Chag Sameach! - It's Sukkot Again

Okay, so we've been a little lax in posting, but it's only due to the amount of hours we've been working. Now we're on break for all of Sukkot, so hopefully in the next few days I'll be able to post more than we've done in the past (okay, well since anything is good it'll hopefully be more than this post).

So, we're going to relax a little, get over our colds at the moment, and then post some more. Till then,
Chag Sameach!


Here's a fun Sukkot video to get you into the holiday mood:

Back In Israel

So after a long and very exciting summer Nate and I have moved back to Israel. We made aliyah (officially became Israeli citizens) on Tuesday, August 26th. It was a short flight in comparison to the flights we had taken to Australia this summer, but yet still pretty long at 10 hours. We landed in the Ben Gurion airport and were straight away taken to the old terminal to have a small reception and have our first meeting with the Office of Immigration. We received our immigration i.d. and forms allowing us to sign up for a bank account and health insurance. We then were provided with a taxi ride back to Hamivtar where we had lunch and dinner with friends from last year and got a good, but short, night's sleep. The next morning at 8:30 am the movers showed up to move all of our belongings from Hamivtar, where we had stored them over the summer, to our new apartment in Jerusalem. They were done moving us in by 9:45am (a record of what I have heard), and they did a really good job. Our new physical address is 24 Shai Agnong, Jerusalem, in the Goldstein Youth Village. Our new mailing address however is:
P.O. Box 4180
Jerusalem 91041, ISRAEL.

Nate and I spent the day unpacking and then got a very good nights rest in our own bed in our new apartment. As the week went on we set up a bank account, received our permanent identity cards, met with the Office of Immigration to make sure we were in the system and receiving all of our benefits, set up our health insurance, and unpacked and set up our new apartment. We now have a brand new fridge, a washer and dryer of our own, and a carpeted and insulated apartment. We did all this while we started our new job as the Av and Em Bayit (dorm parents) at Yeshivat Shvilei Hatorah. We helped prepare the school and the dormitory for the boys arrival, and created all necessary databases of the boys information. Basically it has been a very overwhelming, yet exciting, first week back in Israel.

Yesterday, however, the boys arrived. We have ourselves set up, with the exceptions of a few boxes left to unpack, but now we have to spend our time getting to know the boys and making sure they get what they need. Nate has spent most of today with them helping to run orientation, and I will get to spend meal times with them. I am organizing the events for this weeks shabbat, at which we will be having a kiddush (snack) with singing and words of Torah Friday night after dinner, and a small kiddush (snack) after prayers in the morning. Nate and two of the other Rabbaim will be speaking at each of the meals respectively and the boys will have their first downtime to just hang out with each other and us. Next Tuesday night we will also be having an open house for the boys, for which I will make some desserts, just to let them get to know us and let them stop by and see our apartment. It is our hope that they will feel comfortable coming over as often as they like.

There are 48 boys, and as our new boss put it, you guys just had 48 boys without the 9 months of being sick and the labor, but now the work really starts. We are excited for the job, and look forward to updating you more on what is going on!

Shabbat Shalom!

Off to Oz

So we're sitting here in Los Angeles waiting for our plane to board for our flight to Melbourne. We've been in the US for over three weeks and now we're off again, two weeks in Australia. So far we've seen countless family and friends.

Since our departure from Israel we've spent :
19 hours and 30 minutes in the air
Flown almost 7,000 air miles
Driven over 1300 miles

And that does not include the upcoming flight to Melbourne via New Zealand and back.

It's already been one eventful trip and it's not even half over.

We'll post more when we can, but it's time to board our flight to Oz.

Packing and our Trip to the US/Australia

We've finished packing and moving to storage before we leave Israel. Naomi's put in many many hours of work while I've been finishing up at school; we're boxed up and we bought pizza to entice guys to help us carry our furniture and boxes to a few uninhabited caravans nearby.

I've managed to sprain my ankle rather well, and have since Saturday night been on crutches so Naomi's has had to do most of this without me.

Our wonderful tortoise moe. has been dropped off with friends of ours (Natan and Meg to be cared for by their daughter Ella).

We're now waiting for the driver to come pick us up to take us to the airport, our flight is at 4:50pm Israel time, we're expecting to arrive tonight around 10pm Eastern.

