Skype two nights a week for 45 minutes.  He had a workbook and an MP4 player they had given him pre-loaded with all the lessons so there was audio for each lesson that he was supposed to listen to 3 times every day.  Then he had a one week immersion - every morning for 5 days he met an instructor somewhere in Yerushalayim - the Old City, the shuk, Nachlaot, wherever and they spent several hours speaking only in Hebrew from the lessons he was supposed to have learned on his own or from the day before.  Then they went to the office where the ulpan was housed and he spent 1/2 an hour with an instructor, 1/2 an hour in the learning room, 1/2 an hour back with the instructor, etc for 2 1/2 hours.  The last module consists of two days a week from 4-6:30 pm back at the ulpan office learning one on one.  This week is the last week.  It's really been forcing David to learn and he's enjoyed it immensely.  We can't afford for me to take this ulpan, but when he's finished he'll give me the workbooks and the audio for me to work on.  I need to be a little more optimistic that I can actually do it - as long as I have friends who interpret for me and tell me what my mail says, I've been pretty lax about learning it.  It would make life so much easier if I knew what people were saying, or to be able to read the flyers I get or the bills or the newspapers or the posters that advertise everything!


I've been sitting here writing for over two hours!  It was so nice not to have to do any dishes after Shabbat this week; that's never happened before.  My friend, Nuchi, who eats with us many weeks for Shabbat, decided that this week we would come to her for BOTH meals.  It was awesome!  Then she decided that as long as we were coming, she may as well invite other people, so there was a crowd for both meals.  Nuchi is a wonderful hostess; she sets the most beautiful table and makes way too many dishes!  The problem is that she's such a good cook, it's hard not to sample everything.  I heard it got up to 102 degrees today, the hottest it's been in several weeks.  Once we got back home this afternoon, we napped for awhile and then Shabbat was almost over.  It's been a long time since we've been so relaxed.


I really have to thank Hashem over and over for all the blessings he so liberally showers on me - my husband to share my life with - as well as all the times we get to laugh together, our dogs who bring us so much happiness, the opportunity to live in Eretz Yisrael, the wonderful people He brings into our lives, our parnassa (livelihood), the great community we live in, my children, grandchildren and siblings (so very far away physically but always in my thoughts), my health, my computer, my books, our apartment, our car, my clothes, my desk, the fact that He led me to a path of Torah - EVERY SINGLE THING IN MY LIFE - even those things that frustrate me or make me angry or hurt me.  I'm so appreciative just being alive!  Are there things I wish were different?  You bet.  The worst for me is having my family so far away; not being able to have them all for Shabbat or watching my grandchildren grow. I can only daven for everyone's health and safety, and pray that somehow we'll get to see each other soon. 


I need to go make my lunch for work tomorrow and iron some clothes - vacation is over!

Allow me to introduce myself. Hmmm. How to do that accurately?

I am a child of Hashem. I'm a changed person from whence last we met, these six months past. Where to begin? What to say? How to say it?

Just the facts, ma'am: We moved back to Ramat Beit Shemesh just before Pesach, two months ago. As much as I loved the yishuv, we feel as if we've come home. Just to sit in our garden (and I use that term loosely) and be able to look out again at the green hills, filled with blooming flowers and grass and trees; to be able to walk on the streets with hundreds of other people – and hear English spoken from all sides; to walk out the front door of our apartment building and reach a shul in any direction in five minutes or less; to walk 100 steps across the sidewalk into the door of the makolet (grocery store) or just around the corner to the bus stop or produce market; to have friends EVERYWHERE telling us how glad they are that we've returned and spending every Shabbos and Yom Tov (holiday) with different families either at their home or ours; these things in themselves are enough to make David and I so very, very grateful and so very, very happy to be here.

But it's more than all these wonderful things. It's the bottomless joy in feeling Hashem's presence in my life every second of every day. It's not that I didn't feel Him on the yishuv. It's that in the past two months I've “opened wide my mouth” and He has filled it – with strength and understanding and love. Yeah, it sounds corny, but what can I say? It's how I feel. There's growth in everything I read and everything I do because I'm concentrating on the learning and the growing. And while I've gone through periods like this in the past 16 years of becoming observant, it's never been to this degree or with this much sensitivity. Part of it is having the zchut (merit) of being able to live in this holy land, and part of it is that I'm more amenable to opening my eyes and my mind to all that He's showing me.

And knowing that my husband is right there with me, feeling the same awe and growth as well. We feel so blessed! We thank Hashem that he's given us a decent parnassa (livelihood) that enables us to have not only what we need, but even a little extra to be able to help others.

I'm not saying it's all perfect and rosy. We live in a VERY small apartment – not even large enough to invite more than 6 people to have a meal with us. We're in an apartment building with young, Hebrew-speaking families with many (very many) small children who can be quite noisy at times (see, I'm smiling). The people upstairs decided to add a few rooms to their apartment, causing among other things, sparks to fly down into our yard and starting a fire; burning the glider we brought with us from St. Louis into total ashes (Baruch Hashem they got the fire out before it burned anything else). The bus commute to work can take an hour and a half or more EACH way. And for some reason, there are some tiny little ants who seem to be crawling on my desk right now – wonder where they came from?

But these things are NOTHING. They're so unimportant in the scheme of things! We have a place to live in a great location, near shuls and friends and with a small yard for Emma and our patio furniture where we can sit in the evenings and look out at the twinkling lights on the hills of Gush Etzion. We feel an inner peace and excitement here that I'm not sure we've ever felt before.

The political situation here doesn't lend itself to feeling peace and security, but that's a whole other thing. I'm not willing to look into that so deeply right now.

Only two things make me sad. The first is that there are so many Jews out there who just simply don't know the joy of living a Torah life. They don't understand, they don't want to know or understand, or they just don't care. They don't understand why we're here on this earth or what they're living for, and they've never even questioned why. I should know – that's how I was for the first 38 years of my life! The world is spinning slowly and slowly out of control: recessions and foreclosures and job losses and immorality and nuclear threats. What should be obvious (blatant anti-Semitism) is looked at as normal – even by Jews! Defending our land, defending our right to live in our land and to populate every inch of our land is looked at as evil, while real evil – terrorism – is overlooked and even condoned! The fact that Torah-observant Jews don't even know that they should be here; that they don't want to give up their comfortable existence because of the challenges they'll certainly encounter here makes me so sad. Hashem is taking away people's savings and their homes and sending disease and storms and other disasters – and no one's taking notice.

