Oh God

[On the drive back from Bet Shemesh.]

Some musings on the nature of the Almighty, from the always inquisitive mind of Ariella:

1. So when Hashem made Adam and Chava, She (Ariella, the post-feminist, always refers to God in the feminine) decided how people would look, right? Like they would have two arms and legs and a mouth and nose and eyes. And then when Adam and Chava had children, they all looked that way. [Pause.]

2. If Hashem messed up, She could just crumple it up and start again. [Pause.] I think maybe Hashem drew everything out on paper and then made the people.

3. Where is Hashem? Is Hashem air? [Well, in some ways you could compare Hashem to air, because Hashem is all over the place, just like air.]

4. [CLAP!] There, I just killed air, does that mean I just killed Hashem?

[Screech! Me, swerving the car, to avoid the gigantic lightning bolt heading straight toward us.] Well, you can't kill air just by clapping it in your hands. Air is always there, it changes, but you can't destroy it. The same way Hashem is always around, no matter what.

5. Well how can Hashem see everyone all at once? [That is just one of those special things about Hashem. Hashem (notice the studious avoidance of pronouns on my part) can be everywhere, all the time.]

6. Is Hashem a cloud? [Hashem is like nothing in the world. Hashem created all the things in the world, so Hashem cannot be any of those things. It's hard to understand. Mommy doesn't understand it, Daddy doesn't understand it. Maybe Yaakov gets it.]

7. But people made things like roads and streets, right? [Yes, Hashem made people smart enough to make all these things we need.]

8. Will I have time to do fuse beads when we get home?

Me Speakeded in Hebrew Today

Well, folks, the second graders at the school I subbed in today seem to have survived their experience with the immigrant teacher. Yes, my accent I'm sure sounded like nails on a blackboard to the poor kids, the Hebrew equivalent of, "Cheeeldren, plez to take you seats now," and I mixed up masculine and feminine with shocking abandon. (At least one child corrected my Hebrew.) But, the children, for the most part, did the assignments, so I assume they were able to understand at least a few words of what I said. I was substituting for my friend, who teaches English to the Hebrew-speakers, so I could handle the content. (What letter does "gorilla" start with?) Also, it was the same activity 3 times, which made it a little easier.

Also, you don't need to be fluent in any language to give students The Look.

Later, after picking up the kids from gan/school, they decided they wanted to play in the park outside of Yaakov's gan. Usually, I am able to convince them that what they really want to do is go home, let Mommy change into pajamas, and then play/read/finish homework/watch videos. Not that I have anything against the park, it's just I am very much pro-pajamas. After 4:00 - barring any late-evening playdates, birthday parties, or meetings - I am all jammied up.

But today, they won. Ariella's friend was at the park, and since she hadn't seen in her a whole fifteen minutes, it was imperative that they play together. Then Yaakov's friend (I know, you're shocked, so was I, but apparently he does have friends other than himself!) showed up also. They were running around pretending to be airplanes. The park becomes a gathering place post-gan, once all the moms come get their kids. So we were all hanging out, and I had yet more opportunities to speak in the holy tongue with the fellow gan mommies. Phew! Zat eez much of Hebrew today. I sink is time for to take a breaking of Hebrew.

Question for Discussion:

1. Do schools even have blackboards anymore?

2. Most people who meet Donny compliment his Hebrew within seconds of talking with him. ("You've only been here a year and a half? Wow - your Hebrew is amazing!" And by the way, Donny's thinking of telling people he's been here "a year and a half" for many years to come. They're much more impressed that way.) When I meet people, however, their reaction is, "You've only been here a year and a half? Wow - your kids' Hebrew is amazing!" Do you think this has something to do with my Hebrew? Or am I simply meeting the wrong people?

The Gloved One

Now, I know you've all been dying to know: Did Yaakov wear anything strange today when he went to gan?
And the answer is: In fact he did! He insisted on wearing socks. On his hands. Luckily, he consented to wear another pair on his feet; just as luckily, there are no gloves to be found in our apartment (thanks to our 80-degree winter.)

He put them on this morning, and I let him wear them into the car, thinking he would take them off before gan. But no. As we marched into gan, other parents were giving him, then me, strange looks. He went in by himself (kol hakavod!), so I did not get a chance to explain to the ganenet that no, he is not, God forbid, diseased or badly damaged. Just strange. (I actually called gan after dropping him off, just to reassure them of this. He's b'seder. Just strange.)

I don't know how long he had them on for, but in the afternoon, the morah told me she was pleading with him to remove them, as it was, like we discussed earlier, rather balmy. In the end he did take them off, and they were in his tik when I picked him up. All ready for tomorrow.

