Better than the back of the cereal box
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8/24/04:
So, I�m going to yeshiva tomorrow. Eek eek eek.
In other news, I just came back from a week at sea in the environs of Alaska. That was a pretty rockin� week. I held a starfish, walked on a glacier, slept and ate a LOT. That�s a great vacation, if you ask me. I�ve put up more photos at http://photos.yahoo.com/raffibilek - the Alaska ones are worth a browse, I think, if only to see the glacier photos, which are really swell (including the big-ass chasm). I also put up a new folder of pictures from my week at the Havurah Institute (which, if you�ve seen Desh�s pictures, you�ve seen these, but more ought to be added soon), and also, a whole lot have been added to the old July-May folder, like the somewhat sketchy one of me in a trenchcoat. Maybe I shouldn�t have mentioned that.
One other thing I wanted to mention is my latest project which is now up at http://www.geocities.com/raffibilek/songs.htm. It�s up for the enjoyment and input of all, so feedback of any kind is welcome.
That�s all the news that�s fit to print. I�m going to yeshiva tomorrow. Eek eek eek.
8/9/04:
Well, thus ends the year and another chapter in my life. Très weird to now be able to say, �Oh yeah, I did such-and-such for a year of my life.� I feel old.
I was very glad to get out of that house by the end there, though I definitely will miss my New York friends, and also the rich cultural and Jewish life that New York has to offer. But I don�t think I�ll be missing the house much, nor the people in it. Didn�t much form many strong bonds there. *Shrug.*
I left Avodah early and went to the National Havurah Institute, a weeklong gathering a really, really, really cool Jews. It�s another one of those experiences that simply cannot be adequately captured by typing this and posting it online. Sigh� I�ll do my best, and probably write this over many sittings to get in all the important stuff.
The Institute was definitely all people had said it was going to be� an amazing, warm, rich community of cool Jews who were all totally engaged in, wrestling with, swimming in their Judaism � a big lack I felt at Avodah this year. Many of the people at the Institute were very observant, many not at all. (There were basically no other �Orthodox� people like myself � the place is fundamentally egalitarian.) The community was amazing. Everyone is welcoming, everyone is friendly, everyone loves you just because you�re you the minute you walk in. That�s what everywhere should be like.
I met some really great people over the course of the week. Well, everyone I met was awesome. But some people that stand out in my mind: the really bright, friendly, interesting Jewish guy who was born an Anglican woman (we had some great conversations); the fun, energetic giggler who reminds me something of a gypsy character in her run-and-playfulness and the bandanas she would wear on her head; the deep-voiced big, goofy nerd like me who seemed like he was probably more comfortable in a suit and tie than in his own body, but somehow was this incredibly fun and funny person, and loved to sing like me, which was awesome; the soft-spoken, long-haired ingénue (of sorts) who walked and talked with a self-effacing demureness, but who clearly had some worldly experience, having spent some time in India, and, in fact, having collaborated from there to help organize the Institute; the shaggy-haired and �bearded Holy Man with an unpeggable past who wore his soul outside, like a garment; and lots more, all of whom I wish I had gotten to know better and regret the time I won�t get to spend with them. Wild.
Other great things that happened at the Institute: my morning class was a theater class. I worked on a short five-minute piece over the week and ended up performing it for the talent show Saturday night. People loved it. I got a standing ovation. I was also swarmed by friends as I came off the stage. It went over really well. Got a lot of laughs and stuff. Go me. I went to a workshop on songs and rounds� learned a lot of great new songs both there and just in the billion random song sessions that happened over the course of them week (many of which I have recorded). Lots of romping (thanks, Beth). Lots of great random conversations, and just heart-to-heart being. Great. Volunteering to sell blessing cards to raise money for the NHC, and doing a heck of a job attracting people by using my harmonica and my generally charismatic personality. Buying some great books at the bookstore for real cheap. And lots of other good stuff that has faded into mixed memories in my mind.
It was a great week. Thus ends another chapter of my life. Next starts a whole new page about the year in yeshiva. This can only get more interesting�
P.S. Pictures ranging from May to July can be seen in the newest album at http://photos.yahoo.com/raffibilek. More will be added there shortly, and another album containing pictures from Havurah Institute as well, I hope.
7/7/04:
So summer is markedly different than everything else. I�m really loving things right now. School finished at the end of June and mostly now I�m just chilling out. I had a week off, which was great, and now I teach summer school from 9-12 in the morning and that�s all. I�ve got two weeks of that, and then the rest off. And everyone else is still working nine-to-five in their crappy little offices, ha ha ha!
The end of school was nice. I went on a bunch of trips with the fourth grade, such as Ellis Island, the Museum of Jewish Heritage (Holocaust stuff). They just started learning about the Holocaust, so their teacher brought me in one day to talk to them since I know more than anyone in the school about it, having grown up soaked in Holocaust education. I came in and they just asked me questions for an hour. It�s kind of weird talking about the very basics � �What did they eat?� �Did they have cars in the concentration camps?� Things that are patently obvious to me but to someone who�s never heard of a concentration camp until that week�
Then I said goodbye to all the teachers and kids. That�s sad. I�m going to miss my kiddies, especially the first graders and kindergarteners. I figure I�ll be back in New York some time down the road, and I�ll come to visit, and they�ll all be massive, because even one year makes a huge difference when you�re 5.
Summer school is going well. This week I�m working with former second-graders and next week with former third-graders, none of whom I worked with this year, since those grades were split off in another building. I�m doing actual teaching, I�m teaching them PowerPoint � not actual slide show stuff, more just how to use pictures, artwork, fonts, backgrounds, colors, etc. � stuff you might use in Word anyway to decorate documents. It�s going really well. They�re enjoying it. I also feel a lot more confident than I did at the beginning of the year. I know I could never have handled my own class back then, but now I really feel like I know what I�m doing and I know how to manage them, even though some of them are really obnoxious kids. I�ve got 6 in this class, half of them are good kids and half are real jerks. Ah well. It�s a nice challenge. Next week I�ll have 12 (minus however many don�t show up � this week I was supposed to have 9). That could be tough.
Other than that things are pretty rockin� too. I�m dating this swell chick whom I met a little over a year ago at a Hillel conference, and we hung out in Atlanta last summer, and I haven�t seen her since then. But we get along real good, and we�re having fun together, and it�s a really great way to spend the summer, though we acknowledge that it is hopelessly confined to this summer, as I am going to yeshiva come August and she is returning to Chicago, where she goes to school. We also acknowledge the humor in the wide disparity of our frameworks � me, a nerd-cum-yeshiva boy, and she, a resident of a �queer leftist artist co-op,� in her language. It�s a good match.
To top it all off, one of my best friends and favorite people is in town for the summer, and is living remarkably close by � as does the abovementioned lady � especially considering my frequent travel to the Upper West Side. So we�ve all been hanging out in the chillest sense of the word, and it�s been� summer. I�m feeling very good. I just wish summer weren�t a season but an endpoint, perhaps. *Shrug.* Onward, ponies.
