Ethan Update II
Eitan Halevy
archives with this. Enjoy!
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I. FLAT-HUNTING, SHABBAT IN THE CITY, ETC.
We found the apartment on a website called flat-hunting.com. A sort
of open web-forum for people to post listings and responses. By a
miraculous stroke of luck we got hooked up with a beautiful place in a
great location, a dream landlord, and a good price to-boot! We staid
there for the first time over this last Shabbat and had a great time.
We easily walked to the Kotel (Western Wall) for services Friday night
and Saturday morning, and we feasted all our meals on goodies from
Macane Yehuda (the Jewish market), which is possibly the only fully
kosher, large, open-air market in the world (though there may be a few
others in Israel, I'm not sure). It's amazing to be there on Friday
afternoon, with thousands of people bustling around buying groceries
for Shabbat. So many frum(very religious) looking Jews bargaining
loudly in Hebrew, buying food for ridiculously low prices, and every
few minutes--as the market approaches closing time for Shabbat
(officially 3pm, but unofficially precisely 3:34pm!) the vendors shout
out a new price, lower than the last. If you're there at the right
moment, you can get a kilo of mouth watering, fresh-baked rugelah for 2
shekels (a little under 50 cents).
II. LIFE, DEATH, ETC.
My Bubbie (Esther Strauss) died about ten days ago. It was a bit of a
relief, since she'd been suffering for a long time, but it still hurts,
just not as sharply as it might have. I lit a Yarzheit(memorial)
candle for her, read some psalms, and went about my business with a
heavy heart. I believe the tradition is not to shave for ten days
(when mourning), so I haven't. I think I might just let it grow for a
while...
III. VISITORS
My cousin, Danny Levy, will be staying with me this Shabbat. It's
exciting to have a guest in the new apartment. We even have a
roll-away bed! If anyone wants to spend a few days in Jerusalem and
needs a place to stay just drop me a line!
IV. ULPAN, SCHOOL & SUCH...
The first ulpan ended, though I'm not sure how I did on the final, but
it hardly matters. The second ulpan has been going for about a week
now and I'm having a good time. There seems to be a pattern in how
they choose teachers. There are two teachers for each ulpan, who split
the 5 hour day of teaching however they want to--pretty much
arbitrarily as far as I can tell, and changing from day-to-day. They
give you one teacher who goes really fast, pushes you, and has a little
bit of a mean edge to her, and another who's more gentle and soothing.
In other words, it's good cop, bad cop. It seems to work well; the
first one pounds it into us, and the second one sooths our mental
wounds, going over things and making sure we understand. This was the
pattern in the last session as well, but I didn't realize it was a
common occurrence!
We'll be meeting with our academic advisors in a few days to discuss
our curriculum for the Fall semester. I'm hoping to take a class in
Modern Jewish Thought, one on Israeli Economics, and a class on the
Talmud, in addition to Hebrew. I might try to take a special program
(Mechina--for new immigrants) to take twice as much Hebrew in the same
time, and take one fewer of the other classes. We'll see how it works
out.
V. WHEN WILL THIS E-MAIL END!
Please write back! There's nothing worse than throwing massive
E-mails into the black hole of cyber-space. Well...there are things
that are worse, but I definitely don't like it! Take THAT, rhetoric!
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B'shalom,
-Ethan (איתן)