Five Reform Jews Walk Into a Conservative Synagogue in Ra'anana...

One of the things that you never have to worry about in Israel is finding a synagogue.  In Ra'anana alone, there are more than 60 and they represent almost every group you can imagine: Ashkenazi (eastern European), Sephardi (Spanish), Yemenite, Shtiebele, Conservative, Reform.  As one would imagine in a country like Israel, much of which is governed by religious law, most of the synagogues are not large, ornate buildings like you find in the States; they are shuls for a smaller group of people.

In advance of Rosh Hashanah, which is still a month away, we wanted to experience Shabbat services.  Fortunately, there is a Conservative congregation about 2 blocks away.  Their web site talks about them being a merger of two congregations: one, mostly English speaking, and one, Spanish speakers from Latin America.  "Why not?" we said and off we went for Shabbat morning services today.

Before describing everything, let's let the girls tell you what was similar to services at home and what was different.

The Same

• Prayers were in Hebrew
• Some of the tunes were the same
• All of the people were nice
• They read the Torah
• Some of the prayers were the same
• It was casual -- people moved around during services
• There was lots of audience participation

Different

• It was MUCH LONGER (it was probably 3 hours, not that much longer than a Saturday b'nei mitzvah service at home)
• They did the entire Torah portion
• The space was a lot smaller than we were used to
• Most of the tunes were different
• There was no English during the service (except when they were addressing us or talking about us)
• The chairs were not as comfortable as our Temple at home
• It was really cold -- the air conditioning worked well and we sat right under it
• The sang the kaddish many more times than we were used to
• There was a very big oneg and they served whiskey for the adults (yum)
• It was very community led -- everyone seemed to do something and there were 4 students preparing for their b'nei mitzvah who helped lead part of it.  Special props to Gabi who accepted the invitation to dress the Torah.

The Torah portion today was Re'eh, from the book of Deuteronomy.  Moses tells the people about punishments they can expect if they worship idols, he explains the laws of kashrut, and he details the three pilgrimage festivals (Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot).  I can honestly say that it will be some time before I forget this portion, not because of the content but because of what happened during the service.

A few days ago, a friend of ours here told the folks at the synagogue that we'd be coming today.  We arrived at 8:40 to find about 8 men praying.  We weren't 100% sure where to go but someone approached us and invited us in.  We did, sitting together, and finding our place in the all-Hebrew siddur.  Fortunately there were numbers on the wall, constantly being flipped to keep up with the page we were on.

Maybe 30 minutes in, Moritz approached me to say hello -- he is a congregational leader and was expecting us.  He knew my name and said, "You're a Levi, right?"  There are three groups of Jews: the kohanim (a small subset of priests, descended from Aaron), the levi'im (the larger group of priests, descended from the Tribe of Levi, responsible for music in the Temple and guarding stuff), and Yisraeli'im (everyone else).

So I acknowledge that I'm a Levi.  The next thing I know, I'm following a kohen into the kitchen to wash his hands.  Yep.  Performing the duty of a Levi.  But it gets better.

About halfway through the service, the Torah is removed from the ark and eventually the week's portion is chanted (quite nicely here too).  Before each section of the portion is chanted, a congregant is called up for an aliyah -- they recite a blessing before and after that part of the portion is chanted.  The first aliyah goes to a kohen.  The second one goes to -- you guessed it -- a Levi.  And there's Moritz, asking me for my Hebrew name and my parents' Hebrew names for the aliyah.

The rest of the service went smoothly and we had a nice oneg -- snacks -- afterwards.  This is when we discovered that there were a good number of Israeli-Americans in the room. They were really helpful and curious about us. We learned about the youth group that meets on Fridays (almost 100 youth), the Tues/Fri market in Ra'anana that sounded like a good farmer's market, and people's family in the States (a high school teacher in the Boston area, a professional violist in Miami ... yes, a professional violist...). Jan was quickly friendly with the folks who host a lot of house concerts and are especially active in the folk music community of Ra'anana.

The people were incredibly friendly and welcoming and they look forward to us returning.  I imagine that we will, even though Alice and Gabi were lost most of the time and the rest of us were struggling to keep up with the speed of the Hebrew reading.  But it's nice to feel welcome and part of a community, even one that is almost 6000 miles from home.

What is Jan doing?

So, there's always a little consternation over what we're doing in Israel from people at home and people we meet here.