The second disheartening situation is that my sons live some 6000 miles away and the older one is one of those Jews who doesn't know what it means to be Jewish. He and his (non-Jewish) girlfriend of eleven years just had twins 3 months ago, which brings the number of their progeny up to four. He's thankfully working full time (as a cook in a treif restaurant) and they seem to be handling the added stress well. I may never get to meet my new granddaughters; their brother was only eleven months old when we made aliyah, and the oldest rarely wants to speak to me on the phone. It breaks my heart. I've been hearing rumors that my younger son may be making aliyah within the next year, but he hasn't said a word to me (his friends told me at a wedding we attended about three months ago). I can only pray...

I heard Rabbi Lazer Brody speak recently. He reminded me of Stevie Wonder, sitting in front of the crowd with his eyes closed and a wide smile on his face, swaying in his chair and speaking about Hashem's love for us. He said we needn't be afraid, that this time before Moshiach's arrival (the Messiah) is simply leading us to our greatest joy. He said it's like taking a tablecloth and shaking off all the crumbs and dirt to get it clean. Hashem is “shaking the world clean.” Those with emuna (faith) will be able to hang on, while those who don't have emuna will unfortunately be shaken off. He reminded us that everything that Hashem makes happen in our lives not only has a purpose, but is ultimately for our own good. We just have to have emuna in Hashem and do our best to work through our challenges. Hashem never gives us more than we can handle, and each challenge is tailor-made for each of us. He was so inspiring!

David has decided that we're going to drive into Yerushalayim for work tomorrow instead of taking the bus, so I should try to get some sleep because he likes to leave early. It's motzi Shabbat (Saturday night), and Shavuot was the day before Shabbat. We ate with different friends for 3 out of the 4 Yom Tov meals, and this afternoon as David and I were walking Emma I stopped at a woman's house who I used to play mah jongg with and both of her daughters were also home. David took Emma home and I had a wonderful afternoon playing mah jongg for the first time in over two months. Life is good!

Is this an awesome picture or what? Last week we had our first really steady rain of the year. When I left for work the sun was shining and I left the patio door open a few inches for Emma, as usual. AND left my umbrella at home. It started raining sometime mid-morning and was pretty consistent throughout the day. When I left work mid-afternoon it had stopped for awhile and after I descended the thirty or so stairs out my office door and turned to the right to head to the bus stop, I totally stopped in my tracks. There was the most perfectly formed rainbow I had ever seen, stretched from one end of the sky to the other. Even though I know we're not supposed to stare at a rainbow, I couldn't help it; it was so stunningly beautiful.

As I walked to the bus stop, I tried to call David but he didn't answer. Later he called me and said he'd been in a meeting, but his office has lots of windows (not just in the computers) (I know, that wasn't so funny) and he and all his co-workers went out to the atrium to see it. David asked, "But did you see the second rainbow?" I was disappointed that I hadn't; probably I was so intent on the first one that it hadn't occurred to me to look past it.

When we got home that evening David found the picture above that a co-worker had taken from his cell phone and emailed to everyone. Can you believe a cell phone can take such a beautiful picture? Our phones don't have that capability so I've never experienced taking pictures with one. Can you see the seond one above the first? I just tried to look up on Google what rainbows mean in Jewish thought - did you know that Double Rainbow is a brand of ice cream? Or that rainbows are associated with Jewish gays? I sure didn't. I couldn't find anything about double rainbows, but I found this from MyJewishLearning.com:

The Talmud (Hagigah 16a) states that one who gazes too intently at the rainbow will suffer a diminution of his eyesight. In the Kabbalah, the colors of the rainbow represent the various shades of the Sefirot. The rainbow has thus become in Jewish thought the symbol of both God's glory as manifest in the universe and God's faithfulness to His covenant to mankind and to the people of Israel.

Now let me tell you about the rest of that rainy day.

It was almost the end of the month and we needed to buy our new chofshi chodshi (monthly bus pass) for November. David had given me his ID card that morning, so I went to the bus stop headed for the takanah merkazit. I left work at 3:30 (the earliest I'd gotten off in a week) and by the time I got to the bus stop it was spitting rain. There was an overhang at this particular stop, and about 42 million people (more or less) crowding under it. After about 20 minutes no #11 or # 35 had come by so I jumped on a #56 and got off in Geulah. By then it was POURING. I took a back street and stopped at the first store I found to buy an umbrella; it was probably a record day in umbrella sales for stores that day. All the streets were flooding like crazy but I managed to make it to the #15 bus stop and the bus came just seconds after I got there. I kept thanking Hashem for keeping me surprisingly and mostly dry at this point. With all the streets under construction (they are literally working on almost all the streets of the city right now; mostly for the new rail system) and the driving rain, everything was a mess. It took another half an hour to make it to the bus station and it wasn't very far away from where I got on the bus. As I dashed across the street to get in the security line, I stepped right into the flooding waters and got drenched up to my knees. I couldn't believe I made it to within a few feet of my destination and then got soaked.

Actually I wasn't so worried because I knew I'd get a good seat on the bus back to Kochav Yaakov since I would be getting on at the beginning of the route. Lucky for me the ticket window was practically empty and after I purchased my pessa flora (passion fruit) slushie, the #143 was waiting for me.

That's when the fun started. Well, not fun exactly. More like a lesson in savlanut (patience). I got on the bus at 4:45 PM. Right at 4:50 PM the bus pulled out of its parking spot on the upper level - and then stopped. There were three lanes of buses trying to get out of the one-lane exit. We were literally moving about one inch every few minutes. Every time the buses pulled forward a little bit, the bus drivers jockeyed for position to get to the exit first - three lanes of Israeli drivers merging into one is not a pretty sight.

The nice thing was that there were probably all of ten people on the bus and it happened to be a brand-new, clean one so I was pretty comfy. The bad thing was that I didn't have a book with me and a normally 45 minute ride took two hours and fifteen minutes! All I could think about was those poor people waiting at bus stops with the rain drowning them and no buses coming. The traffic on the streets was almost totally stopped in all directions; it took us an hour and a half to get out of the bus terminal and around the corner on Yirmeyahu to the intersection at Sarai Yisroel, which normally takes about five minutes. Once we got past that point, it only took another half hour or so to get home.

Did I mention that I bought a slushie before getting on the bus? And that it took another two and half hours before I walked (ran, actually) into my house? I think you can guess the implication of that. Suffice it to say that I didn't even notice the little tiny mud prints all over my house and couch and bed until long after I came out of the bathroom...

