Nivim and Unfunny stuff

First of all, thanks to Momz and her close reading of the blog. She caught a mistake I made during my "strudel" rant - apparently I put the "nekudah" in the wrong place. Oy vavoy! I apologize to anyone who tried to use that email address (blahblahblah@.walla.co.il) Good thing she caught that - I have now fixed the mistake, and Momz, I say to you, "WALLA!"

BREAKING NIVIM NEWS....BREAKING NIVIM NEWS....BREAKING NIVIM NEWS

Thank you to my Loyal Anonymous Reader (you know who you are) who sent me my own copy of the BYLine (the Bais Yaakov alumni newsletter.) As promised, the teacher interviewed is none other than.....Mrs. Steinhart, of Nivim fame! Apparently, I am not the only one whose sole memory of "Ivrit" in Bais Yaakov is memorizing nivim! In fact, so enamored are the alumni of their stockpile of nivim that Mrs. Steinhart has created an "Alumni Nivim Contest!" No, I am really not joking! (I kinda wish I was, though!) There are 10 nivim printed on the newsletter - actually a photocopy of Mrs. Steinhart's own handwriting, how nostalgic - and whoever can explain seven of them correctly will be entered into a raffle. In addition - yes, folks, it gets better! - if you remember the English idioms that Mrs. Steinhart taught us for two of the nivim, you get entered - are you sitting? are you ready for this? - a SECOND time! Ohmigod! I might actually plotz from the excitement! All I can say is, tovim hashnayim min ha'echad, baby! (Sadly, that is not one of the ten). I am DEFINITELY going to... bring this into ulpan on Sunday and show Irit, because she will get a kick out of it.


Now, as you may have heard, there is a war going on here in Israel. I haven't said much (read: anything) about it because, frankly, it's not very funny. However, Ariella and I became part of the "war effort" yesterday. There is a program in a couple of cities in Israel to bring homemade cookies to the chayalim. So a woman in Modi'in was coordinating the effort here, and I figured it seemed like a worthwhile thing to do. We like chayalim, we like cookies - what better than to bring them together? Yesterday, Ariella and I made very festive sugar cookies (but not the kind you have to roll out because we have NO CLUE where our rolling pin is, so we made the kind you refrigerate and then cut.) This was the first time Ariella had heard about this war. It could be they're doing something in gan, maybe saying a special tefillah or something, but if they are, she has no clue. So I was explaining about the war, and how we're very safe here in Modi'in (which is true - it's kind of strange how life is completely normal here, in terms of going to school, shopping, etc. As Donny said, if there was a war raging in New Jersey, you can bet that people in New York wouldn't be going about their daily lives. But that's how it is here.) Anyway, I told her that that the chayalim might be sad because they miss their families and they might want a treat, so we are going to bake cookies and draw them a picture. Ariella had, as you can imagine, a number of questions. (She likes to thoroughly investigate an issue from all angles. Don't even ask about our numerous discussions about how babies get in and out.)
1. When do the soldiers sleep?
2. Do they have to fight in the night?
3. Do they have time to eat?
4. Are the bad guys like Yaakov? 'Cuz he can be bad sometimes. [Yes, but he's little and he's not trying to really hurt anyone.] Oh. These bad guys are big. They should know better.
5. Should we give cookies to the bad guys? 'Cuz maybe they're hungry also. [No.]

Today I dropped off the cookies at the woman's house. Apparently I'm not the only one. When I got to ulpan, my teacher told us that she has a nephew in the army, and he came home for a weekend and said, "I don't even want to LOOK at another cookie!" (Well, it's the thought that counts.) In Super-why-don't-you-sign-up-for-our-credit-card-sol, they have boxes of goodies - energy bars, chocolates, Bissli, etc - you can buy at a discounted price that they will send to army bases. So I did that also. Basically our chayalim will be coming home from this operation very fat. They are going to have to roll these guys home. "Come on [grunt]... help me push Katzav...up....this...last...hill. Shoulda...laid off....that last....sugar cookie."
Anyway, the "matzav" is obviously on our minds at all times and we are hoping this war ends quickly and that the good guys win.