First, an academic sabbatical is not a vacation. It's a time to focus on research (translation: producing new knowledge and learning new stuff that lets you produce that knowledge). Research is a job requirement and I will submit a report of my activities when I return in February. This kind of work often requires a lot of brain space that is complicated to carve out while teaching and doing service at a college, not to mention juggling family responsibilities.

As for why Israel, there's lots and lots of reasons why (some of which I list at the end of this post), but for the purposes of my research, the general thing I wanted to benefit from was not being at home. A mentor had suggested this idea to me for one of my previous sabbaticals, but it just wasn't the right time for me or the family (or for me to leave the family for a while).

Case in point: I just completed a significant goal, and I accomplished almost half of that progress in the last 17 days. The rest of it took a good year of unprecedented success in balancing research with service and teaching. The goal was to analyze, form diagram, and input to a spreadsheet all thematic returns in every last movement of Haydn's Symphonies--108 movements. I sit here on a red couch with earphones in, listening to Haydn and representing it graphically. It takes anywhere from 25-65 minutes per movement. (I love my Haydn Symphony YouTube playlist!)

This is a tiny screen shot of part of a movement's form diagram

another tiny screen shot of the spreadsheet... 1054 lines and 18 columns so far

I think I've been able to work so effectively because (1) It's "perfect quiet." Helen is at school, the little girls are on their devices with earphones most of the day (le sigh) until school starts in less than 48 hours, and there's the white noise of cars and people in Ra'anana, (2) There's peer pressure. Josh never has problems focusing and working, and he's sitting about 8 feet from me in our little apartment. (3) There's accountability. I'm back on my timer regiment to keep myself honest. (4) There's a lack of other things to do. I have none of the creature comforts of my home, and it's horridly hot outside. (5) There's more boundaries. I'm far from Oberlin, so it's easier to stay detached from institutional concerns and day-to-day minutiae.

My project is to rigorously tease out how thematic returns in Haydn impact his forms. I'm more convinced than ever that current theories of sonata form lead to mishaps and misunderstandings for Haydn's music and style. I'm reading a lot of stuff published in the last 20 years, which is bringing up more ideas and questions. There are lots of ways to go at these questions, but I ended up in a big data project. At the midpoint of this project, my excel spreadsheet had gotten really slow (and crashy) from the formulas, so part of my daily routine here in Israel is working through the Python 3 course on codecademy. Why Python 3? because that's what almost all other music theorists doing this type of work are using. I'll also be re-learning some useful statistics and playing with some other recommended computer programs that will produce cluster analyses and other graphics that are good for communicating some of what I'm exploring. This kind of learning is really fun for me and I'm delighted my research has taken me towards mathy stuff.

my Python course

At the beginning of July, I was invited to a workshop in Tel Aviv that fits this project really well. This timing was great for my research because it exposed me to many new ideas, revealed flaws in my own work, and allowed me to develop professional relationships with people who are helpful and know a lot more than me about the technical side of things. This was also super well-timed because not only did I get to go to Israel for the first time by myself, but I could go a day early to check out our apartment. I also met a dozen Israeli music theorists interested in work similar to what I am doing. I've already had the pleasure of spending a morning with one who teaches here in Ra'anana and have been corresponding with a few others. It's possible that I might get some sort of institutional affiliation with TAU (Tel Aviv University), which could be beneficial for library privileges.

In addition to the research and learning (I aim for 4.5-5 clocked & focused hours a day), I'm working on my Hebrew through Duolingo 30-60 minutes a day, doing mom stuff (so much dust/sand to sweep up in the apartment, must get girls to the park when the temp drops below 30 celcius, daily grocery store because food spoils quickly), doing a lot more cooking than usual because Josh often needs to be engaging with colleagues in America during dinner time, and playing my old favorite game: Civ V. There's a bridge club near us, so I'm hopeful that we can play bridge at least once while we're here, but other than that we're homebodies--everything is so expensive that eating out (unless it's fast food like falafel) is something we're avoiding when we have the time and means to cook at home. We're not even buying wine. If you know us well, you know that's a big lifestyle change.

Duolingo progress. 14 units done. can't wait until I can unlock saying stuff in the past tense...

So why Israel? I really didn't need to be exactly here for my research, but being away is going to have a significant positive impact on the research aspect of my professional career.

