September 2008 Archives

Today marks the third week that I have been away from my home in Los Angeles. I think it is safe to say that these weeks have been the most exciting and most hectic weeks of my life thus far. In three weeks I have been in two countries, one of which I am calling home for the next nine months. Israel, the home of the Jewish people, is now where I call home in every sense of the word. It is my homeland, and where I reside. I have always thought of Israel as my home away from home, a place I wish to visit frequently and support, but now it is truly my home. I am no longer just an American tourist.  I buy my groceries at Israeli supermarkets, take Israeli busses, volunteer at Israeli after school clubs. I am making a life for myself here, not just a two week vacation.

            However, I didn't begin my overseas endeavors in Israel. My Young Judaea adventure began before I came to the holy land. I am a participant on Olami 3: Sephardic Judaism and Zionism, a travel program  throughout my time on Year Course. The first trip was to Spain, and throughout the year I will also be visiting the Netherlands, Turkey, and Greece. Our first trip to Spain was absolutely incredible. The trip involved both the normal travel, touristy sights and an intensive Jewish history curriculum. We started our adventures in Barcelona, then traveled through Madrid and Cordoba. We immersed ourselves in both Spanish history and modern Spanish culture. In one week, we went to Jewish history museums, Maimonedes' old synagogue, either a flamenco show or a soccer game, and different Spanish art museums, seeing the works of Gaudi and Picasso. Spain itself is just a gorgeous country, it has a typical beautiful European feel with its own latin flavor, I just love it. The entire week is a bit of a blur two weeks later, but I can tell you that my decision to add on the Olami component of Year Course has already proven to be a great one. Living in Israel this year is incredible and laden with history, but I am already familiar with a lot of the history of the state of Israel and its cities. However, traveling to Sephardic countries and learning about Sephardic Judaism is something that I have never done, and an aspect of Jewish history I have yet to cover in all my years of Jewish education. It is an unconventional learning technique, and I am always drawn to all things unconventional. Also, in seven short days, my Olami group grew incredibly close. My Year Course Olami group consists of kids from all three Year Course sections, and many of the different specialty tracks. It gave us all friends in Israel to visit all over the country before we even get there.

            On the morning of September 1, Year Course officially began. A bus dropped us off in our new home of Bat Yam, and I must say, at first sight, I was a little hesitant. Bat Yam is not a brand new, gorgeously styled city, but then again, I would not be here for Community Volunteering if it was. I arrived at my new home before any of my roommates, awkwardly chose my bed, and passed out due to sheer exhaustion and jet lag that had accumulated over the last week of traveling and no sleep. I woke up to the sound of suitcases rolling up the stairs, jumped out of bed, and met my new roommates. As I write this, I realize how long ago this all seems. Although it may have actually only been two weeks ago, I feel so at home in Bat Yam. I have my routine down, and I am loving it. I volunteer at Bait Noar Kadima, or Youth House "Kadima," which translates to forward. It is an after school club for kids to do their homework, practice some academic skills, and just hang out and have fun activities. The majority of kids that go there are Ethiopian immigrants, which is so cool because coming from Los Angeles, I have met very few Ethiopian Jews. Working there can be challenging, but that is also just the nature of working with 5^th and 6^th grade kids at time. That's not to say I don't enjoy it. I genuinely love working with kids, and working with Israeli kids is even more fulfilling. I also am taking Ulpan classes, which is so important to me, because one of my goals is to come home from this year fluent. Aside from the basic schedule stuff, I am truly just loving my time here. I have made incredible friends, taken cool tiyulim (trips), and began to really get the hang of this "living independently" thing.  More to come next month, I can hardly wait to see what I am up to!

**Gaby Grossman is a native of Los Angeles, California. She recently graduated Shalhevet High School, and will be attending Boston University in the fall as a double major In Political Science and Print Journalism. Her hobbies include watching and critiquing movies, going to the beach and relaxing, coming up with original new catch phrases, and incessantly quoting The Office and Arrested Development.

My new family and I made our way down the cracked sidewalks of Bat Yam, heading towards our new home. Our madricha (counselor) was telling us about our apartment. "It's on the fourth floor," she admitted. My longtime friend and now roommate Jonathan Kunis blurted out, "That's going to be so annoying to get to on Shabbat when we can't take the elevator." She paused and stared. "It's going to be so annoying every day," she told him, "You don't have an elevator."

            Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore. (Side note: One of the things I've learned here is that the actual Dorothy on Shalem does not appreciate Oz jokes.)

            As if that wasn't enough to prove our spoiled-American-ness to us, the next few days of excruciating heat, broken air conditioners and showers, tired feet and strange food would certainly do the trick.

            Fast forward a few more days and we're finally starting our volunteering assignments. I will be working at a local elementary school and I was cautiously excited. I get to the school and am bombarded by a thousand 6^th graders asking a thousand questions in Hebrew. I can speak some Hebrew and I'm always looking to improve so I decided to engage them.

They wanted to know how old I was, so I told them eighteen. They asked why I wasn't in the army. Uh oh, now we're getting into murkier territory. I said that I wasn't from Israel; I'm from the United States (Can you say "duh?") They were confused. "There's no army in the U.S.?" I explained that there was a military, but I didn't have to go to it. Their next question left me completely flabbergasted. "So there aren't wars in America?" All I could muster out was "There are, but it isn't the same as Israel."