6/16/04:
Here is a picture of me in the New York Times. I was swing dancing in Lincoln Plaza dressed to the nines - the gold suit, the black fedora - the works. People snapped some photos. Here it is. :-)
6/7/04:
So, my life has been doing interesting things lately. It seems I�m becoming something of a frum hippie (which has been my intention for some time now). I hear this is very �Carlebach� (as in �Carlebach Shul,� not �Carlebach melodies� � same field, different connotation). More on this soon, I hope.
What news? The Jewish Outdoors Club retreat was a lot of fun (though no Jews in the Woods). Met a nice girl who I�ve been hanging out with since then. �Dating� is funny when you�re two frum people, but hey, call it what you want. She�s actually de-frumming, I�m en-frumming, it�s kind of funny. I also met this really cool guy who I just spent lunch with the past Shabbos, and it turns out we have a lot in common. Very cool guy, very �heart-oriented� as he put it, very �frum and fruity� as I would put it. (Take �fruity� to mean �Carelbach� or �hippie,� not �gay.�) So yeah, this past weekend was boatloads of fun, involving wild singing, ribbons sticks, capes� you�ll have to ask me for the full story. It�s too damn funny for the internet.
The previous weekend I was at Brown for Shavuot and commencement. That rocked a whole lot too. Some highlights include:
- unexpected Jews-in-the-Woods buddy dropping in at random from Connecticut
- multiple meals with Rabbi friend
- seeing all my buddies at Brown!
- staying up all night over Shavuot and skipping the classes to read Maimonides� no-nos of sex instead
- holding an impromptu class on the Ten Commandments for 3 young, bored, curious teenagers who actually ended up being really engaged and interested. (This was really, really cool.)
- mystery woman of the weekend!
- Lev�s girlfriend Sarah, who is totally awesome and who deserves him entirely, and whom he deserves entirely too
- finally having some warm and fuzzy interactions with ex-girlfriend Sarah after an extended period of rather awkward interaction
- the inverted sock, Brown�s famed alumni procession, where you get to see and walk among a whole mess of Brown alumni and graduates. Wow.
- chilling with Michael Small (�74?) over Shabbos lunch and knowing how much our community affected him
- heart-to-heart with Zach
Lots more too, but that�s a good start anyway. :-)
In other big news, I�m officially going to yeshiva in the fall. Starting August 31, 2004, I will be a student at Machon Shlomo, Har Nof, Jerusalem, Israel. Wheeee! Should be lots of fun. Day starts at 7:30 AM, ends at 10 PM. Wish me luck.
5/5/04:
So, the latest on life is that I really love my job, and I really hate my house. Well, that one�s not news I guess, but I guess the degree of it varies by day and week. Like the fact that some people generally don�t do their weekly chores. Or the fact that trash can accumulate in funny places. Or the fact that people opt not to show up to community events. Of course, I�m one of those people now, and I�m much happier for it. Gives me lots of time to go other places and meet interesting people.
Like a new buddy of mine, Neal Kaunfer, brother of Alvin Kaunfer, rabbi of a synagogue where I worked as a teacher for a brief time in Providence. Coincidental meeting on the Upper West Side, but after I ran into him twice at Shabbat events, I decided to spend Shabbat at (by) his place, and it was such a great time. He�s almost 64. You don�t meet very many older folks who are zany like me and my type of friends. Very connected to Judaism and open to ideas, emotionally in touch, etc. A singy-dancey-huggy-feely sort, which is uncommon among his age group, I find. Most of them are still in conservative synagogues (in fact, he is JTS-oradained but �grew out of it�). I guess he wised up.
But like I said, my job is going great. I�m really much better at everything than I was at the beginning of the year. I find I can handle situations a lot better, and I know how to talk to the kids, and I feel much more comfortable in what I say to them in order to guide them on the right path towards growing up, which is really what they�re here for, especially the younger ones (kindergarten and first grade to some degree too). It occurred to me that really, just by being here, just being present as a Jew and as a good guy, I show them how them should act, and even if it�s never explicitly said, they are absorbing good values and good ideas about behavior from me. So that�s a nice thought.
We finally talked about my summer assignment, to wit: I will be running three weeks of summer computer courses for the kids, so I�ve been thinking about what I�ll teach them, and I decided to do a little PowerPoint design, in large part since the older grades do PowerPoint publications in their writing classes. Should be exciting, I�ll be running the classes by myself and actually deciding what to teach, how much, how fast. I�m a little nervous since I don�t really know what the ability levels of these kids are � i.e., just how much and how fast they can learn this stuff � but I guess that�s part of the fun.
Other fun things of note include an upcoming weekend retreat with the Jewish Outdoors Club (Modern Orthodox), which I�m all excited about, and Shavuot/Brown graduation at the end of this month.
Rough life, I know.
4/13/04:
The last holiday-days of Passover are barely out and I am madly typing away on a computer to process thoughts of, about, and relating to this past weekend (and then some). It�s been a while since I�ve posted anything, so I�ll write little more too, but first � the weekend!
This weekend was another Jews in the Woods weekend. I believe I wrote about one such weekend a few months ago. This one was equally as powerful and amazing; more so. I met a huge number of incredible people, and I learned so much from all of them, and I gave lots of hugs, and I sang a whole lot, and it occurs to me that posting to a web site will never capture the amazingness of this experience. It really is a pretty life-encapsulating thing. I think maybe I�ll just launch into a little stream-of-consciousness again, because to try to describe what happened over the weekend� too much.
There were prayer services on Friday night where I remember feeling like �I haven�t prayed like this in ages�� It felt good...
I met a guy named Jeremy who I had once run into at a Teva benefit concert (Teva is a Jewish nature agency thingie). I was on my way out and he on his way in, but somehow we had wanted to talk. I said, Well, I have to go� but we�ll meet again soon. We�ll get a chance to talk sometime.� And here it was! We chilled a lot over the weekend; he ended up coming to Providence afterwards and we hung out some more. Great guy�
I discovered I�m a pretty good African dancer.
I learned so many beautiful new songs to sing. How wonderful.
Jeremy taught us how to tell time from the stars.
I slept with one of my top best friends ever in my arms.
There were pounds and pounds of quinoa. Go Passover.
There was naked hot tub, naked sauna, and naked bonfire. Go Ben Harwood.
Niggun-dance with Shachar, a person of deliberately ambiguous gender. Wow.
Love.
Hugs.
Jews.
Wow.
The context of this weekend was that I spent the last days of Passover at Brown, hanging out with the old gang, which was, as usual, a total treat. I miss my friends a lot (some of whom I assume are reading this, and should know they are being referred to) and it�s always hard to go back to New York, which I will be doing early in the morning, where there is no friendship like there is friendship here, where nobody challenges me to be the Jew I can really be, where nobody may think I�m a bigot or a sexist but loves me just the same. I love this place.
Before Brown was the seders at home. That was a little challenging, but overall I had a nice time. I love spending the time with my parents when we�re not fighting, which happens often with my mom when I try to put tape on the refrigerator, and with my dad it�s not so much fighting as much as one constant, long, drawn-out conversation about �The Matzav,� the family situation. I had the first seder with my mom, and would really have liked to have the second seder with him, but he is currently living with a non-Jewish woman whom he had become involved with prior to divorcing my mother. And as much as I�ve struggled with this (that�s a lot), I can�t see myself sitting down to a seder meal with her. So the awkward halfness continues until�. I don�t know.