And then there's all the other benefits such as an immersive international experience for all of us, stepping away from our normal patterns, nuancing our Jewish identities with first-hand experience in Israel, trying to better understand the global politics of the area, and making some incredible family memories. I feel very blessed that all of this is possible.

The Wild Cat's Of Ra'anana

Today, when we were walking to the park, we noticed that there were a lot of cats.  We also noticed that they each had their each own unique fur pattern.

One of them was a solid color ( black) but the rest had more than one fur color.   Some of them got really close to us and one of them walked between our Dad's legs when he was about to take a picture,

Alice thinks that some of the cats had kittens which would be really cool.  We also noticed that the cats usually come out during the early morning or the night when it's a bit cooler.  We also noticed that the cats were not by pigeons most of the time.  

The main type of cat that we saw was the orange and white cat and they are so cute.

One day when we were coming back from our normal evening walk, somehow we saw 8 cats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 CATS!!!!!!!

That is the most cats we've seen so far.  We are sill trying to beat that record.  One cat ran down stairs really fast right in front of me (Gabi) and another ran straight through the middle of 3 dogs and one tried to catch the cat. When we saw the orange cat he was still looking at us but i think he was yawning.

Then we realized that this cat and another 2 were the same cats because of the light orange spot on their left front leg

All of the other cats we different cats. We saw many other cats after these but we did not take pictures of them because they did not want to be taken as a picture, so they ran off.

The black cat was the main cat that ran off, but we did get a picture of one. It is so cute.

We also saw 2 cats at the park we like to go to each day.  We saw an orange cat and we named him Mr. Ginger and we also saw a puffy one and we named it Puffin.  We only got a picture of Puffin.

Some of them were running between cars to get away but we got one of them.

Alice & Gabi 

A Day at the Beach

(Sand art credit, Jan Miyake; it reads "Yisrael 2019")

We had quite the adventure yesterday.  It started with a promise to the girls that we would go to the beach.  The only problem is that Ra'anana is a land-locked city.  So we turned to a local business called Car2Go -- it's a car sharing service.  Monthly fee, rental charge, mileage charge.  Bing bang boom and you're all set to go.

But it's not really that simple.  You make your reservation and choose which car you want to use based on where you live and where the nearest car is located.  In our case, it was about three blocks away.  You get to the car, swipe your membership card over a box mounted inside the windshield, and the car unlocks for you.  It's really cool.  The only problem was that we didn't have the membership card.  So a call to Customer Service (yes, on Shabbat) got the car unlocked remotely, we got our membership card set up, and off we went.

Poleg Beach was our destination, a twenty minute drive north to Netanya.  We got there, got settled, and off we went.  It was Alice and Gabi's first time in salt water -- yes, even with three bat mitzvahs in Miami, they didn't get into the Atlantic (Helen did a couple of times).  They spent more than 3 hours jumping in the waves, swallowing some salt water (yuck), and generally getting more exhausted than they've been in a while.

While they weren't in the water, there was sea shell collecting... 

... digging holes in the sand...

... and burying one's twin sister (with her permission, of course).

And lest you think that the older members of the family weren't there, there are pictures to prove we were.

After more than fours hours at the beach, we were ready for dinner.  Some new friends (as it turns out, parents of a new enrolling Oberlin student I met in Phuket, Thailand two years ago) live in Netanya now -- Patrick is a high school science teacher at Helen's school -- and invited us for a home-made meal.  It was a great way to end the day.

And here's the view they have every evening.  Sunset over the Mediterranean.

Cooking Overseas

I like to think that I’m handy in the kitchen; I know that my family likes what I can pull off.  But cooking overseas can challenge anyone.  I was prepared for new ingredients or a small kitchen or not being able to read instructions on the back of the bags (thank you Google translate).  But I wasn’t prepared for this:

Yes, the stove top.  Such a seemingly easy thing to operate: push the “on” button, change the temperature of the burners, and off you go.

Except for the lock button in the bottom right corner.  Yup, every time you want to use the stove, you have to unlock it and then proceed with your cooking.  Do note the size of the cooktop however.  It is barely big enough for a good sized skillet and pot yet I’ve made teriyaki stir fry and rice (in a pot, not a rice cooker) and two different pastas on it so far.

Tonight’s challenge: the oven.

