January 2007

So I need to remind myself never to go more than one Shabbat without writing! I’ve had so many experiences, all extremely interesting and many quite foreign to me: a day of touring the Galil valley and the Kineret (Sea of Galilee), erev Shabbat dinner in the home of a Druze family, celebrating their holiday of Chag HaKorban (Day of Sacrifice—only the Druze religion is a secret one, so I never found out the significance of the day. It is also celebrated in Islam as an Eid, but apparently for a different reason.)

Also, learning about the migration and living habits of cormorants (as thousands of them perched and swooped among the trees around and above us. They are quite large birds, and manage to sit quite easily on what appear to be small branches!) This last was with Galron alto Pnina Gershoni and her husband. Their son Noam, who was injured so terribly this summer, was finally released from hospital and is back in his own apartment, though attending physical therapy every day. It is a miracle that he survived and has recovered to the extent he has, so far. But people come from all over the world to Israel’s trauma centers because they are the most advanced in the world (sadly because they have had to be.)

Another lovely Shabbat dinner with Aliza and Tzvika Regev, a wonderful luncheon party with some Galron singers and spouses at Ronit and Razy Goldbergs’s house, and a memorable weekday dinner with Shuka Pinsberg and his wife Ronit. Ronit Pinsberg grew up on a moshav (farm) and is yet another amazing cook! Simple dishes, perfectly cooked, with the best vegetables—one little gem after another. She was disturbed at the thought of me cooking for myself, and sent me home with leftovers from the dinner, soup, grilled chicken breasts, potatoes, avocados, oranges, and sweets. Truly overwhelming hospitality everywhere I go.

But even with the steady and inventive attention from my friends and their friends, and all of your many emails, which I just love getting, some of this experience has been hard.
I am the proverbial “stranger in a strange land.”

My Hebrew improves slowly—even writing and reading as well as I do, to live and get around, you gotta read the signs, and the bank statements, and the phone bills! Translating or just getting the idea of names and contents of shops, signs inside government buildings, and the forms there, and labels in the grocery store (I only buy things that have the picture of their contents on the outside! Fortunately the goat cheese has a goat on it, etc.) And a typical day includes the language classes, entirely in Hebrew, so constantly I am lost just in the homework directions, for example. And up and down four (4—arbah!) flights of stairs 5, 6, 7 times a day!

So one day I was listening to an amazing CD—drummer/singer Shlomo Gronich and the Sheba Choir, made up of Ethiopian children who have made aliyah with their families (sometimes, without) and they sang the African American spiritual “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home, a long way from home.” And I had another of those “what was I thinking?” moments!

And then the phone rang, and it was someone who had heard about me and knew I sing, and did I want to sing with their group on Tuesday nights? “It’s a new group and we’d love to have you!” This is a group that is made up of members of a Reform synagogue in Rosh HaAyin (east of Tel Aviv) but they don’t sing for services (OK—that is weird to me and I will tell you more after I attend services there tonight.) So I said yes, and they picked me up, and I sang with them. Everyone is amazed at how quickly I pick up their music—but I have had to sight read and learn quickly for a long time—good practice!

A “long way from home” but no longer that lonely child.

This week I cooked a dinner for a party my flatmate and I had, to send off one of her best friends who leaves the merkaz next week—somehow with 2 saucepans and one sauté pan, I made a feast (kosher dairy, no less!) of brushetta, risotto with veg. broth from scratch, and the four of us ate nearly everything. New local strawberries with cream for dessert…But cooking for me means being home, so the circle is complete!

So, to Galron (the Koleiniks want to know this!) Finally last Sunday (after 2 rehearsals in which I was overwhelmed and seriously thinking I wouldn’t succeed) we rehearsed only with Gali (she is a firecracker of a gorgeous young woman who choreographs our songs for performance. She also is gentle and encouraging and knew I was really stretching. Somehow with her guidance, I managed to sway, step and sing through 3 hours worth of repertoire. I had all the notes (remember, the alto!) and most of the words at least of what we rehearsed that evening! So I certainly feel better about that!

Because of Aliza and my Galron family my life is so much better than it might have been! I don’t have a car, so people have to shlep me everywhere (when I can’t walk, which I still love to do!) And because I have been here before, I know just enough people to be greeted wherever I go—as if people are waiting for me. It’s the most amazing feeling.

One special experience was attending the Kfar Saba Partnership 2000 Steering Committee meeting—the counterpart to the committee I worked with in Columbus! Aliza drove, and we met at the Chatzav Veteran Art Center (Koleiniks will remember that special place where physically and psychologically wounded soldiers come for art therapy, and prove the magic of the human drive for creativity!) And there were Ilan Jarus, Shai Felber, and Janine Gelley! It was a great pleasure to chat with them and to open the meeting (at Aliza’s insistence, really!) singing “Mi HaIsh” (yes, Aliza on soprano, and me doing my best on alto!) And then to hear the reports about the P2K projects for which I voted funding as a member of the Federation’s Allocation Committee.

Incidentally, here in Israel, if you say you sing, you’d better be prepared to do so! I have given command performances in the language classes (the music teacher was late, and the other class took forever to file into the classroom,) and my teacher said, “Seendy, sing!” So I sang “Tzena, Tzena” and she sang along and clapped, and then started “Kol HaOlam Kulo” which I took up, and she and I at least had a grand old time! Sadly, only one or two of the other students knew them…it is nice to know that the kids at TBS do!

Another time we were “talking”—at the beginning of class, about ourselves and what we do, in Hebrew. I had my Ipod shuffle (thanks, Isaac!) and the teacher asked what I was listening to, and when I said “Sasha Argov” (one of the great Israeli composers/lyricists) she asked what was my favorite song, and then made me sing it! So this week when we learned “moom-cheh” the Hebrew for “expert” she said as a fill-in-the-blank, “Seendy moom-chah b’_______” and the class, in one voice, answered “singing!” I think that bodes well for my future!

And all of my friends, Israeli, Danish, French, Columbian, Uruguayan, etc, etc, have the best time laughing at me, as I prove that I read well, write eloquently, sing passably in Hebrew, and completely fall apart when I have to speak! I am assured that “it will come—how long have you been here, 3-4 months?” and when I say, well, 3 weeks, they laugh even more and tell me that I must have “sahv-lah-noot”—patience!

Well, I cannot tell you everything—who has time to read all of this? But all of you are on my mind, and every day there is something that makes me think of you and how I wish you or your kids could see it with me.

Yallah, yallah—yes, I am new here, and still “high.” But I am always new, right?