I did get to spend the two holiday-days at home with my mom though. I spent the whole time reading a book called �To Be a Jewish Woman,� by Lisa Aiken, which I highly recommend, and I had a very very nice relaxing time. And I got to play minigolf with my dad and brothers before the holiday came in, and that was also grand. So you do whatcha can.
Meanwhile, I�m gearing up for yeshiva next year. I�m pretty sure at this point that I�m going, the only debate being whether I�ll go to Machon Shlomo in Jerusalem or Ohr Somayach in Monsey, NY. This is also a big struggle, because everyone says it�s better to go to Israel, but I have major reservations about going that far from my family. So I struggle. Currently leaning more towards Israel. We�ll see how things pan out.
If you�re reading this and I haven�t heard from you in a while, this is your cue to write me an e-mail. More news soon to come, I expect!
3/5/04:
This week began (or last week ended) at a celebration/gala event of Kolot Chayeinu, an amorphously Jewish minyan in Brooklyn. They proudly celebrate (as a holiday, apparently) their female rabbi�s wedding to a non-Jewish woman � to give you an idea of where they stand liberal-wise. Anyway, I�ve been wanting to check them out for a while, but I can�t quite bring myself to miss my style of Shabbat services for� you know� not that. So I went to this event, which was a lot of fun, and I met a lot of very nice people, and many encouraged me to come back to the congregation, which I�d like to do, if I can ever allow myself the indulgence of missing a more traditional Shabbat for whatever they do over there, and hope that doesn�t sound as derogatory as I think it does, because I don�t mean it to be. So much.
There were a significant number of Avodah alumni at the event, in fact, but for the most part they only talked to each other (despite my best efforts to be friendly), so I decided they suck. I ended up dancing with this old guy with white hair (he had to be around 50) who was dancing like a nutcase. You know that old maxim �Dance like nobody�s watching?� That was him. So what could I do? I joined him. We had a blast. I definitely had some interesting �So who are you?� conversations after that.
Work this week has been a little sluggish. Not doing much. Monday was so beautiful though that I did park time twice. Huzzah! One of these days, I think it might have even been last Friday, we had a romping good time at the park. Sometimes (when I let them) the children will chase me around the park, which is fun for a while, except that you have to remember that six-year olds have no sense of moderation at all. So if one kid or two kids is hanging on to me, fine, but when there�s 10 of them pulling me around, it�s too much (since I have to watch out for all of them not getting hurt at the same time). They have no concept of this. They just keep going and going and going. And I might get tired, but this is completely inconsequential to a six-year old. If HE�S not tired, why would we stop? Well, anyway, we were getting to that point again, and I was running out of options of how to stop this, so I broke away from the throng, ran to the gate, and proceeded to scale it. This is a very bad idea, because of course, they all tried to imitate me and I had to yell them down or there would soon be a lot of crying. But it was pretty cool because I was hanging on the gate a good few feet above their heads and they all thought I was right cool. Anyway, I knew I had to come down eventually, so I start coming down, and the brilliant children are yanking at my feet as I descend. And standing under me, no less. So I�m hanging on tight while yelling that they really shouldn�t do this, and finally they clear a space for me to land, so I jump off, land, get attacked again, and have to run off.
So I head to the monkey bars, hop on top, crawl to the middle, and amid all the oohing and aahing of the kids, I proclaim at the top of my lungs, �ATTENTION PLAYGROUND SUBJECTS! I AM THE KING OF THE MONKEY BARS!� Now, to be heard over the significant clamor of fifty children in the playground is quite a feat, but most of them turn around to see what�s up (me). My proclamation is met with lots of giggles. �THE RULES ARE AS FOLLOWS! RULE NUMBER ONE: YOU SHALL ATTEMPT TO CROSS THE MONKEY BARS FROM THIS SIDE TO THAT SIDE! IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?� All the kids yell �YEEESSSS!� Except a few jerks who yell �NOOOOO!� �I BELIEVE YOU MEAN, YES YOUR MAJESTY! � �Yes, your majestyyyyy!�
�RULE NUMBER TWO: YOU SHALL CROSS THE MONKEY BARS ONE AT A TIME! IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?�
�YEEESSSS!�
�I BELIEVE YOU MEAN, YES YOUR MAJESTY! �
�Yes, your majestyyyyy!�
�RULE NUMBER THREE: WHEN YOU FALL, YOU WILL CLEAR THE AREA! IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?�
�YEEESSSS!�
�I BELIEVE YOU MEAN, YES YOUR MAJESTY! �
�Yes, your majestyyyyy!�
�IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THESE RULES, YOU WILL END UP ON THE BENCH. IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?�
�Yes, your majestyyyyy!�
�GOOD! LET�S GO!�
And with that, the kids started trying oh-so-futilely to traverse the monkey bars. As soon as they�d get near me I�d pry their fingers off, or with the better ones I�d just grab their wrists and pick �em right off. Or sometimes when they stalled and tried to think of something or wait me out or if the kid just really thought they had it, I�d crawl over and start banging with my knuckles on their fingers and watch them try to suck up the pain until they had to let go and fall. It was good fun. There was a lot of cheering for the contestants (�Char-LIE! Char-LIE! Char-LIE!), as if there was ever a question of their making it across. Pa-ha! I was very sad when it was time to go.
Currently all ready for a rocking Purim on the Upper West Side. I think I have a pretty good costume. I�ve got a George W. mask and a three-cornered hat and I�m going as Haman. :-) Pictures to follow.
2/10/04:
I had a really lovely weekend this weekend. I went to the Upper West Side for Shabbat and Tu B�shvat (new year for the trees). There was a big event at the Manhattan Jewish Community Center where they had a Tu B�shvat seder (not just for Passover, folks!) and there was a couple hundred people there, and it was rockin�. I knew ten or so people in the room from random places, which was totally exciting � a rabbi I knew from a program in Israel, a friend I worked with this summer at Coleman, a guy from Heritage retreats in California, a girl I met at last weekend�s Avodah retreat with the DC Avodah contingent (oh yeah, more on that in a bit), and a couple of guys I�m starting to recognize just from being on the upper west side enough times. Cool. I also met a bunch of new people at the table I was sitting at, and they were all fairly affable folks, and that was a good time. I rather enjoyed that, because I definitely remember a time when I was far too socially inept to sit down at a table full of strangers and have a good time and to make myself well-liked too.
So Shabbat was really nice, and Sunday I went to a Jewish book fair (nothing of any use whatever), then to Chinatown for the Chinese Lunar New Year (year of the monkey!) closing ceremony. There were some dragons, a strange dancing guy who did nothing interesting at all, a really pompous singer, who even in Chinese I could tell didn�t know what he was doing (though he had a heck of a voice), and a really great kung fu demo with this girl with a sword and this little kid with some chainy thing that he whipped around and didn�t hit himself in the head with, wow cool. And also lots of confetti.
After Chinese Lunar New Year (year of the monkey!) I went to a play with a guy from work. It was by a children�s theater company, actuahlly three short musical pieces, The Sneetches and The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, and then some history of women through music thing. Each was better than the next. We thoroughly enjoyed it.
