Orientation Week

So this past week I finally got to meet my classmates at HUC. Monday was our first official day of orientation. I had most of the morning to myself to wake up, eat, and head over to school for our first event at 4pm. We got to schmooze for a little bit and get to know each other before moving in to the sanctuary for some welcoming words from the director of the program and the head of student life. They spoke about what we should expect from the year and how, while this is only the beginning, we will not believe how fast this year will go and how quickly we will return to these same places and have very similar conversations in just 11 short months. After that we broke into small groups to get to know each other a little better. The interns (Bess, Brandon, and Udi) created questions to have us share our answers to as we went around and introduced ourselves. My favorite question was "what was a significant moment you had in the last year while wearing the shoes you have on right now?" I was wearing the shoes I wore at graduation, and responded accordingly. Other people had much more interesting answers like they wore these shoes when they were traveling the world or they just bought these shoes a few hours ago. Ater our ice breakers, we went outside for a lovely Israeli dinner. It was delicious and good to get to talk to people in an unstructured setting. After dinner, we went for a walk towards the old city and sat while we listened to four HUC ordained rabbis come and speak to us about what we should take away from this year. It was really cool to hear what they and to say about their experiences in Israel just a few years ago while sitting in front of the the walls of the old city which had seen hundreds of thousands of people in its lifetime. 

Tuesday I woke up early (745) to get to school for t'fillah (services). I pretty much had goosebumps during the entire service. I loved praying with these people. Listening to everyone sing with different harmonies, hearing their voices fill the worship hall, and just feeling the warmth of this community was an incredible feeling I can't wait to re experience throughout the year. It just felt right, like I was meant to be doing this with these people in this place. After services, we started our day of expectations. The provost of the university came and welcomed us, then the director of the program laid out some academic expectations. After a coffee break and lunch, we did another round of ice breaker activities before defining our own expectations of ourselves, our peers, and our teachers in the classroom and community. 

Wednesday was not a very exciting day because it started out with two hours of placement exams for my summer Hebrew class and biblical archeology class. I just found out however that I made it into the third level of Hebrew for the summer (out of four) which is kind of exciting and scary at the same time. Exciting that I did so well on my test but scary that I'm gonna be expected to talk at a kita gimmel level (level 3). After a coffee and cake break (they are really keen on giving us coffee and cake everyday, an expectation that we are getting used to, but know that it's one that won't continue once our actual classes begin), we did our final getting to know you activity, this one slightly more serious than previous ones. They asked us a series of questions and we moved from one end of the plaza to the other depending on whether we agreed or disagreed with the statement. They started out as lighthearted (like I am certain to take in a stray Israeli cat this year) to more serious (like I am conflicted about living in Jerusalem as a reform Jew). It was interesting to see where people stood and even more interesting to hear why they stood where they did. After that we had a break for a few hours before being split up to walk in and learn about different neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Naturally, I was placed in the group that went to a neighborhood furthest from my home (because they sorted the groups based on phone number and not our living locations).  

Today we had t'fillah again and it was just as beautiful as Tuesday, although I'm really excited for when my classmates and I start leading each week. After that we got to meet some of our professors. We met the director of ulpan (Hebrew class) who explained the schedule and expectations for summer Hebrew. Then we did a text study session with our bible teachers (we were expected to study four texts in forty minutes; we barely got through two of them before we ran out of time). After our usual coffee and cake we were split up into groups by our Israel seminar teacher to go and explore different streets in Jerusalem. We were asked to speak to Israelis and get to know a little bit about the history of the streets and about the customs of the people who live and work on them. My group met a very nice Nicaraguan security guard who invited us to come back and see him again, but not next week because his mother is in town. It was uncomfortable to try and speak to people in Hebrew and to interrupt their day. I don't think this exercise would have worked very well in a place like New York. We came back to discuss our various experiences before having a ten minute break. Or penultimate event was listening to a lecture from Yossi Klein HaLevy, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman institute who spoke about how we should frame our year in Israel from a political perspective. Usually political talks do not interest me. I don't feel that I know enough to intelligently participate in a conversation, so I usually tune out and disengage from the conversation. However, he spoke incredibly well and in a way that I could understand what he was saying. I was also incredibly impressed with the questions my peers asked and the poise in which Mr. HaLevy answered them. It was a really good talk and I might even read the book he wrote that's coming out in October. Or last event of the week is a walking tour. I chose the rooftop tour with intern Udi, which will hopefully give me some beautiful views of the capital city. Tomorrow is a day off before Shabbat which we will celebrate as an HUC community, and Saturday we will have a havdallah (separation) ceremony not only between Shabbat and the rest of the week but between orientation and the start of our school year. 

If I learned anything this week, it was (as everyone kept telling us) to get out of our comfort zones and try something new, meet new people, go to new places, and really make Jerusalem and Israel our home for the year. Hopefully when school starts I'll write more frequently so these posts won't be that long.