In other Yaakov news, he informed Ariella that when she was a baby, Mommy let him hold her. Ariella patiently tried to explain how this event would have been impossible, but Yaakov is blessed with the ability to ignore incontrovertible evidence. He also insists that every baby picture of Ariella is, in fact, really of him. Because how can it be that the family - nay, the world! - existed before Yaakov Lev??????
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From the title of my book on child-rearing ("Leave Me Alone so I Can Read the Paper,") you may have deduced that I firmly believe that the best kind of parenting is when you have to parent very little at all. So it was with great pride and happiness that I report to you the following events of Shabbat morning:

Kids got up. Ariella helped Yaakov with the bathroom. She got them both breakfast (my job is to take out the bowls and the Shabbat cereal the night before.) After breakfast, they sat on the couch and Ariella read (!) to Yaakov the book he brought home from gan.

Ahhhh.....Shabbat bliss. It lasted until after SEVEN O'CLOCK. (If I see a "7" on the clock on Shabbat morning instead of a "6," I'm a happy woman.) When, inevitably, one of the following occurred: someone's hair was pulled, someone was called stupid, someone didn't listen to someone else's rules, someone sat in someone else's spot, etc. etc. etc. One of the myriad reasons they proceed to beat the #$#$*& out of each other.

But, until 7:something, it was a beautiful thing.
כן ירבו

Stay tuned: Tomorrow I sub again - this time in Hebrew!!

I Know What You're Thinking

A wise old person once said: "When there is no more room in your cup holders for your coffee, it's time to throw away the old coffee cups."
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Question: Do you think I am traumatizing Yaakov for life by discussing his bed-wetting issue on Facebook? And now, apparently, on the blog? I'm hoping that by the time he's old enough to care, "Facebook" and "blogging" will be archaic relics of the past; instead we will all be zapping Mind Messages to each other. (It could be dangerous, so of course you'd have to check off in your brain which thoughts are "Private" which are for "Friends" which are for "Friends of Friends" and which are for "Everyone." You'd want to avoid broadcasting to the world, that while it looks like you're talking to your coworker about blabbedy blah, what's really on your mind is whether your husband mailed that thing, and if he didn't, how you are absolutely going to kill him because it has to be in this week, and you've reminded him over and over and as usual, he waited until the last minute, and then, wait, is the umbrella in the car? Or did I bring it in with me? Shoot.)

In other exciting news, this has been a week of two Loyal Readers, and one loyal reader. As you know, lower-case loyal reader "Rachel" has been in Israel this past week, gallivanting around Modi'in and Jerusalem. Then, on Monday, I got to have lunch with Loyal Reader "SaraK," also visiting the Holy Land during this holiday season. SaraK is one of those rare people who, instead of saying, "I'm going to be in Israel, maybe we can go out?" and then promptly forgetting all about it, actually did call me and we went to - don't you know this by now? - the MALL, where we had lunch at Roladin and then Frozen Yogurt with Stuff In It.

While at Roladin, we ran into my Cousin and Friend Ahava, also doing some Holy Land gallivanting this week. Tonight, Leezy, Ahava, and I had a Cousins and Friends dinner at Angelo's. (Which is - are you sitting? - not in the mall. Hey, you gotta have some variety in life.)

And then everyone returns to their respective places and jobs and families. Life goes back to its normal, every day normalness, with lots of wet laundry and no excuse to go out for lunch and dinner and Frozen Yogurt With Stuff In It. So if any local Loyal Readers would like to get together this week and make up some reason to celebrate (the groceries are finally put away!), let me know. Just send me a Mind Message.

"Zeh Lo Kashur Elay"

Well. It seems I am behind in my blogging - writing one, reading other people's, commenting, etc. Tsk tsk on me. Naturally, since I am American, I will shift the blame to someone else - namely my friend Rachel. Since I am Israeli, I will now charge her a two shekel fee.

Rachel is here visiting from the Old Country. She arrived on Monday, and since then, I have been showing her the exciting sites of Modi'in, then leaving her to her own devices in the afternoon when I go tutor. She is becoming very close with our couches.

So far, our Tour of Modi'in has included such famous locales as:

1. The Mall!
2. Ofer's Falafel!
3. The Mall - Again!
4. The Frozen Yogurt with Stuff In It Stand at, you guessed it, The Mall!
5. Bank Discount, where I attempted to get a new password, their computer crashed whilst dealing with me, and then of course, I had to go to two separate ATM's in order to deposit a check and take out cash.
6. Bank Discount is, naturally, located in...The Mall!
7. And the tour ends with the unbeatable, the thrilling, Inside of our Apartment.


