Eitan Update, 7 Cheshvan 5768, A Change of Season

[Eitan Levy]

בס"ד, ז' בחשון, התשס"ח
BS"D, 7 Cheshvan 5768

EITAN UPDATE: A Change of Season

So, it's almost Shabbat, finally. It's been a long week, not in the
sense in which time goes slowly from suffering, but in the sense it
just feels long because so much has happened. Yeshivah days are
long, and new worlds are opened, delved into, set against one-
another, etc., constantly. The drama, in that sense, merely builds
and builds until you finally break for Shabbat late Thursday night.

On the other hand there have also been a lot of changes around here
for one week. In the first two days of the week, of Winter Zman, we
went from an all English speaking yeshivah to a half Israeli
yeshivah. My classes switched to being sometimes in Hebrew.
Chevrutahs were arranged and changed, the atmosphere somehow
shifted. It's a positive change, just one I wasn't expecting. At
least now my Hebrew should improve since I'll be speaking/listening
to it about half the time. We also had the first rain and started
praying, just last night, for more of it. Watching a lighting storm
play out over the next hill-top as it rolled in over the wadi in
between and creepingly brought the rains closer was thrilling, as was
saying blessings for lighting and thunder and feeling a drizzling
rain startling your senses with cool pokes on exposed skin, awakening
as the lightning flashed and the sun set.

And now we enter Shabbat, parshat Lech Lecha, "Go to yourself," the
Jewish, archetypal paradigm of Shakespeare's "To thine own self be
true." May we all be blessed to find our true selves, as did Avraham
Avinu, in honest relationship with the Creator of the universe.