To jump back to last weekend for a minute, we had a big retreat with all the Avodah crew and the Washington, DC Avodah folk as well (there�s 15 of them, all girls). It was a really good time, a really chill Shabbat, a nice break from work (we left Thursday afternoon and took all of Friday off). We went snowshoeing Friday morning, although that didn�t work too well with my migraines. There was also a nifty talent show Saturday night, which you can actually see parts of at http://briefcase.yahoo.com/raffibilek . I did a little shtick with some poetry and singing and harmonica, and I also did a group thing with my house wherein I am Danny of famed Musical �Grease!� So it goes. After the talent show there was a swell little dance party, and I taught Elesheva of DC how to swing from scratch, which was a little challenging since she happens to be deaf, but she turned out to be really good for her first night (for any night, really) and we had a blast.
So yeah, house things are pretty much okay these days. I�m on good terms with The House again, although I�m still pretty much treating it as just a place where I happen to be living, and I�m trying not to give a damn about how awfully organized/communal we can be at times. I�m still pretty content with the way things are going as a whole (see past weekend�s events, upcoming description of job, etc.) I shop by myself nowadays, after my shopping group fell apart rather informally. One day we needed food, and I e-mailed/called people asking if they wanted this or that, since I thought I should get some stuff, and there was the usual maddening wishy-washiness, and I couldn�t get anyone to answer anything, so I went out and got some stuff I knew we need/I wanted, and I told people they could either buy into it and eat it, or not buy into it and eat it, or just not eat, or whatever, I didn�t care. And that was basically it. Since then, people have basically informally bought together sometimes and sometimes not. I don�t even bother to waste my time, as I am fortunate enough to not need the financial benefits. People eat of each others� food fairly freely (I think), which is very relieving, since I hate labeling food and having to ask everyone anytime I want a cup of milk or a bloody frickin� egg. In any case, people have been eating MY food pretty freely, which I am an advocate of, so I do the same to other people, i.e., take a few eggs here, a cup of milk there, etc., nothing major. Of course, I can imagine one or two of the girls not taking from me because they�re fatally polite and thus ruining the whole system, but so far, don�t ask, don�t tell has been going well. Wait until next update and we�ll see, right?
Also, and I hope this is as bizarre to most of you as it was to me, I had to have a talk with one of the girls about my temper. Did anyone know I have a temper? Well my yelling was very frightening to her. I mean, I know I yell, but I like to do that to blow off steam. I don�t think it�s a problem of mine to blow my top and really yell and scream at people when I�m angry at them. I just yell in general when I�m frustrated and angry, so I was yelling in the kitchen about a situation that was bothering me, and apparently she was in the basement being very afraid, and there were some other similar instances, and she was afraid to bring this up for months. So finally she mentioned that she�d rather I not yell, and then I pursued this a little farther and found out to what extent this was bothering her, and I cleared the whole thing up and explained that really I�m not a violent person and I�m not going to start abusing anyone in the house because I have a loud voice. Well, anyway, that whole scenario kind of irritated me. If anyone disagrees and thinks that I do have a temper problem, please let me know (honestly) because otherwise I�ll never be able to fix it.
The last thing I was going to say which was really one of the first things I had meant to say was that as of sometime in the middle of last week, I think I love my job. It�s not always that glorious, but I had this day whenever it was last week or the week before when I was just on all day, where I just felt like I finally knew what I was doing. And this is mid-year mind you, and I haven�t really known what I was doing until now, and still don�t a lot of the time. But all that day I really had it, and in all my dealings with the kids, every time I had to rebuke them or praise them or fix a situation or whatever it was, I really knew what to say and how to say it and why I was doing it, and it was a really great feeling, and I finally feel a little competent. It�s definitely a challenge knowing how to deal with these situations that routinely come up. I�m still working on it, but it�s nice to know it�s achievable.
Also, last week, there was one day where I got two �I love yous� and one �You�re the best.� That didn�t hurt either.
Click here to check out some pictures of the kids I work with. These are a select few of the cutest pictures from a CD I got from the kindergarten classes.
1/19/04
Well, hello again. Fancy meeting you here.
Been a long time sine my last update, I know. Well, I felt like not a whole lot really exciting happened in a while that was really postworthy. Anyway, I have a little time and I figure two months or so worth of aggregate general living is probably postworthy.
Last Wednesday my parents got divorced. The whole get ceremony and all that. Not a great day in my family history, but hey, one of those inevitable things, right? Anyway, I�m guessing it was probably worse for them than for me. So there ya have it, my parents have now joined the swelling ranks of American statistics. Jolly.
House life is no better than it used to be. There was a period of two or three weeks where I was basically avoiding the house altogether and hardly speaking to anyone there. This came after an incident on Chanukah where I came to light candles with everyone, and they said they werwe waiting for one of the other girls, and so I asked them to call me when they were ready, and when I popped my head out of my room a few minutes later, everyone was in the kitchen singing and cheering after having lit the candles. So that was a little upsetting for me and it was kind of the last straw for my trying to make the hole �community� bit work out. Since then I�m taking the approach that I�m basically living there and there happen to be 9 other people there as well. Although lately I�m back to hanging around the house a little more and talking to people again.
Work I think has gotten better with time: I feel better about my coworkers and much more accepted, certainly. I�m definitely more friendly with them, even with some of the more surly ones. And that�s nice. And also I�ve been feeling a little more important lately. I�ve had some work assigned to me that I think was important, and especially one assignment that I enjoyed doing and that I know I was the only one who could have accomplished it based on knowledge that I acquired at the beginning of the year, due to time I had on my hands etc. etc. So it�s nice to feel needed and important and all that. And my bosses are all very appreciative, and they constantly tell me how great I�m doing and wonderful my work is and so on, which I acknowledge is very lucky since many of the other Avodahniks simply don�t have such appreciative bosses, and I think it�s really a positive factor in the workplace.
So right now I�m at home in Atlanta after having popped home for the long weekend. On Friday I was just kind of thinking it would be nice to go home. So I did. Jus tran off to the airport and flew how. And again, I realize how lucky I am that my parents can afford to do that for me, and that my work is flexible enough to allow for that (my coworkers and superiors didn�t mind at all), since most of my peers really can�t do that at all. Huzzah! Anyway, it�s been a really nice weekend. I got to see both my brothers, spent a lot of time with my parents, had a really nice Shabbat, saw a really good friend Saturday night, went swing dancing (haven�t done that in far too long), made the most out of Saturday night (ask for details � this one�s too good for the updates page), and in general am very very pleased with the way the weekend went. I am about to head off to the airport, so this is where I leave things. Until the next one then, you should all e-mail me if I haven�t heard fro myou in a while. And even if I have. :-)
Oh, and also, the e-mail alert thing seems not to be working quite right. If you�re somehow reading this but didn�t get an e-mail alert (and you normally do/want to), please sign up again at the top. My apologies for the problem.