David is delighted that I'm blogging tonight. He wants me to be sure to write about him. Hmmm. I can't say that. And that would be loshon hora. Oh, yeah! Well, no, it wouldn't be right to talk about that, either. I know! It turns out that David had a SEVERE B12 deficiency. It caused him to be anemic and also low in vitamin D. Now he's giving himself B12 shots three times a week and is on iron tablets and vitamin D drops, and life (for both of us) is so much better now! He's happier, has more energy, has a more positive outlook - it's wonderful. Now if we can just find a vitamin that helps with procrastination...

G'mar chasima tova! I hope you had a meaningful Rosh Hashana and that the next ten days before Yom Kippur will be introspective and full of conversation with the Almighty. I know mine will be!

I read 2020 Vision this week - what a story to make one think! It just seems so obvious that the coming of Moshiach is just around the corner. Look what's been happening in the US with the financial situation. Is it a coincidence that the stock market plunged in its biggest drop in history on erev Rosh Hashana?! That Hurricane Ike did so much damage in the days following Olmert's unconscionable assertions that we're going to give so much of our land to the Arabs - land that many of us are living on, I might add? All over the world things are spiraling out of control - why don't more people see it?! And what if, G-d forbid, Obama makes it to office? It can only spell more disaster for both Israel and the US.

The only things we can do at this point is to pray, do teshuva, and give tzedaka. We Jews have to do what we're supposed to in order to fix the world. We must all of us ask ourselves - what am I doing or not doing that's causing evil to run rampant in the world? We can't look at other people and say, "Look how terrible he is"; we have to look in the mirror and tell ourselves, "Look at the difference between what I am and what I have the potential to be. WHY AREN'T I TRYING HARDER? What's preventing me from being a kinder, more sensitive person? What do I need to do to get back on track?" Hashem doesn't care if we reach our goals; he's only interested in the effort we're putting in to try to reach them. If we start off this new year already stuck in the bad and lazy habits we had last year, what's the point in going on this way unless we resolve to be more productive?

Now I guess I have to explain that last paragraph. Kindly substitute all those "we's" for "I's" because it's really a pep talk I'm giving to myself. I KNOW that I can be much more productive than I currently am. I KNOW that I have to stop looking at the faults of other people when mine are so numerous. I KNOW that I'm not making realistic goals and a plan to reach them. Recently I read something that said that all you (I) have to do is make one small change and Hashem helps it grow exponentially. For instance, if you decide you're going to give your spouse one compliment and a smile every single day, you'll soon find that you're smiling much of your day and becoming a more relaxed, happy person. If you decide that instead of yelling at your kids when you get annoyed, you're going to stop, count to five, and then hug that child - you'll soon find that he misbehaves less and becomes more loving to you.

It's our job as the Children of Israel to make the world a better place; from wherever we are in our lives; in whatever situation Hashem places us - our attitude and countenance comes from within. So let's (me) get healthy and happy and productive and cheerful and giving this new year! May Hashem bless you (yes, YOU!) and your family with a sweet and healthy and constantly-changing-for-the-good New Year!

Been reading Angela's Ashes thought it was a holocaust story turned out to be a memoir about a boy named Frankie grew up poor in Ireland around the time of world war II. How can anyone live on tea and fried bread three of his siblings starved to death didn't make it until the age of three. Frankie must have made it somehow grew up to write the book. Here in Israel too much poverty one third of all children with growling stomachs when they go to bed wake up in the morning and nothing in the fridg. No food patches on their clothes shame in their hearts. They don't know no shame in not having G-d gives to each of us our own. Those who have think it's theirs we fill our stomachs eat too much don't think about who lack. We overeat our stomachs full our neshamas gasping growling nothing to put in. Sitting on chair with hand outstretched their eyes beseech guilty we reach for a coin. Avoid the eyes drop in the money don't see the arm attached to a body like you and me. Does G-d drop gifts and walk away not wait and worry and soothe. He sits besides us gives and gives and gives smiles hugs and comforts shows us how. I learn struggle to understand nothing mine. Share the gifts food money smile shake the hand look into their eyes. Fill my neshama stomachs don't need much hearts yearning. Make Him proud.

Did I ever mention how beautiful it is in Jerusalem after dark? Tonight I worked until 8:45. When I walked out of the building, there was a wonderfully cool breeze blowing. Walking through the back streets of Bais Yisroel, a pretty hareidi (religious) neighborhood, I saw many people out in the streets: groups of girls with their heads bent together, giggling and talking as they walked; young men and boys striding purposefully, husbands sitting or standing outside their back doors speaking loudly into their cell phones as their arms gesticulated wildly; young mothers pushing baby strollers, pre-adolescents playing on the sidewalks. As I wound my way onto the bustling street of Shmuel Hanavi, I saw that many of the shops along the street were still open for business at this late hour. Some were closing up, but the aromas of falafel and pizza from every third doorway was still in the air. Here, too, the sidewalks were bustling with people and there was a constant stream of traffic in both directions.

I approached a bus stop where I frequently wait for a connecting bus to the one that will take me home. Normally, in the heat of the day I wait fruitlessly for a #2 or a #10 that never come in time to get me to where I need to go when I need to get there. This time, however, the #10 pulled up just as I was sauntering past. Even though I knew my bus home wouldn't be leaving the takanah merkazit until 9:15 and would take at least ten minutes to get to the bus stop I would be waiting at, I still jumped on the #10 and arrived at my destination two minutes later. Taking a chance, I called David at home and asked him to look up the bus schedule for me. I knew that they had changed some of the times and added more frequent bus service recently and Baruch Hashem! A 9 PM bus had been added. Within a few minutes a nearly empty 143 pulled up to take me home.

Once we get past the machson (checkpoint) at Pisgat Ze'ev, the driver turns off the inner lights of the bus, and once again I marvel at the clear, starry skies (that we have every single night from early Spring until late Autumn). There are so many sparkling lights from the different communities on all the hilltops as we wend our way home. It's hard to believe that so many people live out here in the desert hills north of Yerushalayim. Wherever I might be living in this Land, I will always believe that it's the most beautiful place in the world. And I will always be grateful to my Creator for blessing me with the schus (merit) to live here.

I neglected to mention that David's blog is located at www.noshwithfriends.com. He's just starting out, but I think his first (real) post is pretty good!

Surprise! I'm already back again. It's late motzei Shabbat and I have a little more energy than I did yesterday before Shabbos started. After two days of running to the bathroom with the "d" word, and running a slight fever on and off, I feel much better. It might have helped that Miryam and Rachel showed up this afternoon and we played about 3 hours of mahj!

