I had a really incredible week with my mom here. She came to my classes with me, met my teachers and friends, and just spent quality time with me all week long. It was really amazing to have her here, being so supportive and loving and mommy-ing. It feels so good to be doing something with the support of the people who matter most. So many girls here have parents who are entirely unsupportive, for various reasons (I know one girl whose father told her he'd rather she became an escort in Vegas than a religious Jew,) and I guess having my mom here for the week and seeing her pride and joy over my happiness here was exactly the kind of boost I and many others needed.
On Tuesday we had Thanksgiving – my mom paid for the whole thing, and we invited a bunch of friends, and my roommate Alisa and I cooked up a whole meal, with all the trimmings. We made a whole turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, gravy, green beans, and I even made my Dad's stuffing, which came out really well considering I only had Israeli ingredients to work with. (The trip to the butcher was pretty funny. Here's an approximate transcript: "Do you have any whole turkeys?" "I can order you one." "We need it by tomorrow morning." "I can get you one tomorrow but it will need all day to defrost." "So how early can we get it?" "In the morning." "Will it be enough time to defrost so we can start cooking it for dinner?" "No." "Oh..." "Do you want one right now?" "Um...yes?" And off he goes to the back of the store, and comes out with a great big frozen turkey. No clue why he didn't just say he had one in the first place. Ah, Israelis. And butchers.) The dinner was really moving, since we are all far from our families, and we went around the table saying things we are thankful for and giving blessings to one another. My mom acted as everyone's mom, and it was just really heartwarming and beautiful. We also watched Lilo & Stitch, which is one of those underrated Disney movies that more people should see. On Thursday we went up north to visit a couple of charities that my family gives to. That was a really great experience. We visited Elem and Migdal Or, two really amazing charities, who do so much for underprivileged and abandoned children in Israel. Migdal Or was actually one of the most incredible places I've been to – the rabbi there, Rabbi Grossman, is very famous in Israel and internationally. He takes care of over 6,000 children at a time at his campus, as well as Jewish prisoners, soldiers, and anyone else who is in need. There is no discrimination between secular and religious, and nothing but total acceptance and love. For Shabbat, we went to the Carlebach Moshav, which was an interesting experience for my mom, who spent a few summers there about 30 years ago. There were a few people there who have been there since then, and she reconnected with a few very old friends. Unfortunately, my stomach decided to act up on Friday night, so I was in a lot of pain for several hours, which put a damper on things. But I got through it, and then Saturday was really nice. We hung out, we ate and sang and danced a bit. Havdalah was beautiful, as it always is on the Moshav since everyone gets together for it, and then we got back to the house and immediately checked the news to find out what happened to the hostages in India. That was extremely difficult, as we had been thinking of them and davening for them all of Shabbat, so to find out they had been killed was like a slap in the face to all our hoping and praying. My mom left a couple of hours later, and now here I am, back at school, writing my blog. It's hard to go back to the regular routine now, and I feel pretty homesick, but luckily I have great friends here to keep me company.
I want to write a bit about India, since it's on my mind. I don't mean for this to be at all political, or to spark any controversy in the peanut gallery, so just take this as my own inner ramblings rather than anything worth responding to, ok?
I HATE terrorists. I know hatred is bad, but I do. I also feel bad for them, but mostly, it's the hate thing. I can't stand the fact that they exist, that they can believe it is a good thing to hurt and kill innocent people. That they exist everywhere. That nowhere in the world is safe, especially for Jews and Israelis. That any individual person could look another human being in the eye, recognize the fact that they are a living, breathing, thinking, loving person/parent/sibling/friend, and then shoot them dead. I know that part of what makes us human is our capacity and our tendency to look for meaning in the world, even when it doesn't exist. We ask why when there's no answer, when the question isn't even really valid. This is one of those times, I think. I can't help ask why, I can't help trying to attach something cosmic, something grand and purposeful to events that ultimately defy explanation. And I come up totally empty. I know the stock answers, I know the way I'm "supposed" to feel about it, the therapeutic response. But it all just seems ridiculous right now. Sure, there will always be things we can't understand, but my ego is not ok with that. I can't just accept that. I read an article this morning in the Jerusalem Post about the attacks, and it says that when the cook of the Chabad house saved the toddler, his pants were soaked in the blood of the dead bodies lying around him. Maybe his parents. I can't read something like that without feeling genuinely sick, and angry, and hateful towards anyone who has it in them to create this type of suffering. I know people are suffering the world over, I know that even those close to me are often in incredible pain, but I guess when something like this happens, it highlights the craziness in the world, it throws it in your face and forces the tears out of you. I'm learning about hatred in one of my classes, what the Torah view of it is. It's pretty interesting, actually. It's not that you're not allowed to hate – you're just not supposed to do so in your heart. You're supposed to speak it out, try to resolve, try to relieve your heart of the weight of those negative feelings. So that's what I'm doing here. Letting it out or something. As for our enemies, we're told never to rejoice over another's suffering, even if it's an enemy. There's a prayer in the shmoneh esrei that asks G-d to destroy our enemies, (I believe Conservative and Reform synagogues remove this one because it's not PC,) but that was written specifically by a man named Shimon Hatzaddik, who was the Rabbi who constantly taught never to rejoice over the pain of our enemies. He wrote that prayer out of a desire to protect the Jewish people in the face of the constant suffering others were putting them through, not to inflict pain. (Much easier for us to be PC in a time when it feels like we're so safe....then something like the attacks in India happen and all of a sudden, it makes so much more sense to pray for that kind of thing. At least to me.) I know there's a difference...We can be glad for our own freedom and salvation, but not for the pain of others. So why do I still hope that those guys felt pain when the police finally shot them dead? I guess I'm not on that high a level yet. (again, I know this paragraph will probably spark comments, just understand, I know this issue is highly nuanced and there are several ways to think about it and look at it, and my words can easily be twisted into things I didn't mean, so just keep that in mind, maybe just leave it be.)
In other news, it's Kislev now, which means Chanukah is coming soon. I've been learning and reading a lot about it, and it's really such a beautiful and deep holiday, a celebration of light coming out of darkness, of comfort coming out of suffering. I'm pretty excited for it. Especially because a certain person will be here then, and that will be the best Chanukah gift of all.
Anyway. It's Tuesday now, and this week has been pretty tough. The events in India have thrown me for a bit of an existential loop, and on top of that I'm feeling homesick and particularly far away from the people I love. I feel like I'm constantly cycling through that here – missing home, feeling good here, then missing home even more, etc. etc. I've been thinking a lot about whether I will extend my trip here past February, and recently I've felt less and less like I wanna do that. Who knows, maybe my feelings will keep changing, in fact they probably will, so I'm not setting anything in stone yet. But at the moment, I want to come home pretty badly. (I wonder how many of my blog posts have ended this way. Probably quite a few.)
Love, Shira