Our general schedule for the next two months is:
July 8th - Arrive in US, head to Philly
9th - To DC
21st - To Philly
27th - 29th - in Cincinnati
August 3rd - Fly to Australia, Melbourne
18th - From Melbourne to LA, then back to DC
26th - Fly back to Israel

Oh What a Crazy Life it is!

As many of you may have noticed Nate and I have not been posting very much lately. We apologize for this, but we promise we have a pretty good excuse. It all started about three weeks before Passover when we realized we had no idea what we were doing next year, had no where to live, and no income coming in, and we had to figure it out ASAP. As many of you know in about two weeks we managed to get answers to all those questions: we got a job at Yeshivat Shvilei Hatorah, a post high school seminary for boys. We are now the new dorm parents for the school, our title being Av and Em Bayit (father and mother of the house). This job involves living in the dorm building the boys live in and being an emergency resource for them after hours, when the Yeshiva is closed, creating a positive environment in the building for the boys, and being the boys parents in their home away from home. The job also involves some teaching, Nate will be running what is called a Chaburah (a study group of 6-8 guys) for an hour and a half a day four days a week and he will be helping to coordinate the evening classes. Further on Thursday nights from 7:30-12:15 Nate will be helping to coordinate learning programs and one night a week Nate and I will have a few boys at a time over for dinner where I will lead a Torah (Bible) based discussion. I will also be the one who brings little treats, such as brownies and cookies, to the study hall for the boys to have a snack with, and I will be making sure, along with Nate, that at the Thursday night learning sessions they have a kiddush (large snack) prepared for them.
This job obviously provides us with an apartment to live in in the boys dorms, we get a salary, and it involves moving to Jerusalem to what is called the Goldstein Youth Village, a very quaint little village for youth programs.

In addition to this Nate and I, as many of you know, are making Aliyah (becoming citizens of Israel). Getting the paperwork together for this took a large amount of time, and we are just now finishing up on getting it all together so come August 26th when we land, we will officially be Israeli. Further I applied, was accepted, and am now in the process of accepting the invitation, to attend Hebrew University, Rothberg International School, for the next two years. I will be studying to get my masters in Community Leadership and Philanthropy Studies.

In addition to all of this Nate and I have had the amazing pleasure of having both sets of our parents, and my brother and grandfather, here to visit us. Nate's parents came first over Passover which was absolutely delightful. We had Passover Sedar to which I contributed a bit with my cooking, with the Fein Family's very very close friends, the Ben-Or's. It was very interesting for me to be at a seder other then that of my parents since I had not ever been to another, for as long as I can remember at least. Of course with this came the sadness of missing my own parents seder, but at the same time I very much enjoyed being where I was. We also did some traveling to Herzaliah, where I had never been before, to go boating and meet some of the Israeli scouts Mom and Dad know, and up north to visit the cousins. It was very nice and we were very happy to get to see everyone. Our favorite part though, we have to admit, was to have Mom and Dad Fein here in our home for the last day of the holiday, to give them a bit of insight as to how we live our lives. We know that they come often to Israel, but where we live and how we lives is very different then what they usually see when they are here, so we really appreciated them allowing us to share it with them. We really hope they enjoyed their stay as much as we enjoyed having them.

Exactly 44 days after Mom and Dad Fein left, during which time we were still finalizing details for next year, my Parents, Brother and Grandfather came for a visit. I have to say that as much as I enjoyed and loved having Mom and Dad Fein, having my Dad, brother and especially Grandfather here was the most absolutely amazing experience in Israel yet for me. This was their first time ever coming to Israel. (My mom, who I of course also had missed very much, had been to Israel previously) To watch the excitement in my dad's eyes as he just absorbed everything he saw, to see the amazement my grandfather expressed at the beauty of everything around him was truly a gift I felt G-d had made just for me. I loved showing them everything I could, although it was not nearly as much as I would have liked to show them due to the constraints of time, and I loved how after seeing each thing they would spend hours talking about after. After living here for a year I have started to take on the Israeli mentality of loving where I live, knowing I am surrounded by amazing things, but becoming numb to it; for these past two weeks, that was 100% impossible. I know they are all planning to return which makes me so much happier because I can not wait to show them more of the country.