12/4/03:
Hooo-eee. I been working at the second site of my school since this week (the school is divided into two sites for various reasons this year). So this week has been pretty hectic as I try to adjust to my new space and a new schedule, which has been constantly changing over the course of the week despite my best efforts at getting it set last week before making the switch. This is in large part due to one of the teachers here who has been less than helpful in lending out her time and is borderline not nice. One of those very powerful black-woman personalities. Someone I really wish I didn�t have to butt heads with. And really, it�s not even me butting heads with her so much as it is me advocating for other people, and then for her to other people, since I don�t really care when the second graders have computers versus the third graders, I�m just trying to please everyone! It�s a little messier here at this site.
Also, I don�t have my own space at this site, there�s no actual computer lab (all the computers are in the classrooms), so I feel a little homeless and unsettled. But whaddayagonnado.
The really nice guy Furman who I didn�t see much anyway turns out to be a VERY part-time guy, so now he�s on a two-month hiatus working at a school in Portland, Oregon. So we keep in touch by phone, but I was fortunate to find another really funny guy over here, except in a totally different way. Charlie. He�s a thirtiesish black guy from the south who pronounces �with� like �wif� and has all the characteristic speech idiosyncrasies of your average stereotype, and he just cracks me up. We get along.
The kids here are pretty funny too. Very different from the other site somehow. There�s this big roly-poly kid who looks like he was snatched right out of a cartoon show. He�s just round as a tomato with these big sad porky lips and he remind sy ou of Big Fat Albert like anything. He got lost in the school Yesterday. Charlie was in hysterics. �You been he� fo� (4) mont� an� you don� know yo� way �roun� schoo� yet?� Kid shakes head with waggling lips.) �DAMN son, �bou� time you pay �tention!� Ah, great stuff. I hope nobody will take my recountings as racist in any way; I�m being pretty faithful to reality here, and I�m quite enjoying absorbing the cultural differences I�m being exposed to, but the fact of the matter is that this is how these people are talking, and this is how their lips are waggling. Take it or leave it.
Another great story was when I walked into the teacher�s room (nook?) to talk to Ms. Brett, and as I opened my mouth to say something, a third-grade girl who was in there talking to another teacher decided right then to say, �Just because I like Malik doesn�t mean I�m a pervert!� So there I am (behind her, so she�s not seeing me), Ms. Brett looking at me, at the little girl, my lips akimbo, my hand raised, ready to speak, and I just drop my head, put up a finger (�just a minute, here�) and walk silently out of the room to take a minute to recompose myself. Laughing in front of the girl, after all, I thought would be crude. Ms. Brett thought otherwise � she burst out cackling once I left the room, and I went a had a good laugh elsewhere in a corner. I tried to come back but I didn�t make it, I just signaled to Ms. Brett to meet me outside.
So that�s school. Home life is still uncertain. Can�t really tell where things are going. We had a communal dinner last night (provided by ME and one of the girls) for which we actually all showed up for the first time in my memory, and then we all stuck around to practice an act for the talent show that is happening Saturday night at this weekend�s retreat. We�re going to recreate the talent show from Dirty Dancing. I get to be Patrick Swayze. Partly because of my dancing abilities, partly because of my muscular back. So I get to yell, �Nobody puts Baby in the corner!� and stuff, and we�re going to do a half-assed version of the over-the-head-lift, and it�s going to be a riot. I�m totally looking forward to the retreat. It�s going to be a blast, and hopefully we�re going to get a chance to talk about some of them Big Issues we have to deal with too.
Speaking of which, I feel a little bit duplicitous talking about my life all the time and sort of glossing over my family life, which has always been and will always be a huge part of my life. Mostly I haven�t done so up until now because of the strange irony of describing my miserably screwed up situation while my parents constitute if not the large percentage of, than certainly my most loyal readership. Hi Mom! Hi Dad!
Anyway, for those of you who don�t know, my parents are getting divorced, and yes, it sucks horribly, and yes, I don�t like it one bit. Hurray! Another marriage joins the 60% that don�t make it. That�d be the norm, I suppose. It�s definitely a challenge to my sense of family and the values that I cherish, and it�s been bad, and it gets better, and it will probably be a long and bumpy ride. Thanksgiving was nice in that I got to see my folks, but of course my Dad thought I wasn�t spending enough time with him despite my best efforts to go out of my way to spend time with him (nor is this an attempt to convince you Dad, or clear my conscience), and probably my Mom felt a little the same way, but hey, you never know because our relationship is suffering a big block and a big challenge from this sad event.
So that�s where things are there. I�ll keep writing a little more in the future about that. It�s nice to know that friends are with me in my troubles, since I can�t call all of you up and have this same conversation with you all the time (you should send me mail with mishna in it like Elihai did!), plus maybe my parents, who are reading this RIGHT NOW, I know, weird, will gain a little bit of objective insight into my brain, and not call me up later and ask me about why I said this or what I meant by that, hint hint, because conversations shouldn�t happen online/in public, this is really just supposed to be a what�s-going-on-with-Raffi, honest.
And that�s what�s going on with Raffi.
11/20/03:
So. I�ve been delaying writing this one for a while because� because it�s a little larger than life, and I hardly know what to say to accurately convey what really needs to be conveyed. This past weekend I went on Jews in the Woods, as did a significant portion of the readership of this page, I suspect. It was intended to be a pan-denominational gathering of northeastern Jews coming together to celebrate shabbat in a cohesive community. It was a total success. It was tremendous, wonderful, awe-filled, incredible, life-altering. If you need some kind of indication as to what people thought of the weekend, you can log on to the jewsinthewoods yahoogroup page and read through all the messages that have ever been posted to it � before the event, when the discussions were important and intense; and after the event, since when the messages have overwhelmingly been catharses of emotion and love and gratitude for what we all know was seven steps above the rest of the world.
It�s hard to really get a sense for what this weekend was. I wrote a poem about it, maybe I�ll post it sometime. Poetry can do so much more for evoking emotion than a web update can. Also, if I start describing it to you in person, you�ll see me start really getting into it, and maybe I�ll leave the mundane world behind again for a bit, and then if you can feel the intensity pouring out of me, maybe you�ll have a glimpse of what came on JITW.
To give some examples of the great things that we did there� patchwork shabbat services where the different sections were led by different people (apologies to non-Jewish readers for the details here, but it�s clearly somewhat dear to me) � women led things like kabbalat shabbat, pesukei d�zimrah� I led ma�ariv (all these are different parts of the service), which in turn I made a patchwork of different prayer styles, pulling tunes and themes and devices from all different camps of Jewish thought� there were three sections to pray in, men, women, and mixed (I prayed in the men�s section)� lots of food, in fact, and more than enough vegan food� one of the more interesting things I noticed was the variety of talitot (prayer shawls) people wore, from standard white-with-blue-stripes to dark blue to color-me-rainbow� tzitzit hanging out on Orthodox folk, anti-Orthodox folk, male and female alike� Torah sessions and storytelling� LOTS of singing and dancing, both planned and spontaneous� walking in the crunchy leaves in the brisk autumn air� playing harmonica with another harmonica player and a banjo� sleeping in various random aggregations of people on the floor�waking up for the briefest of moments to catch the sun rising over the water� cuddle piles consisting of a few people sometmies and of nearly the entire group (55 or so Jews) at others� and that�s just a taste. I can�t wait until the next one.