So there's a lot of excitement in the air in my neck of the woods. I can't really say what it is yet but suffice it to say that someone's son we know is about to propose to someone's daughter we know. Everyone knows it but the soon-to-be-kallah (bride). The soon-to-be chosson (groom) went to the girl's parents and actually asked their permission! As if everyone didn't already know that it was just a matter of time. So now two families that we're friends with are going to be related and everybody is happy (including Miryam who will have a new grandson-in-law). Okay, enough said. Or maybe too much.

Getting back to the topic at the end of yesterday's post - last week a family on the yishuv sponsored Rabbi Pinchas Winston to come speak. There were about 25 of us who went to hear him (this was the evening before the Bloggers Convention - we actually went out two nights in a row!). If you've never read any of Rav Winston's books or heard him speak, he's absolutely amazing. His new book Geulah B'Rachamim is a MUST READ for every Jew. It's published by Shaar Nun Publishers and it's a small but powerful paperback.

Rav Winston says that the time of geulah (redemption) is very close. He says the geulah can come b'rachamim (with compassion or mercy) or by a very terrible war called the war of Gog v'Magog where very many people will die. He said that no matter how many mitzvot we have accumulated, in the latter scenario they will not save us as individuals. But - we as the Jewish people have the power to bring the geulah b'rachamim! All it takes is a change of heart! There are many places in our teachings that tell us we have to yearn for redemption. We don't have to necessarily make aliyah. but we have to want the land more than we want our expensive and comfortable cars and homes and clothes and status. He says that the Jews in chutz l'aretz (outside the land of Israel) are sometimes so far away from Yiddishkeit that they don't even know they should be yearning! I know I'm not doing his talk justice - please buy this book and read it for yourselves. It's 60 lessons (one short page a day) for turning around what could be a terrible and frightening war for ALL OF US.

Okay, tomorrow is the start of a new week so I need to get to bed. Hopefully I'll be up to going to Curves tomorrow morning, and then get to work by 1 (tomorrow's my late night). Have a wonderful week!

Jewish bloggers everywhere - unite! That was the feeling Wednesday night at the first International Jewish Bloggers Convention held at the Nefesh B'Nefesh office in Givat Shaul. Although the convention lasted only a few short hours, it packed a punch heard the world over (well, maybe not the entire world but a good part of the western side of it). There were 201 live partcipants and we were told there were 1000 more linked to a live web feed. I say 201 because they announced that there were 200 and we managed to get them to allow David in even though they didn't have his registration.

David is a blogger? you ask in amazement. Why have we never heard of this phenomenom before? The answer is that, although he professes to be the owner of three such sites, he has as yet only written one post for one blog. Sad, but true. Although, this very moment as we speak my DH (that's blog talk for "Dear Husband") (I don't know any of the other shorthand initials so don't be so impressed) (I learned that from my friend, Shifra from reading it on her blog and asking her what it meant) (I should get back to the original subject), my DH is right now writing his second ever blog post.

Okay, now back to the original original topic. David left work and hopped on a #35 bus while I walked a long, hot way down Shmuel Hanavi Street and picked up the #11 (which had no air conditioning even though it was 87º). We ended up getting to the same bus stop on Kanfei Nesharim within two minutes of each other! From there we walked the few blocks to the convention. David's name was not on the registration list even though I had emailed back to the person who confirmed my registration that he also wanted to come. After a lot of hemming and hawing, and having the person in charge tell us that registration was closed and there really wasn't any room, etc., etc., we just stood our ground and very politely reiterated that we had come a long way in the traffic and were both interested in participating, etc., etc. We've come a long way, baby! We felt like true Israelis when they conceded that they could probably fit one more person.

The convention was amazing! You can see the video on the Nefesh website: www.nefeshbnefesh.org and then click on the blogger convention on the right side. I had a private interview at about 9 1/2 minutes into the video. {Please note that the screen is wide, so objects are much smaller than they appear} Once the video starts playing, DO NOT move your cursor or you'll lose the picture (at least that's what happened to me). If you lose the picture, minimize the screen and then open again. Jacob Richman, who takes lots of pictures at Nefesh events, has posted pictures at of the event at:

http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/jerusalem/2008/jer173.htm

We're in pictures 2024, 2030, 2032, 2064, and 2068. (I'm typing this post in something called ScribeFire and I have no idea how to use it, so the font and font size keeps changing on me.)

I'm writing this now on erev Shabbos and I can't even think straight any more. I'm running a fever and I don't feel so hot (actually, I feel very hot); we had to disinvite Miryam and Shaya for Shabbos. But we were sharing the cooking, so I've still had to make my stuff and David will take their share over before candle-lighting and get our share of what they cooked. David is in the kitchen now making the curry chicken - Yudit at work gave me this very easy recipe and we made it a few weeks ago - so yummy! And so easy! David was going to BBQ chicken for tomorrow's lunch, but we decided to just make all the chicken the same in the interest of simplicity. I feel bad that he's working so hard on his only day off (besides Shabbat), but I'm thankful that he's doing it.

There's SO much more to tell you about the convention, but more importantly, about the talk we heard by Pinchas Winston the night before. It's imperative that I pass on that information, but unfortunately my popsicle is melting all over me and it's difficult typing with one hand so it will have to wait until after Shabbat. May you all be blessed with Shabbos joy and rest (and mahj, if you get a chance!).

When I first started keeping a blog I couldn't wait to write every day. After two years (yes, we've lived in Israel for two years now!), it's getting harder and harder to find the time to write. It's not that I don't have what to write about (that's Jewish lingo); the problem is that there's so much to say and I've just been too tired to write it all down. It seems as if I've been leaving for work earlier and staying longer - and enjoying every minute of it.

On the other hand, poor Emma is home alone for up to ten or twelve hours, in the barely bearable heat and how silly is that, to feel guilty over leaving your dog? I guess if you have a pet and you know how important they are to you, then you understand how I feel. But it's also a wonderful feeling to work for an organization that feeds so many hungry children every day, and supplies clothes and blankets and heaters and backpacks, and helps their parents train for better jobs and then helps them find jobs.