I also saw a new side to my dad that I really loved, while he was here. My dad has always been the one who brings the discussion of Torah to the table, he is the one who starts it and the one who proctors the debates. I also always knew he went to the classes at their synagogue, but I never went with him to know how important these classes truly were to him. While he was here, I saw my dad stay up for a full night just learning Torah at Nate's school, I sat with my dad as he had discussions with people learning to be Rabbis and truly challenging them to think, and I really got to see the passion my dad has for Judaism and learning that I am sure deep down I knew existed, but until now would not have characterized him as. My dad tells many people that the reason he learns Torah and the reason he is so passionate about Judaism is because of me and my brother, but Dad, now it has become the reverse, I learned over these past two weeks a new level of passion for Judaism and Torah from you! Thank you for that!

Yesterday my parents left for America, which is why today I can sit down to right this post. I hope that you all accept my excuse for not writing for so long, and understand that our lives have been a bit overwhelming lately. We will try and be more on top of it now, but who knows what direction life will take us. We hope all of you are well and we hope to see many of you soon when we return for a visit to the states in three weeks.

Be Well!

Syrian-Israeli Peace?

Recently it was announced that Israel and Syria have been having diplomatic relations through our mutual friends Turkey. Most of the world hailed the developments has a break through, clearing the way for peace in the Middle East. I, however, am a little more pessimistic.

There a a few things that I'd like to show why I'm pessimistic.
1. What would we gain? The status quo with Syria is peace. We don't fear Syrian attacks like we do from Hezbollah or Hamas. At best this treaty would give us another number to chalk up on the board of countries with diplomatic relations although I do have to admit there is a possibility that Hezboallah/Hamas would lose Syrian support, but that isn't good enough to give up the Golan.

2. The Golan. While people like ex-IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz say that we could live without the Golan Heights, since artillery is not as important as it once was (the threat coming more from rockets than anything else). It is abundantly clear to me that high ground is just as important as it once was and will continue to be. In the event that there is a war or terrorist bombardment from the Golan it would allow them to easily hit cities like Tiberias, Sfat, Afula, etc.

3. All this is a facade to remove the discussion of the indictment of our dear Prime Minister due to bribery and fraudulent election donations.

4. The Syrians said that Israel offered them the Golan in return for peace. The problem is is that most Israelis have actually been to the Golan (unlike Gush Katif) and like it. I can't imagine that the Israeli public would support giving up the Golan for relatively little in tangible results (see #1).

5. I find it interesting that the country that is moderating these peace discussions is Turkey. If we remember, back in September it came out that Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear reactor, the country to spill the beans was ... Turkey. Israel flew through Lebanon into Syria and out through Turkey without tripping any alarms and what happens? The spent fuel tanks land in Turkey and that's how the world found out. To me it seems that these two events are connected.

The Jerusalem Post recently reported "The diplomats said Syrian atomic energy chief Ibrahim Othman told the Arab delegates his country could not open secret military sites to outside perusal as long as Syria and Israel remained technically in a state of war." The IAEA wants to go into Syria to inspect, but now that Syria is limiting the inspections the world will start putting even more pressure on Israel to accept Syrian terms (give up the Golan so we can go check out more nuclear sites).

Guess we'll have to see how this plays out, but for all these reasons I really don't think that now it an appropriate time to make peace with Syria.

Our Plans for Next Year

Most of the plans for next year have been finalized, so I thought that I'd catch you all up on them.

We've decided, I suspect a lot of you know by now, to make aliyah. We're becoming Israeli citizens on August 25th when we return from the US to Israel. It's a big decision that we've made, one that will allow us to financially support ourselves while we're here in Israel and that binds us with the future of the State. Come what may, we're now (or will be) Israeli.

Secondly, I've taken a job - that will require both of us to function - as dorm parents to a post-high school Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Shvilei HaTorah. The Yeshiva is walking distance to Nishmat (Naomi's school this year) and Emek Refaim (where I lived when I was on Nativ 7 years ago) - which means that it'll be very different from where we live now. The Yeshiva has asked me to teach a little in the afternoons which will be great experience for the future.

Naomi has been accepted to a Masters program at Hebrew University in Community Development and Philanthropy Studies. Currently she's deciding between starting school or pushing it off another year so she can take time and work first.

Naomi's parents are arriving Monday night, and it's Yom Yerushalayim, the day when Jerusalem was recaptured (reunified) by Israeli forces during the 6 Day War - 41 years ago. It's another big holiday in the Israeli year so it should be pretty cool.

Due to the imminent arrival of the Oppenheim's I hope to fulfill my promise of Passover-Fein Family pictures very shortly.