Meanwhile, life here goes on. Coming back to the house was really tough, considering I was coming back to a community that was relatively compared with JITW. Basically, JITW was what I thought Avodah was going to be, except (almost) nobody here seems to be the least bit interested in exploring or engaging their Judaism any further, unless maybe it�s as a (very thin) backdrop for their social service work. Well, my perspective anyway. Very disappointing.
As for �the situation,� I can never tell from day to day or even hour to hour how things are here� sometime I think our community is and buried and I should just mvoe move on, and sometimes I see a glimmer of hope in an interaction I have with someone and I think maybe there�s a shot. So I don�t know where things are going. I�m still working on different things. From conversations that have happened this week I realize that everyone is having their own challenges and difficulties in the house, and I�m not sure if everyone is really as disappointed as I am, well, still people are disappointed and struggling in different ways. We�ll see where things go.
We had an interesting discussion last night (these updates tend to get written over several days); the fact that we had it was interesting, not so muc hthe discussion itself. The question came up of whether we would recommend Avodah to people for next year. Right now, I certainly wouldn�t. (If you�ve been considering it, please wait until later in the year for a full decision/recommendation from me.) I�d just say go do social justice work somewhere, because the added aspects that were supposed to come of Avodah � i.e., an active, Jewish community � are simply not here in any worthwhile quantities. Interestingly, when we were discussing it, there was a general trend of people in our house agreeing that they would not recommend it (the exception was one who, in my opinion, seems to care the least about whether we do or don�t have a community here anyway), and people in the other house saying they would. Make of that what you will.
Anyway, it�s anybody�s game right now. I�ll keep ya posted.
Oh, also, here's a picture of where I live. I been meaning to put this up for a while.
11/6/03:
What a week this was! All kinds of nutty things. Here goes�
(Note: This is a long one, due to a loooong week. If you get bored somewhere in the middle, I recommend hitting the next-to-last paragraph for a good laugh.)
Sunday morning I went to see the New York Marathon as it passed through Brooklyn. That was something to behold. I walked out of the subway station out on to Fourth Avenue just as the first runners were coming by. Sort of. These were the wheelchair marathoners. They came rolling by and everyone whooped and cheered for them. There was a slow trickle of them (I must have missed the bulk of them), then came a few marathoners on Achilles� clubs (those elbow-crutches things). It was really amazing. They had support teams around them, waving flags and stuff and watching out for them, but it was truly awe-inspiring to see these people determined to make it the 26 miles. Wow. And after them , there was one blind guy who was walking with a cane and a woman at his side, rallying for cheers and grinning, taking step after step down that 26-mile path. Truly a testament to the human spirit.
After the lesser-abled folk went by, there was a pack of the �elite� women, a chunk of (mostly African) formidable athlete just pounding away at the asphalt. Really something else. A trickle of them too straggled behind. A little later, the frontrunning men came by in similar top form; then, a few minutes later, it was just a huge sea of people as the masses of regular runners stomped through, and it kept going and going and going, and then there were people filling the street in either direction as far as the eye could see, and it was just unbelieveable. I managed to spot a friend of mine I recently met at a Jew event; he was wearing a Black Hat and tzitzit. I yelled �Run, yidden, run!� Good times.
So that was the marathon. Immediately from there I went to a bris. There was a baby boy born in the community of the shul I have been frequenting, so I took part in the simcha, and it was dandy. Lots of people. Good food. Got to hang out with some friends at the shul. It�s really nice to become part of the community. I missed being a face at a place, being recognized as someone when I come in, being greeted by people who know me, etc. The community at B�nai Jacob is really great, even if I�m not a fan of the rabbi at all.
Another thing that�s great that I�m noticing is that I can actually be friends with s now. Up until now, there was always this little bit of power/authority issue thrown in, no matter how friendly I might have been with �adults� in my life, because they were clearly real people while I was a student. Often said people were working at the very place I was studying. So inevitably there was some hierarchy there. But now I go to the synagogue and I hang out with folks who must be 35 or 40, and they�re just really cool, and we get along, and we�re friends. And it�s nifty. I spent shabbos dinner with two young married couples last Friday night. That was just scary.
The rest of the week has been ups and downs. I know in the last posting I had said things were getting better, but then for a while they weren�t. I�ve been buying food with 4 s in the house, but was starting to feel a little � a lot excluded, and the communalness of our group was pretty bad. And I was forced to do things (like buy food on my own) that didn�t help that, especially since some of us have extremely different lenses on, well, everything. So one of these days, maybe it was Tuesday, I can�t even remember, I sat us all down and talked it out a bit (I do that, I talk about things, I think it helps), and it was rocky, but it all turned out for the better, and we ironed out those issues where it was giant miscommunications (well, we tried anyway), and things ended up a lot better and we put ourselves back on the track of being a group and being communal and being happy. Which is good. A lot of our problems, again, come from me and several of them having very different styles, and not being able to bridge the communication gap that happens there.
Also, the day before that, we had had a big whole-house meeting to figure out food as a whole. I was hoping we would just go back to whole-house shopping, that being the community-minded thing to do, but I was the only one who was wholly into it and not either against or on the fence. I know, can you believe it? What happened to our community program here? Sheesh.
Wednesday night � no wait, this is also Tuesday night, I went to check out the Brooklyn Jewish Community Chorus to see if I might want to join, but it�s all old people, so I decided not really. Then I came back and was going to put in my blinds which I finally got which I�ve been trying to get for two months now and I was really excited to get and I was practically myself after I�d gone into Manhattan to get them specially measured and everything and I went to put them on my window and THEY DIDN�T FIT. AUUUGGGHH. I was so mad and frustrated, and as I blustered around my room angrily, with people trying to tell me it wasn�t such a big deal and calm me down, which was no help at all, in the process of all this, I cleverly dropped the blinds on my Right Big Toe, which began bleeding profusely, causing something of a downswing in my mood. That was the start of my Very Bad Day.
You see, the next day was the day of my big presentation (have I mentioned that before?) on SuccessMaker, the program that I�m running with all the kids in the school and that basically is my life at work. So I put a lot of work into this presentation, which I volunteered to do, so as to help out all the teachers understand what it is and what they can get out of it (a lot). See, I had to read through literally five manuals to get to the point of proficiency with it, and the idea was to get them familiar with the program so they wouldn�t have to.
Point is, on the day of this big presentation, I arrive in the morning (with a wounded toe), and the projector is AWOL. And the person last known to have used it is in Portugal. Brilliant. So I spent the entire day in mortal stress until someone came over from our other site � late in the day � with another projector. The nice thing about the day was that the presentation was totally successful. I achieved my goals, I was as brief as I could be but still got my point across, I was clear (I think), and people really liked it (including the brief computer-related cartoon slides I interspersed during review/Q&A moments), as evidenced by a lot of positive feedback that I got afterwards by the teachers who attended. The guy who decided to bring me from Avodah was also there (he�s not always at school) and I could tell he was satisfied with his decision. Huzzah.
Of course, after that I endured a good deal more stress as I tried to make it to my Avodah program on time. I didn�t. I traversed at least four subways (I went the wrong way a few times, ahem), leading me briefly through Harlem for a fun jaunt, and then ending up correctly on the Upper West Side only an hour late for a one-woman show by the Hebrew Mamita. Brown folks, you should bring her to campus, she was cool.