A group of about 30 girls from England came to Yad Ezra V'Shulamit this afternoon and I accompanied Bassya as she spoke to them about what we do. When she showed them the video I had tears in my eyes. Rav Ariel Lurie, who founded the organization, is such a special person. He grew up hungry on the streets of Jerusalem and vowed that he would do everything in his power to make sure that other children have enough to eat. But feeding them isn't all; he knew the stigma of being poor and going to school in ragged clothing and dowdy hand-me-downs. Every Fall, the kids we provide assistance for get to pick out their own book bags and school supplies from all the donated supplies we get. Besides giving out 2500 food baskets every single week in locations all around the country, we also have Children's Centers in six different locations where children can come after school and get a nourishing lunch, get help with homework, and play in a safe environment. They're even sent home with food for supper and breakfast the next morning. It's an amazing organization. I think I'd like to eventually do some fundraising for the organization. Not that I like asking people for money, but it's such a worthy cause. If anyone's interested in learning more, check out our website at www.yadezra.net. If you make a donation, please put my name in the comments line so I can get a commission!

We have friends in town from St. Louis. Last Thursday they took a bus to our yishuv and we visited for a couple of hours. Then we drove into town and met David at one of our favorite fleish restaurants when he got off work. We just sat and talked for several hours; it was so nice to see them. They're in Israel for their grandson's bar mitzvah. Two nights ago was the celebration at a hall on Ezras Torah. There were other St. Louisans there - what a shock! Several girls who I knew as kids were there - married with babies! When did they grow up? and why am I continually surprised by it?! I didn't mind at all getting to play with all the babies.

We interrupt this irregularly scheduled blog writing with a totally unscheduled but not unexpected mitzvah request from a neighbor -------

Okay, I'm back. Emergency averted. Mini-version: 9:30 PM and a 10 year neighbor's son is having a tantrum, screaming on the street, trying to get down to the bus stop to go into town. He was yelling into the open window at a friend who was on his computer playing what was apparently a pretty cool computer game, but the friend's father had "disinvited" this kid from being there. Three younger siblings were joining in the commotion. Mom called with an SOS. I got three of the kids to come to my house for 20 minutes to play the stress game on my computer. (It's a great computer game but please don't ask how to download it; my niece, nephew and another friend's son have been begging for it and I don't think the website is around anymore). Anyway, he calmed down enough that when I walked them back home, everyone was in a good mood and Mom was able to relax a little. Unfortunately, they're all planning to come back tomorrow AND IT'S MY DAY OFF AND I NEED TIME TO MYSELF.

In case you thought I might have been yelling that last line, you are perfectly correct, although it wasn't so loud that anyone else could hear. Can we say stress? Strain? Pressure? Anxiety? Worry? I'm not really at liberty to explain all that, due to the constraints of loshon hara. Suffice it to see that I REALLY need some time away from the constant SOS's of several situations.

Until tomorrow afternoon. I pick David up around 5 and we head into Beit Shemesh for a another Bar Mitzvah celebration of friends also from St. Louis (go, Josh!). Oh, maybe I need to go earlier and buy him a present. I wonder if Manny's bookstore in Geulah sells gift certificates?

We would love to have a quiet Shabbat. We said that last week and we ended up with ten for dinner (as of 2:30 PM erev Shabbat) and overnight guests for Friday through Sunday night (we didn't know we were having guests Sunday night until we were awakened at midnight by a knock on the front door and Emma barking madly). So, please Hashem, can this one be a quiet one?

Miss me?

Ever get the feeling that life is running you over? That's how this last month has been. Soooo many things have happened and nothing I can write in public about. Suffice it to say that David and I have been dealing with a lot of other peoples' issues; we have literally felt that our lives are not our own. This past week things have gotten a little better - not for the other people, but for us. Two of the situations deal with extended family and one pertains to a friend who we've been trying to support through a nasty divorce. The divorce is not final and for some strange, unexplainable reason (unknown to any sane person), no one is making this couple separate and the husband won't leave the house. There is a lot of emotional abuse going on and we fear for the wife's sanity as well as the mental health of the children. I finally had to tell her last week that David and I had to take a step back for our own sanity. We didn't see her or any of the kids this past week or over Shabbat; after seeing them (at least her and the baby) almost daily for months, we felt like we were having withdrawal! But I must admit, it was a more stress-free Shabbat.

It was, in fact, a most pleasant Shabbat. On Friday night it was just the four of us: Miryam and Shaya, David and I. I made chicken shish kebobs and baked potatoes, which was a nice change. For lunch, Penina and Pinchas and their teenagers joined the four of us. I had cut up lettuce, celery, red, yellow and green peppers, green onions, tomatoes and cilantro, plus made some Spanish rice, refried beans and spicy ground beef for an awesome Mexican lunch. We had tortilla chips and taco shells and everyone made what they wanted. After lunch, we took the leaves out of the dining room table and the six guys played cards while we four women played mahj - ALL afternoon. Miryam and Shaya stayed for Seudat Shlishli (the 3rd Shabbat meal) and for the last 45 minutes of Shabbat the four us sat outside and enjoyed the cool night air. It's been pretty darn hot the last couple of weeks. When I'm at work it's no big deal, but on days I don't work the house can get pretty hot. We have ceiling fans and floor fans in every room so it's bearable, and by 6:00 PM or so it starts to cool off considerably.

Last week's terrorist attack was pretty ghastly. I had taken a bus into town that morning and instead of getting off at my usual bus stop went all the way to the takanah merkazit. From there I switched to another bus which came straight down Jaffa street past the shuk, and then turned up King George (I had to drop off a check at our car insurance office). I had gotten on the 2nd bus at 10 a.m., and got to work around 11. At about 12:20, one of the Rabbis who works at our office came in to tell us there had just been a pigua (terrorist attack) on Jaffa Street by an Arab who was driving a construction tractor with a huge serrated crane. He drove the tractor down Jaffa running over cars and smashing vehicles with the crane. We listened to the news all afternoon. It was sickening. And then we heard that the murderer's father said, "My son was not a terrorist; he was a drug addict." Who cares?! He got ticked off and decided to see how many Jews he could mow down? That's a terrorist in my book! It's such an old story; Jews being the scapegoat. I know that our defense forces have stopped literally hundreds more of these terrorist attacks from happening, but every time it does happen, it's just too much. We're supposed to be living in civilized times, but what kind of animals have zero regard for human life? Even their own children are persuaded to give their lives as martyrs, and then they celebrate when their children die killing other people. There's just nothing sicker.

Let's go on to more pleasant subjects.

I'm still working out three days a week. Work is very enjoyable, although the computer situation hasn't changed. By the time I leave for the day I've been on every computer in the office. Only one computer has every program in working order. My computer doesn't have the database and isn't connected to the color printer. Another one has the database but doesn't have any Microsoft programs. I can only get my office email on another one. It's crazy! Hopefully we've made enough requests of the organizations's computer person that he'll do something about it this week.