Where do you even start?  There are two dials.  One is clearly the temperature, in Celsius of course.  The other one?  Who knows?  And the 6 buttons in the middle?  Not sure what they do.  After some trial and error, I think that the buttons are for show.  Honestly.  I have no clue what they do and since there are no words, just some pictures, it really is hard to know.  The key was saying, “What the hey?” and turning dial on the left that says Shabbat.  I assumed it was used for keeping the oven warm on Shabbat but it’s actually the dial that controls bake or broil or convection.  It just happens to have a Shabbat setting too.

Hopefully our frozen schnitzel will be good tonight.  It's not going to hold a candle to something from a restaurant, which we will absolutely try, but it's easy and I'm still learning to navigate a kitchen the size of a New York City apartment's bathroom.

Shabbat

I don't quite know how to put it but in Israel, Shabbat is a thing.  If you're not living in a large city with lots of observant Jews or if you haven't been exposed to that community, it might not make sense.  But Shabbat isn't just sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.  Shabbat is a state of mind.  It's preparation.  It's making dinner.  It's doing lots to spend 24 hours in contemplation.

Most of you know me (Josh) pretty well and know that this isn't really me.  I'm happy to take some time to slow down and relax, but I don't do well with unstructured time.  I need things to do.  Shabbat here is going to test me and make me slow down.

How?  Well, everything is closed, starting around 3pm on Fridays.  And nothing reopens until sundown on Saturday or on Sunday.  It's just the way of things.  You have to plan in advance to make sure that you have food for dinner on Friday and all day Saturday.  If you wait until 2pm on Friday -- as I discovered today -- most of the stores have mostly empty shelves.  I was going to make oven roasted chicken and cous cous today only to discover that both stores I visited had chicken breasts only.  So plan B developed quickly -- sea bream for Jan and me; four cheese tortellini for the girls.  And bravo to Gabi for tasting the fish and asking for more.

(photo credit: Helen Levy)

I do have to say, the best part of the shopping experience today was seeing fresh challah everywhere.  Can't wait to try more of them each week.

שבת שלום to everyone.  May you all have a relaxing weekend.

Evening explorations

So, there's been a few signs that seem to indicate that Helen is supposed to be here... Tonight, when we were walking after dinner, we ran into the
picture on the left, which was actually the second rubix cube signage we have seen. Last night, there was a deathly hallows symbol spray painted on a neighborhood sidewalk.

We've been doing a little exploring north of our apartment after
dinner these last few nights. It gives the littles a chance to be squirmy and get some energy out and lets the rest of us explore. Last night, we discovered the sun sets much earlier than it does in Oberlin--it was pretty dark by 8pm. That meant the little-kid playground that we found to the NE was deserted. Tonight we started out earlier and that playground had a ton of 3-to-4-year olds that our girls played around. Swings and seesaws are pretty universal. Helen's avatar of a melting rubik cube--the pin at the location of our apartment on the map--seems particularly apt here in Israel.

On tonight's exploration, we went a bit further north to a bigger green spot on the map and found the Ra'anana music performance center and a sports complex. Very fancy looking.

Here's a picture of our apartment building as we returned this evening.

Other exciting things today: we rented a car, Helen had an interview at her school, the girls had their first falafel (wish we had taken a picture...), Helen and Jan got cold medicine at a pharmacy, we navigated a no-English situation with Jan's SIM card, and we cooked our first meal in the kitchen, having not been able to figure out how to turn on the stove last night.

Good morning! (בוקר טוב!)

The apartment is naturally hot and stuffy because Israel is hot. There are two air conditioning units, one in our room and one in the main room. Gabi and Alice are making do with a fan, and Helen's cubicle is right off of the kitchen, so she should get the air from the main room. We didn't get that quite right last night because we turned that unit off, but we'll try something different tonight. Maybe if it gets cool enough (the night-time lows are in the mid 70s right now), she can open her window.

Josh thought that we would watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off last night to help us stay awake until 8pm. (The time difference from Oberlin is 7 hours later.) Turns out the movie, like all movies from our childhood, had more language than remembered, but Alice slept through it and it was pretty much above Gabi's head, innocent smart child that she is. Helen loved it, as expected.

We all took a little melatonin in hopes that it would help us stay asleep and have almost reconvened this morning. Helen made it to about 6:45am, Gabi is still asleep at almost 11am, and the rest of us are spaced out in the middle there.

 Helen and Alice playing Minecraft in her cubicle.

Josh in the main room, researching the area and What's app-ing with a friend of a friend (we have an army of friends of friends here in Israel and a small platoon of them are in Ra'anana).