Today was much better. I went to the circus with school. Hey, it�s a rough job. It was the Big Apple Circus, and there was a lady with green hair and grandma and camels and trapeze artists and these guys who just balanced like nothing else and these ridiculously strong people who would climb up poles with just their arms and a hula-hoop and a guy with a big mustache and horses and tightrope walkers and a guy fell from the ceiling (on purpose) and juggling and it was SO AWESOME!!!!! I totally loved it. I hadn�t been to the circus in years. This was so great. Amari asked me what was under the circus (pointing to the ring). I told him a giant turtle. He said oh. He asked me where they got it. I said Africa. He said, in an amazed voice, �They have Turtles in Africa?� I said, �Yup.� He asked if there was a light under there. I said only when the circus isn�t running. He asked what the turtle does when the circus isn�t running. I said he swims around in the little swimming pool they give him. �But Mr. Bilek, you said it was a big turtle!� �Well, yes, to us it�s a big pool, but because the turtle is so big, the pool looks little to him.� Pause. �You sure do know a lot about the circus, Mr. Bilek.� �Yes I do.� Then he ran off to tell the other teachers about the turtle under the circus. They were puzzled. I snickered.
That was my eventful week. Currently am looking forward to swing on Saturday at Makor, the everyplace for young s in New York, which happens to be Jewish at its roots, and Jews in the Woods next shabbos, which I deeply hope I can make it down to. More on these next time!
10/21/03:
Wow, it's been almost a month since the last update. I didn't realize it had been so long. Where does the time go? Scary...
I just came back from the most phenomenal weekend at Brown. I was there for Thursday night swing club, shabbos, an extra swing dance, and Simchat Torah. Whoo-whee. I pretty much covered all my bases, except I missed a friend or two here and there, especially Bill, who regrettably didn�t show up for shabbos dinner.
Everything was great though. Saw all my important people and had great times with them. I walked into swing club unannounced on Thursday, adorned in my gold zoot suit, and, well, announced myself. Made quite an impression on the new freshmen, I dare say, and got a nice round of cheers and applause from my old swing buddies. Good times, good times.
Things round the house are looking up. Old tensions are dissipating, I hope, either that or getting swept really far under the rug. I did have some interesting realizations over the weekend, however. To wit, this place is definitely not shaping up to be the community experience that I had come into it hoping for. I wanted a transition out of college. In college, there�s always someone around to hang out with. I was kind of hoping it would be the same here, that there would always be someone here hanging out, in the kitchen, the common room, whatever. But more often than not, the house seems empty. It�s weird. There�s also not so much community in the sense that at Brown, I could choose my friends and choose who I wanted to spend more time with and who I wanted merely to be cordial to and then ignore for the rest of the night. Here, I�m stuck with the same ten people day in and day out, and whether I like them or not, I can�t hang out with anyone else (at least, not while I�m in the house. Doing other social events is an option, but I was kinda hoping for more community within the house).
Another thing I noticed about Avodah is that it�s really not nearly as Jewish a space as I was looking for. At Brown, everyone I was hanging out with was totally into the Judaism thing, in one form or another, and there were so many different flavors (albeit all wrong ones, but that�s beside the point), and here�. nothing. It�s so confusing to me that the people here just don�t seem to care. There�s three of us (or maybe two and a half) that are halachically observant, but other than that, there�s no real day-to-day Judaism that�s a part of our home life. And the only discussions we have revolve around whether this pot is kosher or whether that will violate Shabbat. No spirituality, no love or enjoyment. And those that aren�t observant don�t bring any either, nor do they seem to have any interesting twists, characters, flavors, nothing. Just �kind of Jewish,� and that�s that. But I miss everything being Jewish all day long, and I miss the Jew jokes, and I don�t understand why people chose to do a Jewish program if that�s not them.
I do see a light at the end of the tunnel, though. Like I said, things are looking up in the house, and hopefully as our bitterness subsides, and we get our chore wheel on track, and get food sorted out (STILL working on that), and we finally start feeling comfortable with each other, community will start to appear, and people will start hanging out more at home instead of avoiding it. That�s what I�m hoping for.
Speaking of feeling comfortable with each other, in fact, we had a great program last night (Mondays as usual) involving interpretive dance. No joke. Which is funny, because we had a running gag in our house about interpretive dance. So there was this bulky lady and a blind Asian chick and this wise black guy, Newman, who came and they performed a little (Newman did rhythm and music) and we also participated, and we did sculptures of forgiveness, and we made movements representing �bubbly� and �jazzy� and �marshmallow� (ask Newman how he figured out how to play marshmallow. Must been rough). It was pretty wacky. People had a good time.
Also speaking of feeling comfortable, I finally feel like I have a friend in the house, which is nice, because for a long time I didn�t feel like there was anyone in the house I could tell my funny stories to or talk about issues with, but I feel like finally I�ve gotten to a point with the in the room next to me where we can actually talk, and it�s quite a relief. I can�t believe it took this long, frankly, since I tend to be very open and, I think, very approachable, but hey, that�s the way things are.
So, in sum, hopefully things are on the upswing. Stay tuned.
9/24/03:
So I guess it�s round about time for another update.
Work is going pretty good. Basically what I do is I hang out in the computer lab, and when a class has computer time they come on in and I put the kids at the computers, and then they sign onto this program called SuccessMaker for the older kids, which is basically a bunch of math problems (it also does lots of other stuff, but we�re just doing math for now) or Fripple Cookies for kindergarten, and I just watch �em. And then I give timeouts to the ones who touch the screen or yell out or bother their neighbors (which really isn�t all that frequent, every now and then one of the kids is being a brat), or I fix the kids� headphones when they do something stupid, or I help them out with the math problem when they�re stuck. That�s about it. I also supervise in the morning and afternoon and I do a lot of yelling there, which is kind of a power trip, but it�s really not a very pleasant way to start the day, because it�s just full of yelling and screaming and kids running around, and it�s a pain. I only survive it because I�m not �responsible� for it. As in, I helped out with music for a while before my schedule got busy, and that is basically what his class looks like every day, with the yelling and the screaming, and I don�t know how he deals with it. Computer time, by contrast, is nearly silent every day. It�s quite nice. Plus, I�m getting better at figuring out how to do neat things with the system, like today I figured out how to display the kids� current level on the top of the screen (the program tailors the problems to the level of the kid, so if he�s good at addition but not at fractions, it will take that into account). It�s a good program for the student, but for the administrator it�s an abomination unto mankind, so it�s taking me a while to become proficient with it, and whenever I make progress I get very excited.
Fortunately, my superior/coworker sympathizes with me completely and we�ve had many a great laugh over the crappiness of the management system of the program, and we both get excited over the same accomplishments in advances of our understanding, plus he�s really cool, so that there is good.
And generally the kids are good. There�s only a few that are really tough to deal with, like the hyperactive ones, and the REALLY tough ones are ones that have �stories,� i.e., kids with problems of abuse at home, which is painful to have to know and deal with. But you do whatcha can.