We're trying to find a good dog sitter. Friends of ours in Ramat Beit Shemesh are making a bar mitzvah in a couple of weeks and they want us to come to the Thursday night siyum and dinner as well as to the Bar Mitzvah on Shabbat. Other friends invited us to stay with them, but they already have a dog and he's very territorial. Penina and Pinchas, who watched Emma before, are moving that same weekend to Nofei Aviv in Beit Shemesh. Shayna and Yonaton, who also watched Emma one Shabbat, are going to be in the states. We may just have to go Thursday night and come home.

It's almost midnight and tomorrow starts the work week. Have a good one!

What a great Shabbat! Nothing exciting - just relaxing, enjoying friends, great weather, playing some mahj - what could be better?

And tomorrow starts another work week. I have to be there at 1 p.m. for a two-hour staff meeting. It's actually nice to get there later in the day. After everybody leaves I have the office to myself. The only thing I don't like is that only two computers have the database on them, and mine isn't one of them. Hopefully in June we'll be getting a third, updated copy of the database so I can stop "computer-hopping."

Lat week I went to Curves four mornings; hopefully I'll do the same this week. With four of us going from our yishuv, it makes it easier to get out of bed and go. I usually get to work between 10 and 10:15 a.m. which works out well, because then I only have to wait a couple of hours for someone to go home so I can get on the database on their computer.

Last week I went to the Writer's Seminar. It was pretty inspiring to have so many published writers there; some of them were speakers. There were writers and editors from Hamodia, Binah, Mishpacha, Feldheim, as well as other publishing houses and women who have written books. I really need to sit down for an hour every evening and work on my writing; I have so many ideas but no energy at the end of the day to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). The Writer's Journal they published this year was awesome; they're selling copies of it for $50 in the states. The book had different sections in it and two of my pieces were the first ones in each of their sections. I haven't even had a chance to read the whole book yet; it's pretty thick. Leah, the organizer of the seminar, was taking submissions for several months. I think the booklet is twice as big as last year's.

We're talking about selling the car. It's a big expense and we really don't NEED it as much as we just like having it. It's not a decision I want to make right now. Just knowing we have it is such a comfort. I always worry that if we need to get anywhere in a hurry (like a hospital, chas vashalom {G-d forbid}) we'd be lost without transportation. Lots of people get along perfectly well without one; my mind just has to get used to the idea for awhile.

Shavua Tov (have a good week)!

Shavua Tov!

The strangest thing happened over Shabbat. David always fixes my Shabbat lights for me before candlelighting on Friday afternoons. First he fills seven little glass cups halfway with colored water, and the other half he fills with olive oil. Then he puts them on the candelabra, adds the wicks, and I'm ready to go. Usually the candles burn anywhere from four to six hours. This morning when we sat down to lunch around 11 AM, David noticed that one of the candles was still burning. It stayed lit until 11:30 - almost 16 hours!

That would seem to be almost impossible. What would keep that flame going for so long? It didn't have any more oil in it than any of the other candles, or for that matter, any more than it usually contained. How could it possibly have burned for so long?! Burning sixteen hours isn't even close to burning for eight days, but still ... very strange, indeed.

Today was also my husband's English birthday. Happy Birthday to David! We didn't do anything special. The two of us had Shabbat lunch at home alone, which is what he wanted, and then David took a long Shabbat nap while I went down to Penina's to play mahj. I came back in time to share Seudat Shlishi (the third meal) with him.

Mahj was really fun. It was also the second time this week we played. Thursday was the celebration of Israel's 60th birthday, and Yom Hatzmaut is a very important holiday for most Israelis (Hareidi Jews don't celebrate Israel Independence Day because they don't believe that we should be celebrating a state when 1) Moshiach hasn't yet come and 2) there's a secular government not based on Torah values. We personally celebrate because Jews have a homeland to come home to IN SPITE OF having a secular government. So David, Miryam, Shaya and I planned to go to Migron which is a settlement on the next hill from ours. It's basically home to about 60 families, most of them living in caravans (trailers). Migron is in the news frequently because the government is always threatening to dismantle it. Someone planned a whole day of festivities there, with moonwalks and activities for the kids, booths, speeches, the whole bit. They wouldn't let anyone drive up there because there's nowhere to park, so we went to the shopping area where the shuttle buses were leaving from. There were hundreds of people waiting for rides; families with strollers and a million kids with backpacks and coolers. After half an hour of milling around and not making it onto any of the buses, we finally left. We old folk just aren't up to
all that excitement anymore.

So we headed home, picked up Emma and some food we had waiting, and headed to Penina and Pinchus' where we were expected for a BBQ. Pinchus and David barbequed the chicken and we got the rest of the food ready. It was just like the 4th of July (although if it was really the 4th of July, I'd be sad that I wasn't celebrating it with my older son back in chutz l'aretz whose birthday happens to be on that day). After we cleaned up the tables, we women pulled out the mahj game, while the menfolk were at the next table playing Spades. Emma had fun playing with Choco, even though Choco wouldn't let Emma have one of the two rawhide bones I brought for them. We didn't come home until late that evening. What a fun day!

And tomorrow starts the work week. I have an office staff meeting at noon, and then another meeting with the fundraisers at 1 pm. Tomorrow's my day to work in the evening, but if I have to go in early I don't think I'll stay until 10 PM. I'm looking forward to Tuesday - there's an all day writer's conference in Bayit Vegan that I signed up for. I went to this last year and really enjoyed it. Plus - Leah, the woman who organizes it, puts out a Writer's Journal and I have two pieces that are being published in it. I can't wait to get my copy!

What a day! I'm emotionally and physically just plumb tuckered out.

David was told our car would be ready today - new windshield, new driver's door, plus all the things we needed to have done to pass inspection: new back bumper, new brakes, new battery. We also had a total tune-up and oil change. Then there was the cost to re-license it for another year, plus the inspection fee. PLUS - we had to pay the deductible on our insurance and supposedly it's our insurance company's obligation to recover that money from the guy who hit us. Total bill? Over 4000 shekels!! We weren't expecting that!

So we drove in together this morning in the rental car our insurance company has supplied us with and David dropped me off at a bus stop near where he works so I could catch either the #35 or the #11 into Givat Shaul for a doctor appointment. We left our house at 7:30 am and I didn't get to my 9:15 appointment until 9:25. I don't know where all the traffic came from but it was horrible; it took us over an hour to get into town. I rushed into the clinic only to wait over an hour until I was seen. Apparently they scheduled THREE people for 9:00 appointments and two of us for 9:15, and the doctor wasn't even up to the 9:00 appointments when I got there.