Never have I spoken truer words. Israel is not the same as the United States. This goes for the political situation, and so much more. I think that is what has made the last two weeks here so interesting and fun. Every single detail of our cultures is different. Our ketchup is their hummus. My madrichim and I are still struggling to understand each other's worlds. This cultural barrier reaches so much further than merely language. Slowly but surely though, we are beginning to "get it."

I love my life back in the states, but I was there for eighteen years, which is no short time. A friend and I recently realized that by the end of our year here we will have spent over 5% of our lives in Israel. That may not seem like a big deal, but for a kid who spent his entire life in the same small town in New Jersey, it is.

I had been to Israel before, but never like this. The family vacations that I went on here did not involve much travel and mostly consisted of spending time with family members who spoke fluent English. I was here two years ago for a summer teen tour type of thing, but our counselors did most of the legwork for us. If we needed to speak to a store owner, they would be our translators. Not so on Year Course.

My roommates and I found ourselves in a predicament the first time we did our grocery shopping. You see, we had not thought of how to get all of our groceries home. We ran into our madrich and asked him to speak to a cab driver for us. His response? No way. You do it. We did and, trust me, talking to cabbies in broken Hebrew aint easy.

We are DEFINITELY not in Kansas anymore. We have completely left our comfort zones. Nothing here is going to be easy. Volunteering has been and will continue to be a challenge. Our ulpan is difficult. Taking the bus and dealing with our neighbors is hard work. But this is what we signed up for. The way I see it, college would have been easy; this is not. All these challenges though are what are helping us discover what this wonderful country has to offer.

I absolutely love learning about this whole new world and can't wait to see what the coming months hold. Even if we do have to walk up four flights of stairs every day.

Arriving in Israel on September 1^st was a lot like visiting a distant family member for the first time. I can just imagine the hustle and bustle of the third cousin twice removed as they endeavor to make you feel welcome. So it was with my introduction to Year Course. Everyone I met was friendly and all Year Course administrators and counselors tried to make me comfortable. But, just as a third cousin can never immediately feel like family, my new life in Israel, over 5,000 miles from my much beloved abode in the United States, couldn't have immediately felt like home.

Fortunately, things inevitably got easier. That night I met my roommates and the rest of the people on the Sports Track with me. I met the tzofim, the Israeli scouts who are taking a year off before their mandatory army service to do community service in Holon and Bat Yam and live with the chanichim on Year Course. I met Abby Gruber, my madrichim for the next three months. I got an idea of what I would be doing and how I would be doing it. And I got unpacked.

So it was, that first night in town, lounging on the couches in my slightly small and dingy apartment in Bat Yam with my four other roommates, eating room temperature pizza, and chatting, I finally relaxed a little.

The next day the group immediately jumped into Orientation activity. And, you know, it was the proverbial "blah blah blah." No offense.

So that means the next activity of note wasn't until Wednesday Night when all of Section 2 took a bus to Yaar Bereshit, an outdoor training camp with a "Bedouin tent" (what we would call a pavilion) to sleep in, a climbing wall, and various team elements to complete. We rotated through the different outdoor training stations in groups, so I did all of these activities with the Sports Track. It was fun, but you know boys when they get together to do physical activity; they inevitably brag and show off. Plus, the fact that all these guys were on Sports Track and had been labeled as jocks exacerbated the situation a bit. So, we were forced to run around yelling "click clack," the Sports Track motto, and display our supposed athletic prowess. I hurt the team a little, seeing as it took me almost four minutes to climb up the wall that was taking everybody else 45 seconds to ascend.

After dinner, we had free time to get to know other people on Section 2. It was a little daunting, considering there were over 200 kids and I am not as outgoing as I would like to be. Nevertheless, it's impossible to get a big group of teenagers together with little to no adult supervision and not have fun.

The next day all of Section 2 traveled to Ein Gedi for a gibbush tiyul, a bonding hike- also known as a painful walk in 100-degree heat. Suffering is the best way to unite a group. Anyway, we hiked up the mountains a ways, stopped at a spring to cool off and splash around a little, then continued up to a waterfall. I guess at this point I'm supposed to say it was really wonderful and gush about Israel's beauty. Unfortunately, all I could think was that the Colorado Rockies are just as nice and 20 degrees cooler. This would be an appropriate time to explain that the heat has been the hardest thing for me to adjust to here in Israel and that I am not actually as cynical as I seem.

There have been other difficult transitions though. Learning how to use the public transportation was a bit of a challenge, especially because I don't speak Hebrew. Then, just as I thought I had the hang of it, I had to get used to not having public transportation during Shabbat. Then, of course, there is the big issue of living on my own, without my family, which was surprisingly easy in some ways but then cripplingly difficult in others. Cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping I've got down pat. But I miss people way more than I thought I would. And I don't have a mother and father to blame things on anymore. Finally, there are some of those more luxurious comforts, such as Rockband, the Xbox 360 game, which I am basically obsessed with and miss terribly.

Other than that, the transition to life in Israel and in Bat Yam has been fun, entertaining, occasionally embarrassing, and altogether enriching. I've got my volunteer placement coaching little fourth graders soccer in the afternoons, I've got my gym membership to the very nice and expansive country club in Holon, a perk that comes with the Sports Track, and I've got my Hebrew Ulpan placement in Level 3 of 6. I'm ready to go and excited to be here on the Young Judea Year Course.