Avivaderci!

Ok. I am going to try this blog thing one more time. It seems to be the thing to do when you go off on a year-long adventure. I was thinking of just sticking to twitter but with only 140 characters to update people on events in my life, I could tell it isn’t going to be enough; while I am going to update twitter and Facebook and the whole shebang, I will have this blog to go more in-depth with my adventures. Learning from experience, though, people will be more inclined to read entries on the shorter side than the longer side, so I am going to do my best and try to keep my entries short. Of course, if it appears that those of you reading this blog are interested in reading more, well, you all likely know me and know that I am rarely at a loss for words.

That being said, I will contradict myself now. In just about 48 hours, I will board my plane that will take me on my 10 month venture in Israel. I am nervous, excited and in the process of stuffing my suitcases full of everything I want and feel I need to live comfortable for that amount of time.

My first stop is Haifa, which, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Israel, is a North West city along the Mediterranean Ocean and built upon a mountain called Mt. Carmel. I will be spending approximately three weeks there, studying Hebrew at the University of Haifa and hopefully frequenting the beach often.

At the end of August I move onto Jerusalem where I will be spending the remaining nine months studying at an institution called The Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. I will engage in the study of classical Jewish texts including Torah, Talmud, Jewish law, Jewish philosophy and much more. My experiences over the next year are going to be a perfect compliment to my graduate studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary, which I will complete upon my return to the states.

It hasn’t quiet hit me that I am about to do all this. Part of me thinks it’s because it’s such a break from the path I am used to taking, a path that is linear (aka: high school to college, college to job, job for a couple of years to grad school and ultimately grad school to job). Of course, that is typical, predictable and boring. Nevertheless, my brain cannot seem to

Hopefully I will be diligent enough to update this blog on a regular basis. I had promised that two years ago when I started grad school. Go ahead, take a look at my three previous entries. My aspirations for a grad school blog fell by the way side when I realized that I rarely left the bubble that is the Upper West Side and all I really did was go to school and teach religious school. While there were things that occurred on the Upper West Side/at school/at religious school, I guess I felt they weren’t worthy of broadcasting to the world in bits larger than a Facebok or gchat status. Of course, a year in Israel is a little bit different. So, to play off of how I closed my first blog entry (you should read it, it’s pretty clever):

Follow me as I trek to the Holyland where things don’t quite work in the way they should and breakfast consists of vegetables, cheeses, and bread with nutella (this is notable because I am a huge fan of American breakfasts and they just don’t know how to do that in Israel); Laugh with me as I attempt to use my mediocre Hebrew to get around and get things done while everyone insists on practicing their English and experience with me , my adventures, my learning and my transformation (or whatever) as I attempt to navigate the next 10 months of my life over 5,000 miles away from home.