Blog/October 2008/Oct 17th

October 17th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

The festival of Sukkot began this week. I mentioned last week that everyone started building their sukkot. The building spree continued until the very last minute, with hammering and drilling audible until just before sundown Monday. Our sukkah, being a pre-fab, was finished within two hours of starting; so we were well rested by the time the holiday began. Only we didn't sufficiently consider the wind which blows toward our house from Jerusalem -- every afternoon -- and that stormy weather was in the forecast.

The holiday itself was actually not windy at all -- in fact, the weather was a bit stagnant. That led to there being an over-abundance of some sort of fruit-fly in our sukkah on the first night, which was a bit irritating (and also a bit problematic: we had to keep looking for flies in the food and make sure there weren't any).

On the second and third "intermediate days" of the festival, I took off from work and we drove my mother-in-law around Israel: up the Jordan valley to Beit Shean, to Tiberias and then to the upper-Galilee where one of her brothers lives. The second day we went to Netanya to see the coast (I didn't know there was such a nice beach there, so it was educational for me as well).

On returning the second day, we found the "schach" (thatching) of the sukkah was half blown-off. So I went to work finding a suitable fastening method which did not run afoul of the halachah. We'll see if it holds up over shabbat...

We went to the shuq to get fish and other things for shabbat. As we were waiting at the fishmonger, an older fellow in front of us started arguing with the vendor about the price of the fish. The vendor told him if he could find that kind of fish for the price he was asking, he would give him four cases of fish. Then the older fellow started taking fish off the scale, and putting others on... in the meantime, someone on the other side of Esther had had enough of the first guy, and yelled at him to leave the merchant alone -- and either buy fish or get out of there. To which the first guy yelled back, "Just who do you think you are!?!". From there the voices got louder and more energetic, and I pulled Esther away from the two disputants. Fortunately, they broke off their engagement and the situation calmed down. And who said shopping in the shuq wasn't exciting?

Before that I had to pick up a package from the post-office. Unlike in the USA, the post office here will not deliver packages to homes -- instead, they leave a notice in the mail box for you to come get the package from them. We went to the post office, and were there over an hour (!) waiting for our turn. But the good thing is you get to meet all sorts of people while waiting in line. Everyone is complaining about the abysmal service (to each other, but not to someone in charge who might be able to do something about the service), so everyone feels a sort of common bond. Luckily, they were able to actually find my package quickly when my turn came (no, that's not a given).

Anyway, I have to finish preparing for shabbat, so...

Until next week,
Shabbat shalom!

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