Meanwhile, other things are going nicely too. We had a phenomenal Shabbat this week where the house was completely packed. We had 19 people for dinner, and I had a guest over from New Jersey. I thought it very exciting to be a real host for the first time in my life, so I was really glad to have that opportunity. Good times.
I also met an old college buddy (huzzah! I have an old college buddy!) in central park on Sunday just to hang out for a while, which was nice. I�m deciding to go hang out there more, it looks swell.
So that�s that. I�m going home for the holidays tomorrow, which is nice, and I�m hoping to visit Brown ASAP so I can see a bunch of folks and tell you some good little stories that�ll ya up. Keep in touch!
9/2/03:
First day of work! How weird is that? I walked out the door this morning holding an umbrella in one hand and my little tote bag in the other (I graduated from backpacks today). It was the standard picture of a man-off-to-work. You would have died.
So my commute is only a half hour, which I gather isn�t bad for New York. 15 minutes on the subway then a nice little walk through Fort Greene, which is apparently one neighborhood over from Williamsburg. Anyway, I�d already met my supervisor and the main computer guy at school over orientation, and they�re really nice, and I met the rest of the staff today. They�re mostly pretty young, and mostly very nice, except the tech guy, who was kind of a jerk and kind of arrogant, which is a shame cause I have to work with him a lot. The staff is about half black and half white, with a few Latinos in the mix. I didn�t do much today; they�re still in orientation, so I just listened to a bunch of chatter this morning that wasn�t very relevant to me since I won�t actually be running a classroom, then I took care of some forms and stuff, then I helped clean up the classrooms a bit since they�re full of crap. I got done pretty early (around 3:30) and the supervisor took me with him to make some copies in Park Slope (the neighborhood down from me) and dropped me off by the library, which I�d been meaning to visit, and I picked myself up a card and walked the 20 minutes back home. So day one, uneventful.
To back it up a bit, our first Shabbat was wonderful. Two s were sadly away, but the rest of us brought in the day with a lovely service in the basement (because that�s where we have room) led by me (because I stepped up to the plate, due to the fact that I wanted a guy leading the service and the other guy in the house is a completely non-practicing atheist). So we did a really fun service in the Carlebachy style of the Brown Orthodox minyan, which worked really well for me, and everyone else seemed to enjoy it, and as much as I pressed them to let me know if everything was okay, they really didn�t seem to have any complaints.
Then we went upstairs and I made Kiddush, and we had a really really good vegetarian dinner, for a few reasons: two of the s are vegetarian; we hadn�t set up our system of money sharing yet so we didn�t know how to buy meat yet (i.e., issues of kashrut and expense); and also because the kosher kitchen was all dairyed up so it would have been a huge pain to try and cook meat. Then we schmoozed for a while and sang for a long while and all shared our different songs, and that was great, and then we all went and passed out in our respective rooms.
Saturday morning I walked with one of the s to a local Orthodox shul (though there�s a closer one, apparently), which turned out to be pretty lame mostly because the people weren�t very friendly and the rabbi�s welcome was lip service at best. So I don�t think we�ll be going back there.
Come havdallah time we had our first really dicey religious moment of the program, when one of the religious s, in fact, wanted to make havdallah, claiming it was perfectly legal. I thought it a little bizarre, but I said it was fine as long as she didn�t mind my making it for myself again afterwards. Well, long story short, there was a long �discussion� after havdallah (we ended up doing it together, after much coaxing on my part) about gender issues where it turned out that I was arguing against the two religious s in the house, and the atheist guy was arguing on my side! Go figure. (What it came down to, and I thought my position was pretty self evident, was that they could practice however they wanted, as long as I could still do what I wanted too, i.e., make havdallah after them if they wanted to do it themselves. Their complaint was that that was divisive. My response was, tough crap. Well, no it wasn�t, but really now, I think I would have had a point.) So, we got through that with no hard feelings � everyone really does have good intentions here. It was just a little tense.
The other thing of note that I want to mention is that I really am learning the whole being-on-my-own thing, I hope. We went on a shopping mission the other day, and it was amazing to watch Yuval (atheist guy) go at it � he was all about cutting the prices down and buying the best stuff and getting what we needed. It was very impressive. It was good to have him along. And while he was doing that, the Health Squad was making sure we had all this organic stuff too, and non-wheat this and low-taste that. It was very educational. Soon they�re going to teach me to cook.
8/25/03:
So here we are in Brooklyn. Go figure. It�s pretty unbelievable. I�m living in a house with 8 s and one guy. They�re pretty cool, except for one who clearly was not made for community living situations. (This is already apparent on the first day. More exciting news on this in the future, I�m sure.)
To back up a second, the end of the California retreat was still incredible. We had more classes on things like the World to Come, Science and Torah, Free Will, you name it. All the good stuff. And there was more volleyball, and the beach, and wild dancing. I just came away from there feeling very inspired and very good and very strong in my beliefs coming into what is going to be a very challenging year for precisely those beliefs. I guess we�ll see how that goes.
Back to here in New York. Where even to begin? I live under a highway. The BQE. We�re going to be good friends, the BQE and me. I only woke up 3 times last night. I�m sure I�ll get used to it. I walked in a little late the first night into a house full of 10 people I didn�t know. That was a little overwhelming. The tenth person was Rabbi David Rosen, who is turning out to be a little Rich-like, for those of you from Brown Hillel. Except he�s a lot more knowledgeable, and he�s doesn�t laugh as much at his own jokes, which tend to be pretty funny. He taught us some Jewish gospel today during one of our orientation things. That was pretty exciting. I told him I have a heck of a song to teach him on Shabbos. :-)
I have a teeny-tiny room. We had a time of divvying up the rooms. I�m pretty sure David got a kick out of knowing that was on the list of things we had to do last night and then just saying, �Well, see ya later.� So we hashed it out. It took a little over an hour. I didn�t have much of a preference. Some people wanted to be on the top floor, nobody really wanted to be on the first floor, one didn�t want to be on the same floor as boys (she�s a little frum, sort of), etc. etc. I ended up taking a small room on the first floor since I didn�t much care. In the end I decided to take a room that people wouldn�t be walking through rather than a bigger room that you did have to walk through to get to another room. Oh, and two people have to share. A nice twist.
And all the bathrooms are in the kitchens, except for one which is just in somebody�s room. I don�t know what�s up with that.
Today we had a tour through Red Hook, which is the area of Brooklyn we live in. Not much to say about it. Very nice. Small-towny, almost. We also had our talk about Shabbos. Sharon, the frum , also observes Shabbos. She�s from England. We talked about what we�ll need to have in the house, like leaving certain lights on, but also what other people want, like community meals, whether they want to be able to go out, etc. It was a little edgy just cause we�re all still feeling each other out and everyone comes from such different backgrounds, but it went fine. The one other guy, Yuval, is completely non-practicing and an atheist.
We found out during one of our getting-to-know-you things that Miryam, one of the directors, is getting engaged. Hoepfully we�ll be meeting her fianc�e on next weekend�s retreat; she�ll be joining Miryam and the rest of us. I was a little thrown off by that haphazardly added information on day one, but hey, whaddayagonnado?
This can only get more interesting�
More about my summer...