Yesterday morning I also left the house early (by bus) to get to a 10:00 therapy appointment, and didn't arrive until 10:15. The funny part was, the appointment was for today, not yesterday! I told them I didn't think I'd be able to make it because of my 9:15 appointment fairly far away but I didn't actually cancel it (because they told me to "try" to get there). So when I called them at 9:45 this morning to say I couldn't get there, the receptionist yelled at me and told me they were going to charge me for the appointment anyway. When I tried to explain my position, she just kept saying, "Ani lo mavina" meaning "I don't understand" (I use that phrase a lot). So that's another 75 wasted shekels.

By the time I got to work it was 11:30. I spent the next 5 1/2 hours sitting in front of the computer entering donations that had come in in April. I've been the only person there for the week before Pesach and the week since, and there's a HUGE backlog. Tefilla, the director of the department, was in today and she apologized a couple of time to me for having me do that kind of "grunt" work (should I have told her that I actually like doing it?). She told me that she has other plans for me that don't include data entry. Last week she spoke to me about taking over the office manager's job so she can concentrate on fundraising, but I know Bassya doesn't want to do that. She also wants me to work with the fundraisers by doling out who gets which donors and keeping them organized. On Sundays I'm going to work in the evenings when they're in the office making calls, which works out great for me because David has a shiur that he goes to on Sunday nights. Actually, I just found out that the shiur is for both men and women and I'd actually like to hear this rabbi speak, so I may have to work that out sometime.

Tefilla and Bassya are pretty laid back kind of people. There are three other young women and me (I'm young at heart) who work there, and everyone pretty much makes their own hours as long as the work gets done. I already told Tefilla that I wouldn't work on Thursdays. I really need a day to catch up on laundry and straightening up the house and getting ready for Shabbat. I love the job, though. My coworkers are great and the work is right up my alley.

I didn't get home until 7 tonight (long story having to do with waiting 45 minutes for a bus that never came) and for some reason I decided to call my old office manager at Aish. I rarely call Aish any more; I don't know why I decided to tonight except that I wanted to tell him I wrote my first Thank You donation letter today and started it off with "I hope this letter finds you and your family in the best of health" which is how he starts off every single letter he ever writes. I was going to tell him that he taught me well, but when I called I found out his wife, Shifra (my very good friend and longtime mahj partner), lost her father yesterday. And to make things worse, as she was checking in her luggage at the airport today to go to her hometown for the levaya (funeral), she got a call that her 16 year old, who's developmentally disabled and living in a group home, needed emergency hernia surgery. I felt so bad for her! We who have made aliyah know all too well the pain of not being able to be there for our loved ones or feeling like we need to be in two places at one time. Of course she had to be there for her son, and her mother understood. I called Shifra at her son's hospital room and we talked until it was time for them to take him down for surgery. The operation is only supposed to take an hour, so I'm going to call again before I go to bed. Bli ayin hara, the surgery should go well and have him feeling better quickly.

So, back to the car business. David had to lose a few hours pay when he took the paperwork to the garage after they towed the car in last week. The car rental place they sent him to wasn't easily accessible and he had to take a cab (the buses cost us practically nothing so this is probably the first cab either of us has taken since we moved here) to pick it up. So he missed several hours of work that day. Today he left work in the middle of the day to take the rental car back near the Old City and then take another cab into Talpiyot. There was a whole balagan with paying for the car because he didn't take a check with him (we've probably written 10 checks since we've moved here; everything comes off the credit card that gets paid off each month - as per bank rules) and the credit card company wouldn't let him put the whole amount on the card. He finally got all the financial stuff taken care of and went back to work. Except the car overheated on his way back! He called the garage and they told him to bring the car back tomorrow. David was ready to pull his hair out (the one or two that are left - sorry; couldn't resist).

You see, tonight started Yom Hazikaron (a holiday commemorating Israel's fallen soldiers and the victims of terror), and tomorrow night starts Yom Hatzmaut (a holiday much like the 4th of July, celebrating the state of Israel) - so David will have to get the car there first thing in the morning and probably wait until they can find out what's wrong with it. He left it at work and took a bus home tonight, so he's going to have to leave pretty early in the morning to get there when the garage opens. And he only works 5 hours tomorrow because of the holiday. When he doesn't work, he doesn't get paid. It's not fair that this kid negligently left the back doors of his truck unlatched which then crashed into our car - and he drives away while we have to suffer the lost wages, the time spent dealing with the garage and the insurance, and the outlay of cash that we may or may not be reimbursed for. Again, there's a lesson in this for us, but right now my head is spinning from exhaustion so I'll have to figure it out another time.

Just a quick note to let you know we're both feeling okay - no neck or back pain from the accident so far. Neither of us thought to take the camera down and take a picture of the car before it got towed off yesterday morning. Too bad! One might have wondered how we had sustained no injuries when the car looked the way it did.

Did I ever tell you my husband's nickname? Around here we call him "Tim, the Tool Man, Taylor." For those of you who don't know about old tv shows, Tim Taylor was a real fix-it kind of guy with his own cable Home Improvement show. The problem was, Tim was always getting himself in trouble by fixing things in rather unusual and overboard measures, and usually hurting himself in the process.

We're having guests for Shabbos/Pesach lunch and I decided to make a nice dessert today. Most Pesach dessert recipes start off with "beat eggs until stiff." Unfortunately, our Pesadik mixer didn't make it to Israel with us and it never occured to me to buy one before Pesach started. Instead of letting me knock on neighbor's doors, my own personal Time The Tool Man Taylor rigged up a mixer by melting a plastic knife into a different shape and attaching it to his cordless drill. As you can see from the picture above, it worked rather well. (And the lemon meringue pie looks absolutely scrumptious!)

Ever have a door slam in your face? What about into the windshield of your car? While you were in it.

Baruch Hashem, David and I are all right. Talk about a freak accident! It's surprising to new olim to learn that Israelis have to take 28 driving lessons before they can take the driving test for their driver's license. Judging by the way many people drive, it's hard to believe that they've had any lessons. So many people take chances on the road, like passing on the shoulder or around a curve, or driving right up behind someone and honking. They just don't seem to realize that driving is a serious matter.

