Rosh Hashana Sept 8-11

This week Jason and I went down to Arad to spend Rosh Hashana with our host families. We started out together on the bus from Ashkelon to Be'er Sheva, but when we made the transfer to the Be'er Sheva -Arad bus, the driver closed to door between Jason and I, causing us to take two different buses down. When I arrived I was picked up by my host mom Ofra and her three kids, Noam, Ayala and Amitai. Noam is 10.5, her sister Ayala is 8 and Amitai is a wonderful 3 year old little boy.

We immediately went shopping for some last minute things for the holiday dinner and to grab some cereal for my house. We then headed back to her house, which is across the street from the house I will be living in from November until June. Ofra gave me a tour of my house and left me to get my stuff settled in while she headed over to her own house.

The rest of the evening set the sequence of events for the whole holiday. I went over to the house and played with the kids for a few hours. This was everything from arts and crafts with the girls to a rousing game of “Afo Tomas?” (translated, “where is Thomas?”) with Amitai. “Afo Tomas” happens just about every 30 minutes when he comes over to you, asks where is Thomas and then we start the hunt for his favorite of the Thomas the Tank Engine characters. Every once in awhile though thegame becomes “Afo Percy” and we begin the search all over again. The main reason that these toys kept getting lost is they are the pull back style – you pull the car back to wind up the “engine” and let it go to skitter across the room. Eventually I convinced him that playing on the track would be just as good and we no longer had to look very far to find Thomas, Percy or even Emily. (And yes, I can name all the characters now – and sing the 'Roll Call' song.)

After spending time with the kids I helped Ofra with dinner a little bit (grating veggies for the salad) and attempted to pick up the hebrew words for the vegetables I was using. Then I headed back to my house to change for dinner, and the whole family walked down the road to Savta and Saba's house. (Grandma and Grandpa). The grandparents know a little bit of English (they started out telling me they knew none, but kept coming up with phrases when I got completely stuck with my very limited hebrew vocalubary) but mainly we talked through Ofra or her sister who would translate back and forth.

My first day in Arad (Wednesday) repeated again on Thursday and very closely followed on Friday as well. The only difference being that on Thursday night Jason and I met up with Abir to go out to the local pub and figure out the town a little better. Ofra knew Abir because she helped him interview for a position that is taking him to New Jersey for the next year to teach Hebrew (sound familiar?). Since he is leaving on Monday meeting up with him was wonderful, we told him what we could about the area he would be in while he introduced us to some of his friends and the town.

On one of the days the girls took me on a walk down to the overlook. (The same overlook that Otzma visited on our first week.) Noam packed up a bag for us with water, cups and the Hebrew/English dictionary, while I brought along a camera.

Ayala and Noam

Amitai

The whole trip to Arad was a lot of fun and I feel like I really get along with my host family. Saba even asked if I could move in with them and help out his wife around the house instead of living down the street! I am definitely looking forward to moving down to Arad now.

September 7th

Today we were invited by the Mercaz Klitah to a Rosh Hashana party being thrown by the kids. We all gathered downstairs in the patio area of building 1, and were immediately seized upon by the kids-just like always!

 Eventually though things calmed down a bit and we sat down for a bit of a Rosh Hashana explanation- first in Hebrew and then in English.

 We passed around apples, honey and honey cakes and sang together. Then they kids came around with Rosh Hashana cards that they had made for us. We also retreived some crayons and paper and created cards for the kids and had fun passing those out too.
No party is complete without dancing though, so we started up the music and spent about half an hour just dancing and playing with the kids.

Slichot Seminar September 6

We got information about our Slichot seminar a few days ago, and found out that we would be leaving Ashkelon at 1:30am to head out to Jerusalem. While most people thought about taking naps before we left, it didn't really happen for most of us. We all headed out to the bus in the dark and proceeded to sleep the whole way into the city. Once we got there we met up with our lecturer/guide Jared.
Jared led us into the city and we all sat down to read about Rosh Hashana from some parsha portions and writings. There were some really great discussions about why we do Slichot prayers, and the differences between how they are done by Ashkenazi and Sephardic jews.
For anyone that doesn't know what Slichot is, allow me to explain. Slichot is a time period in which you are supposed to pray for forgiveness from God and work on repenting for the bad things that you have done during the last year. In the states we tend to be taught that this is all done during the 10 day period between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, but in reality it is different depending on your sect. The Ashkenazi start the Slichot prayers on the Shabbat prior to Rosh Hashana, while the Sephardic actually perform slichot prayers for the entirety of the (Jewish) month prior to Rosh Hashana up until Yom Kippur - 40 days. The slichot prayers are supposed to be performed during the night, and usually as close to the start of the morning prayer as possible, this means that the prayers are started somewhere between 3:30-4:00am.

The reason that we were in the city at 3am was so we could sit on an overlook over the Kotel (Wall) and hear the Slichot prayers while we discussed the impact this holiday season has on us.
During our seminar we were asked to break into pairs and discuss our past year, and anything we may have regretted. I sat with Lauren and we talked about our last year and found that we had quite a bit in common.
After visiting the wall we regathered again and headed through the city, we climbed up to the top of the city and settled in to watch the sunrise. From where we were sitting we could watch as the sun came up from behind the hills and rose into the sky.

Sept 2nd

Sorry for the hiatus, I went on a trip to Egypt (and yes I will write about it!) and got out of the habit of updating.
This will be the last of the one per day posts, from now on updates will be about just the big events/holidays/fun things that happen.

Today was fairly uneventful, though we did have a meeting with a lady from Masa Israel. Masa is a program dedicated to helping bring people to Israel for long-term programs (5-10 months). Otzma is a Masa program, so the representative came to see how we were doing and see if we had any input on how our program is going so far.
After the meeting with our representative we headed over to the Ulpan building for testing. None of us knew what exactly this would entail, we were nervous since we did not want to get placed into the wrong Hebrew class! For my test I walked in and sat down with a woman in one of the classrooms. She asked me if I knew any Hebrew and I truthfully told her that I do not know very much, just what I learned through Rosetta stone. She then proceeded to ask me about my Alef Bet (which I do know) and then if I could spell out words if they are said to me. I told her that I could and she thanked me for my time.
After I walked out of the test I was told by my fellow Otzmanikim that they were having some trouble since they had so many more people in Kitah Alef than Bet (Alef is the 1st level, Bet is 2nd) and I started to worry that they were searching for a reason to place me in it. Gosh I hope not!