Blog/November 2007/November 23rd

November 23rd (See this week's devar torah)
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Hello, again!

The rains started up this week in earnest - heavy rain, with hail in the north of the country and thunderstorms all around. This is a good thing; when you live in the Land of Israel you realize why our Sages established prayers for rain at certain points in the year. The rain in its proper time is a blessing - not only because people want a change in the weather, but because the crops need it. So we say prayers for rain, and give thanks when the rain appears.

As I was driving to work in the morning during the first rainy day, the most incredibly beautiful rainbow appeared. That's what you get for living in a sunny place! I noticed that I seemed to be the only driver who saw the rainbow - everyone else was too absorbed in listening to the news, or the iPod, or looking directly in front of him. I suppose there's a lesson in there somewhere...

The problem with the rain is that it seems to have shorted out some circuit in the house, so the power went out at 11pm. It appears the owners didn't use an actual electrician to add subpanels to the house - a short in any circuit causes the main power breaker to flip, plunging the entire house into darkness instead of just disconnecting the offending circuit. This is the second time I've seen this sort of thing in this place. <grrr>

Both my girls were sick this week with sore throats and "general malaise". So Sarah actually stayed home from school two days, and Daniela came home for a bit to get Mama's chicken soup and TLC. B"H, they're both fine now.

This last shabbat we attended the bar-mitsvah of the son of the very good friend we've mentioned in earlier letters. The one who's a friend of our friend Maria from Bellevue. It turns out Maria was also there, so we got to visit with her as well and catch up on 'local news'. The boy read the entire parasha (toldot) very well, as well as the haftarah... his voice was gone after that.

News flash: our solar-powered clothes-dryer doesn't work well when it's raining. Hard to believe, considering all the thermonuclear power involved, that some of it doesn't penetrate to our house - but true nonetheless. So we went to get an indoors drying rack; but the rains were so strong and the wind fierce enough that water came into the laundry room and wet the drying clothes, so they ended up even wetter than they came out of the washing machine.

This week was a pretty good one for me at work - I managed to accomplish several important goals, so I'm feeling a bit more relaxed, and my boss is happy (I think). Esther finished the childbirth portion of her doula class, but I has some more things to do before she gets an official status of doula.

Sarah is starting to do much better in school. Partly because she's understanding more of what's being said, and partly because the catch-up lessons she's been taking are actually catching her up. It's very difficult to make the transition from an easy-going school where academic studies are not very serious, to a school where they expect measurable results on standardized tests. The Israeli educational system is quite different from the American, so adding that to the language barrier makes the difficulty impressive. I'm proud of Sarah for doing as well as she has done, and know she will be able to do even better.

We are starting to look in earnest for a place to move to - we've become fed-up with the situation (with the landlords, neighbors, the house itself, the neighborhood...). So we took a look Thursday night at a place, which was well-kept but a bit on the small side. The thing that was interesting about it was it had "potential". The agent kept telling us we had the "option" to "add a room here" or "add an attic-room", etc. I asked him if these "options" were included in the sales price, to which he simply smiled... I guess he thought I was joking. Anyway, the real-estate market here is boiling-hot, due mostly to the influx of American and French immigrants who don't want to spend Jerusalem prices but want to be close to Jerusalem.

Thursday was Thanksgiving (in the US, that is). I wasn't even aware that it was coming up until my daughters started to make a big deal about how T-day was coming and we weren't even going to have a festive meal like we used to. I tried explaining that it's not a holiday here at all. I tried explaining that I don't get off that day, so I can't cook like we had been used. I tried explaining that we hadn't seen whole turkey for sale here at all. None of it availed... so we ended up having a T-day meal anyway (and I have to say, it turned our very well). Daniela brought a friend from school, and we had a modest meal - including cranberry sauce which had (somehow) ended up in our shipment.

This shabbat we're invited to someone's house for lunch. We don't know the people, they're yet other friends of our friend Maria. I don't know how many of us will show up there, since my daughters don't seem to want to budge from the house on shabbat. We'll see...

Next Friday Esther's father arrives for a one-month visit. He hasn't been here for over twenty years, so he's in for a bit of a shock.

Until next week,
shabbat shalom!