Today we decided to pack our lunches and head into Yerushalayim along with, literally, a million other people. The accident happened before we ever left the yishuv (Baruch Hashem). We were on the main road of the yishuv, and all was quiet. Today was a gorgeous day, in the upper 80's, with not a cloud in the sky. We were both in great moods, enjoying this second day of chol hamoed. A truck was driving towards us and when it was just a few feet away, the back door suddenly swung open and was in our lane! David stopped the car but there was no time to do anything else before the door slammed into our windshield. Baruch Hashem a thousand times over that even though we were covered with tiny bits of glass, neither of us were hurt. The car, of course, is another matter. The driver's door will need to be replaced, and the frame surrounding the windshield will have to be fixed or replaced along with the glass. The driver of the truck, a young guy, was apologetic but didn't seem to really understand that his being careless about latching the back door could have cost us our lives.

All day David and I have been wondering what Hashem's message for us might be. Obviously we weren't meant to be hurt, but to learn something. All suggestions welcome!

If we were in chutz l'aretz right now, we'd be in the middle of our second seder.

But the one we had last night was quite enjoyable. David and I had planned to have a quiet seder with just the two of us, and several books of commentaries to aid in our enjoyment and understanding. As it turned out, our friend who just had her baby a couple of weeks ago joined us. It was kind of a strange seder - she came over with a red and runny nose from allergies (David and I have been taking allergy medicine for weeks; everyone's sneezing and blowing their nose around here) and I gave her a Benedryl. Duh! It wasn't the smartest thing to do. She had the first cup of wine and was out for the count! While she snoozed on the couch I got to hold and rock and walk the baby, which was an unexpected reward for the evening. She's such a cuddly little sweetie. Nathan's had to endure my repeated pleas this past month to find a nice, Jewish girl already and give me some Jewish grandchildren (and, of course, move back here to Israel to do it). He tends to change the subject a lot.

Anyway, David had a very interesting haggadah with some great commentary and we learned a lot of interesting stuff. It's the first time we had the seder at home in several years so I got to unpack all my stuff. We have about 10 boxes of Pesach dishes, serving pieces, etc. so opening everything up after a year is like getting new presents. We have an excess of everything because in St. Louis we used to have big sedarim. Someday we'll have a bigger house so we can have more space to store our things and more room to entertain.

After the seder I went across the street to let Rusty out. He's Miryam and Shaya's 150 pound dog. When we walked over, we could hear singing from open windows on the street. I absolutely love living on a street in a community in a country where practically everyone is celebrating the exact same thing you are. Supposedly 85% of Israelis profess to having a Pesach seder whether they're religious or not. This re-telling of our story year after year for three thousand years is a miracle in itself. As slaves under the ruthless ruler of the biggest empire of all time, our lives and our futures were utterly hopeless - and yet Hashem redeemed and took us out of slavery to bring us to a land "flowing with milk and honey." Every year the story has more meaning for me. So many times in my life I've been off-course, either floundering or just plain headed in the wrong direction, and He's taken me by the hand and shown me a better way.

Sara Yocheved Rigler wrote an excellent piece in this week's Binah magazine. She said that as a nation and a people things are looking pretty hopeless for us right now: the constant bombardment of kassem rockets into Sderot and southern Israel that are maiming and killing, the tragic loss of lives like the yeshiva boys in Mercaz HaRav, the rampant anti-Semitism all over the world, the assimilation that's eating away at our numbers as well as the number of teenagers "off the derech" (path of Torah) and young singles who can't find their mates, our government's ineptness, and worse of all, the threat of physical annihilation by Iran. Her message was to always remember that even when the situation seems hopeless, we have to remember yitzias Mitzraim, the redemption from Egypt, and know that all is in Hashem's hands. Pretty powerful stuff.

I had a lot of fun the past couple of weeks cleaning for Pesach in between working at my new job. I really enjoy working at my new job. Tefilla, the director, wants me full time after Pesach but I told her I was only interested in three days a week. I might work four; David wants me to work as much as I can because we tend to overspend our budget. I'm a little curious how Tefilla plans to work this out. There's already four people and four desks (the fourth person shares an office with Tefilla), so I don't know where I'd work, but Tefilla was adamant that she would work it out. I suspect she's going to try to talk me into some fundraising, and I absolutely don't want to do that. Give me computer work, even if it's inputting donations in the database, and I'll be happy, but I HATE asking people for money.

So I worked five days the first week, and last week just Sunday and Monday so I could finish cleaning and start cooking. All the cleaning was finished by Tuesday night, including covering all the counter tops and tables - first time I've ever been able to finish so early. I didn't get to do a lot of spring cleaning which I usually do; things like washing the windows and cleaning out drawers, but you have to remember this is a tiny house and we don't have kids here so I got done what I needed to. Plus I helped our friend who just had the baby. I did all her Pesach grocery shopping for her and also helped in her kitchen a little. Thank G-d she had some teenage girls who cleaned her frig and did some other cleaning for her.

It was really fun the last few days before the holiday started. Everywhere on the yishuv were people outside cleaning windows and vacuuming out cars and kids scrubbing lawn furniture or toys. I think they actually emptied out the dumpsters all over the yishuv every single day. First I'd see them overflowing and an hour later they'd be empty again.

David took off all of Chol Hamoed. He really needs this vacation. The only bad thing is - EVERYONE takes off this week, so going anywhere will be very crowded. He basically just wants to veg out in his computer/Beit Medrash room, but we'll do some sightseeing. And one night we'll have a BBQ with Shaya and Miryam; we have some rib steaks in the freezer that are calling our names.

Today we had the last seuda (festive meal) with Penina and Pinchus and their kids. Miryam and Shaya were already there; they'd walked down for the seder the night before and spent the night. After lunch we women played mah jongg on our new 2008 cards. Kind of interesting how we got our cards. We ordered them back in January by sending our checks to Shifra in St. Louis. She added them to the orders from my old mahj group. The cards arrived in St. Louis in the mail about three weeks ago. It turned out that Avi from Nefesh B'Nefesh was in St. Louis to speak to prospective olim, and he stayed at Shifra and Albert's house. It was someone who had lived around the corner from us in Ramat Beit Shemesh, so Shifra gave the cards to Avi to bring to Israel. David had the great idea to ask Avi to take them work and give them to Casriel, another guy who works there who lives on our yishuv. And Casriel delivered them to my door. Is it a small world or what? We're hoping to play over Chol Hamoed as well.

David went to bed half an hour ago, and my mind is kind of mushy by now (it's almost midnight). Later, friends!