24 Hours in Israel

So this is a story about why too much of a good thing is NOT always good. It’s also a story about why last Thursday-Friday was one of the longest days of my life. To tell it, I’ll have to back up a bit to Wednesday night. After a short meeting, our madricha Sarah asked about 10 of us to stay behind. She told us that we had been selected for a special volunteer opportunity the next day, where we would be working with officers in the IDF and delivering Rosh Hashanah care packages to local Holocaust survivors, many of whom were below the poverty line. Well, all of us were in agreement on two things: First, that it was a great opportunity, and second, that the timing could not have been worse. You see, this would give us a schedule of being in ulpan from 8-1, then volunteering from 3-10. What you don’t know yet is that we were all going to Jerusalem at 1:00 in the morning for a educational session on slichot, morning services. While everyone else would be sleeping and resting up for the all-nighter ahead of us, we would be volunteering with this program. Now, none of us were going to turn this chance down just so we could sleep a few more hours, so we all signed on to go. And just like you’d expect – it was one of the more interesting afternoons we’ve had yet.

Now, we had done a project like this before – a few weeks ago we delivered care packages to the needy with local volunteers. However, the people we were working with spoke very little English, we really just dropped the boxes off and left, and the entire thing felt very rushed. This time, we were working with officers who spoke fairly good English. Here are the two I was working with:



Rather than drop and run, we stayed and spoke with the couple of houses we delivered to. They didn’t speak much English, but the stories they told were incredible. One man told us about how he served in the IDF in the 1950s, but had to leave the service to care for his sick wife. Another woman told us about how she wanted to change her first name, and when she spoke to her father about it, he told her that she was named for her grandmother who had perished in the Holocaust and that her name was the only thing he had left from his family. Just the kindness these people showed to us, taking us into their homes, and telling us some of their amazing stories. The woman actually wrote a letter to the organizers of the project, praising the kindness of the “strong, beautiful” Israeli soldiers and the American volunteer with the “white teeth”. (I’m not kidding. They read that to the entire group. You can’t make this stuff up.) We spent some time afterwards having dinner with the soldiers and organizers, followed by a video about the IDF. Go figure, it was in Hebrew, so I just watched the admittedly cool images and tried to catch some of the words. Finally, they gave each of us a certificate from the mayor (Ashkelon is very big into volunteering these days) and a little plaque they put together for us, and we headed back to Kalanit to pack.

Now, I wish I could tell you all about our adventures in Jerusalem at night, and how we wandered the city and were enlightened about the world around us. Truth is, I barely remember it. That’s how tired I was. Now, I’m sure it would have been a great experience if the timing on this hadn’t been so bad. Basically, after we got back at 10, we packed our things for the weekend, waited until 1, and boarded a bus for Jerusalem. When we arrived, already pretty tired, we found out that we were going to be sitting in a room talking for 2 hours. It wasn’t till after that that we finally went to walk around the city and tried to sit in on some morning services to see what it was like. Oh wait – turns out people don’t like their prayers to be a spectator sport. We got kicked out of the first congregation we went into, and happened to run into a rabbi who explained to us why they didn’t want us watching, and how Judaism is supposed to be participatory, not something to be observed. Which was really cool and interesting and all, just not quite what we were looking for. Anyhow, next thing I really remember we stumbled onto a bakery that had just opened, ate some rugula, and proceeded to a park for breakfast. After that, we hopped on a bus, drove to Tel Aviv, and jumped on another bus headed for Yokneam at 8:00 AM… 24 hours after ulpan had started my day.

So the volunteering and all-nighter would have been really fantastic in their own rights, but at the end of the day (or morning, as it was), the fact that we were doing this back to back really stunted what I would have gotten out of it. So remember, sometimes having so many great things can hurt the overall impact it should be having.

Now, you ask, why was I headed for Yokneam? Ah, my friends… that is a story for another day.

Some random thoughts:

-Rams suck.

-I should probably elaborate on that more… no, Rams just suck.

-A little concerned about the Cardinals showing against the NL East last week, but I think we’ll be fine. Big debate these days is on the NL Cy Young: I’ll be a homer here, so it’s one of our two aces for me. I’ve been switching back and forth between Wainwright and Carpenter, but I think the deciding factor (which no one outside of St. Louis knows about) is that Carp is actually responsible for Waino’s success this year, seeing as he was the one who corrected his arm movement back in May. On top of that, his pure leadership and absolute dominance makes him, to me, this year’s Cy winner.

-If you haven’t seen the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother, STOP READING AND SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH. SPOILERS AHEAD. SERIOUSLY. LAST WARNING. I really enjoyed this episode, and you could tell how much time the writers put into this. The Barney-Robin scenes were pitch-perfect (Interesting dynamic this season: How will Ted deal with being the only single person in the group?), but the scenes with Ted teaching were priceless. That was some of the most painfully awkward humor this show’s had in a while, and the scene with him switching back and forth with what to have the class call him was legen – wait for it – dary. I also liked the bait-and-switch they pulled with the mother – so she was in the class that he was teaching by mistake, not actually his student? Well done, writers. Good start to the season.

-And finally, just because, I leave you with the philosophy of the Governator.