long time no post...

It appears that I have not posted since September 7. For this I apologize. I really am very sorry, but I have been so amazingly busy. There were some days where it was slightly on the edge of possibility that I might blog, but I ended up taking a nap or reading or going for a swim or writing a college paper or some other such more creative use of my 45 minutes. I am going to try to be as concise as possible about any particular thing that I did, and if you wanna know more, just email me talinuxactly@gmail.com.

On 8/9 (we read the date backwards here), we had a charity project called "Table to Table" or m'shulchan l'shulchan. We went to onion fields and picked over 850 kilos of onions to donate to charity. I almost envy those poor people, because those were really tasty onions. For services we went to kol hanishama, the premier progressive (reform) temple in Israel. My friend David plans on being a rabbi in the future, and is at the moment trying to tackle how his Judaism looks and feels. He was hoping that kol hanishama would be amazing, and he was really excited about it. He was really turned away by it thought because intelectually/spiritually he is a litvak (this means that he does not believe in religious hocus pocus- just cold hard rational approach to religion) and kol hanishamah is spiritually hasidic (the opposite).

On 11/9, we went on tiyul to a whole slew of places: Sataf, Har Adar, and the Tayellet. Sataf was an ancient Israelite village (moshav) that used terrace farming and had two types of agriculture (spring and ba'al [dependend on the rain god]). We went inside the caves of the springs, and learned A LOT. Har Adar was nothing special. The Tayellet is a promenade that overlooks Jerusalem old and new. We learned there that the biblical city of Jerusalem is not in fact the old city that we know and love but what is now an arab village. On that note, the next day, we went to the ancient city of David. We explored some nuances of the bible there regarding the capture of Jerusalem from the Jebusites and other interesting things. We also explored Hezekiah's tunnel (the Gichon spring which watered ancient Jerusalem was deferred from the pool that it usually went to and was led into a tunnel that wound for over 500 meters [this is solid rock mind you] into a different pool so that if Jerusalem was besieged, they would not capitulate because of lack of water). That was also a lot of fun, and for future reference, I always try to be right next to Reuven (my j-hist teacher) during these tiyulim so as to absorb his knowledge. So far so good. The first tiyul of this paragraph took the whole day while the second one was only in the morning and we came back for general studies.

Skipping now to the 14th, we had a study session for the first j-hist exam. It was on the entire bible period minus the second temple times. The exam was the next day, and we were given from 8:30 to 12:45 to complete it (it was supposed to be a tough test apparently). I completed it at about 9:45. All of the questions were short answer and you didnt have to answer with Reuven's opinions. If you had an opinion that you could back up as well as he backed his up it was still correct. There was also an essay: Write about any topic of interest in the bible. My essay was about the Babylonian influence on the early stories of the Torah (I was flying by the seat of my pants. He had told us that that was the essay prompt, and I hadnt thought of anything. When I got to the essay, I had an epiphone and all of this evidence was suddenly overflowing from my head). We also had to hand in a homework essay on the topic of "What is the author of the book of Jonah trying to show his audience?" We got the grades for all that back today (27/9) and of course I got 100% on the test and an A on the Jonah paper. Pretty proud of myself...Reuven seems to have noticed this affinity, and often suggests "Oh, Tal you could write your doctorate on this." By my count, I have 43.628 doctorates to write...

Later on the 15, we did another tzedakah project (we do them on most Fridays). This time we went to an old folks home and sang shabbat songs to them and gave them roses and shannah tova (literally, good year) cards. It was really very awkward because many of these venerable people were senile or deaf or parapalegic or other things. Sometimes they were pretty healthy but then they didnt speak languages that we understood. No one knew English, and some knew Russian, French, Spanish or Hebrew. Afterwards, David and I went with Walter Zanger (he deserves an entire entry all to himself) to Ein Karem where we stayed with him for Shabat. He had many guest over for shabat dinner and during shabbat day, many guests came through just to say "hi" (most often unannounced). One such guest was an Eitan Chamberlin. He is currently trying to publish a book by the name of Ikkibu. It is much like Harry Potter but with Babylonian and Sumerian mythology. I've read the first three chapters, and it is simply incredible. Don't be surprised if it replaces Harry Potter. The next day David and I went off through Ein Karem and did some 'sploring (much like 'splodey but with a ring instead of a dey). We went to knisyyah yochanan ba'harim (birthplace of John the Baptist, now with a church/monastery over it), ein miriam (mary's spring), and knisyyah haorcheut (church of the visitation). If my Latin was better, I would be able to tell you what the last one actually is, but I know it has a burial crypt, a HUGE sanctuary, a tabernacle, and some amazing artwork. For lunch, David and I went to the Pundak Cafe (pundak means inn). We had an absolutely amazing pizza with some coke (coke is a shabat ritual for David. If he doesnt get coke on shabat, he becomes very grumpy so I've made sure that it can happen every shabat). Somewhere during this action packed shabat, David and I watched Serenity with hebrew subtitles, pausing every so often to check the meaning of a word.

19/9 we had no 5th period and went to the Israel museum to learn about Roman Jerusalem (there is a HUGE model of her with lots and lots of detail and you can walk around [its not to scale] so as to tour in the first century CE). The next day we went back to the Israel museum to learn about the dead sea scolls and the writing of different alphabets (a very popular subject in j-hist). We also went to visit a Herodian mansion underneath the Jewish quarter of the old city of Jerusalem. Also Spectactularifous.

I will continue the rest of your update after dinner.