Gabi & Alice's room. Why the child wears socks to bed is beyond me.

Hasids on a Plane

So we've had quite the last 24 hours (or so) of travel.  We left the house at 8:45am (3:45pm in Israel) and got to the airport just fine.  The friendliest and most helpful ticket agent graciously checked our luggage all the way to Tel Aviv and didn't charge us for it (we have two separate itineraries so this shouldn't have happened).  All is grand -- we get to Newark, get food, and get to our gate.

Flights to Israel from Newark are special.  The gate is at the end of the concourse and they actually block off the gate until they're ready for you to be there.  But you don't just walk up and find a seat.  You have your passports and boarding passes checked and then they check your luggage and they wand you down.  OK, no problem.

We get on the plane and immediately start looking at the movies they offer -- lots of good choices.  Round about 5:05pm (the flight was scheduled to leave a 4:50pm) the pilot tells us that some people decided they didn't want to fly so they left the plane and folks were working on retrieving their bags.  Once that's done, someone else decided they didn't want to fly and we went through it all again.  So it was 6:00pm when we pushed back and were on our way.

As you'd imagine, a large percentage of the people on the plane are orthodox Jews.  And since they're on the plane for a while, their carry-on bags are different than what you'd expect: there might have been more talit and t'fillin sets and hat boxes on the plane than there were laptops.  Not once but twice, all the orthodox men of age got up to pray.  They were pretty quiet about it but it was quite the sight to see a large group of people praying sort of in unison.  Not sure if the kids noticed...

As if that weren't long enough, we had to deal with passport control and customs.  Since we are in Israel for more than 3 months, we needed a special visa, an A1 visa.  This visa is meant for people who intend to make aliyah, to move to Israel permanently.  This is not us but it's the visa we had to get.  So we start by picking the slowest passport control line.  When we get to the booth, we get the document we need but the agent says that since we are making aliyah, we need to "go over there" to get our ID cards.  So we went where she pointed.  After 5 minutes or so, we asked someone for help.  He and a colleague disagreed over what we needed to do but she who won out told us to "go over there".  Again, we did.  This time we waited for one or two minutes before asking and learned that we just needed to pick up a phone for a direct line to the office that deals with A1 visa holders.  They came down and took us upstairs.  After being told that it would be about an hour, they informed us that we didn't need their services and that we could just get our luggage.

So yes, it took 2 hours from landing to getting in the car to take us to the apartment.  Everyone was tired and hungry but everyone kept it together.  The girls took catnaps in the car but some ice cream and chips has buoyed their spirits.

Tonight's adventure -- dinner (pizza) and a grocery store.  Wish us luck.

Waiting is the hardest part

College professors are lucky beings — they work with great students, they research interesting and obscure topics (hello, medieval Jewish history anyone?), and every seven years they have the opportunity to take a break from their teaching and on-campus responsibilities.  Yup, sabbatical is a wonderful and hard-earned and necessary part of teaching.

The plans for Jan’s sabbatical this fall have been in the works for three years.  And for most of that time, I have been talking to my bosses — Debra, Manuel, Tom, Jill, Leslie — about the opportunity and what it would mean for my job in Admissions.  Thankfully, there was plenty of support and we think that we’ve figured out what it will look like for me to work remotely.

But to get to this point has been challenging in many ways.  The number of hoops we had to jump through to get our visas to Israel were innumerable.  There were the apostilles for birth certificates and marriage licenses.  There were passports for the girls and a new one for me because the old one didn’t match my birth certificate (stupid middle name/middle initial conundrum).  There was a 20 minute visa interview that, thankfully, we had in Cleveland instead of Chicago.  There was the sending off of passports and visa applications to Chicago and waiting for them to return with the proper visa, one that’s OK for people staying more than three months.

And now the big day is here.  Everyone is excited but we would all be lying if we told you that we aren’t nervous or anxious or paranoid about what’s awaiting us on the other end of the plane rides.  But faculty friends who have taken their kids overseas for a semester or longer have insisted that it was an amazing experience for everyone.  And what doesn’t kill you makes opposed stronger, right?

Over the next 141 days and nights (that’s how long the lease is for) we will share our adventures, both good and bad, so that you can live vicariously through us.  We will have guest bloggers and pictures and video so that you see what we’re  all doing.  For now, we’ll leave you with a wonderful shot of the luggage, almost ready to be loaded into the car.