Hey everyone,
Its currently 430 on Friday afternoon. I'm sitting in the Pirates Cove, aka room 611 with LeeAnn, Gabe and Seffi. In about 45 minutes I'm going to start the hike the Linda Gradstein's house in Arnona. I'm excited for Shabbas/Sukkot dinner!
Let's start on Tuesday night. Every Tuesday we have a mandatory evening program called erev Nativ. This time, we had a guest speaker. Some of you may know him, some may not. Rabbi Joel Roth spoke to us on Tuesday night. Rabbi Roth is one of the most well known and influential Rabbi's in the entire conservative movement. It was truly an inspiring speech. He talked to us about the failings of the conservative movement in israel and in america. he talked all about what the conservative movement actually is and why it is "Most authentic Jewish religious movement in the world today." He talked about the why orthodox and reform Judaism are the way they are, but why, in his opinion, they are wrong and the conservative movement is right.
He says there in the reform and orthodox movement, there isn't a big religious gaps between the rabbi's and his members. Orthodox people aren't any more religious than their rabbi's are, and same with the reform movement. but the conservative movement has a huge gap of religious observance between the rabbi's and his people. rabbi roth told us that the conservative movement is a movement dedicated to halacha, such as keeping shabbat and keeping kosher, but for some reason conservative jews don't understand that.
Let's start on Wednesday. Wednesday I took an ulpan test and ended up getting a 98. but it totally wasnt my fault i didnt get 100 because the font the teacher used was really confusing so i confused a kof and a final tzdik so it wrote the wrong letter. unfair.
OK so they turned off the internet as I was writing, so sorry I didn't get to you guys before shabbas. now i need to update about shabbas as well. ill make that a new post. until then let's cover thursday
Thursday was the ulpan final. it was ok, i'm pretty sure i passed, not sure about having an A but for sure in the B range, which is fine because that should get me to ulpan aleph plus plus which was the goal.
after the test, we had the first week of the NBA, the nativ basketball association at liberty bell park. we got the good court, i brought my speakers and we went. asaf, aaron and i organized the league, there's 5 teams of 4 guys on a team. my team is me, brian, tyler and ethan. we went 2-2, as in 2 wins and 2 losses. i played pretty well, getting better as the night went on, which is pretty normal. after intense basketball, we showered up and got ready for a good thursday night.
after the test we all went out on thursday night, it was pretty fun. what's lame is that all the nativ people don't congregate together in downtown jerusalem, we tend to spread out a little bit which is lame because i would rather spend time with nativ people than random americans/brit's that are roaming around ben yahudia street. that was fine, nothing special, lots of random israeli's playing music and lots of people. pretty standard thursday night.
Friday! friday was free, i woke up at 1145, the latest i've woken up since i've been in the holy land, it felt greattttt waking up that late. we just hung around before shabbas, and then i started to type this blog. then the internet got turned off.
last night, i went to a family friends house, Linda Gradstein, for Shabbat/Sukkot dinner. It was about a 45 minute walk to her house from beit nativ, but since i got lost about 4 times it took around an hour. there were a ton of little kids there, which was super fun. they were all around 8 years old. some were a little younger, some were a little older. after a nice shabbat dinner i walked back to base with two families that i met there and that was pleasant. i got back to base around 1130, hung out with some people for an hour and ended up getting to sleep around 130. i set a mental alarm clock because seffi and i both forgot to set alarm clocks.
i ended up waking up at 750, perfect timing. seffi i went to shira chadasha, a nice service. got back to base, hung out, did some work on my ankle, did mincha, maariv and sutff
going to burgers bar now
talk soon,
josh
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