So Rachel was surely saddened to leave the excitement of Modi'in for the staid, boring town of Jerusalem. But we bid her farewell on Thursday morning (though she will be returning for one last night on the town next week.)
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On Thursday, I met with our two interior designers, Donny and Shikma. Donny has probably been spending nearly as much time as Shikma making pictures of our bedroom, kitchen, hallway, and various "nishas." He is having waaaaaay too much fun.

Shikma and Donny talked business. I also contributed to the design discussion, coming up with, what I think, are some truly innovative ideas.


1. Whenever there isn't enough room for something - suspend it from the ceiling! Okay, it doesn't work for everything, like the toilet, but it is certainly a space-saving idea.


2. A conveyor belt from the kitchen to the dining room table! How annoying is it to always be running back and forth when you're setting the table, and then you finally sit down but forget to bring the salt? Well, in my ground-breaking idea, everything would be on a conveyor belt, and you could just pluck off what you need as it comes around! Why this hasn't been installed everywhere is beyond me. But, then, geniuses are always misunderstood in their time.

So we sat around looking at floor plans, Donny saying intelligent things and me, eyes slowly glazing over, turning the papers around to figure out which way is up, and finally, a la Joey from "Friends," putting all the sheets on the floor and stepping inside of them.

In other exciting apartment news, our bank lost half a million shekels! Of ours! (Note: The bank we are using for the apartment transactions is not our usual one, and I will omit the name for security reasons. Instead, I will say only that its letters can be rearranged to spell "Fearsome Junk Lab.")

Immediately after signing the contract, our kablan, Shapir, told us to go pay right right right away. So we transferred about NIS 500,000 (unfortunately, you can't pay Shapir in poofahs) from our branch of the bank, which is located in a far away, unnamed city, to a branch that is closer. I went to the closer branch ASAP, brought the "shovar" (Hebrew for "piece of paper in which you transfer all of your life savings to the kablan, only to have the money lost en route") and paid. The nice guy at the bank - let's call him "Fearsome" - took out his holy stamper, stamped my shovar, and sent me on my way.

"That's it?" I asked dubiously, surely there would be something else I needed to do. Like pay a fee.

"That's it!" he replied cheerfully.

Famous last words.

A week later, Shapir had not yet received the money. It was no longer in our account, but not quite in theirs. Well, where is it? Was there a bottleneck in the wires? We called our banker.

"Well, all that it says here is that the money has been transferred to another branch. What you need to do is call the other branch."

Donny calls and explains the problem. His response?

"Zeh lo kashur elay!" (This has nothing to do with me!)

But Donny was able to convince Fearsome that because he took the shovar and stamped it with his holy stamper, it IS, in fact, kashur elav.

"Hmmmm," he pondered, mulling over out point. "Okay, you have a fair point." (This is Fearsome's MO: Deny first, acquiesce later, after faced with incontrovertible evidence. When I first came with the shovar, he said "Ee efshar!" Impossible! Once I explained that we had transferred our money, reminded him that he spoke with the other branch about this, etc. etc., he consented to admit that it was, in fact, efshar.)

It took a few days and few phone calls, but we heard back from the other brach with the following cryptic message: "Today, I sent the copies [of the shovar, presumably?] to the bank in front of me [Shapir's bank, we hope?]"

So. There is a fairly good chance that Shapir has the money and won't give our apartment away to someone else. If he does, I hope those people like sofas suspended from the ceiling.

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And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the new year, Gregorian as it is. Happy 2010! Now I really need to stop writing "2008" on my checks.

Ariella Beats the System

A digression on education.

Ariella is a fantastic reader. She can pretty much pick up any book in Hebrew (provided it's vowel-inated) and read it. In this way, she has now reached my own level of reading proficiency. Never mind the 24-year age difference. She actually sat and read the Hebrew-English dictionary on Friday night. And was very dismayed to find out that while "Ari" was an entry, "Ariella" was not.

However, she does not always understand all of the words. When I do her homework with her, I always ask her to summarize the paragraph in English. If we come across a word she doesn't know, we look it up. You'd think, why look it up? This is first grade reading - can't you just translate it for her? But, if you thought that, you'd be wrong. Many of these words are far beyond my meager vocabulary. For example, thus far, not one story has consisted entirely of the words "Shalom! Mah Shlomech?"

I noticed that the ever-elusive "they" pick words that fit with the sounds they want to teach, but are not necessarily a first-grade-level word. For example, I can't tell you how many stories centered on a "chakah" - a fishing rod. I also can't tell you how many of these children spend weekends with their dads fishing for trout, but I'm guessing it's not a whole lot. The Hebrew word for "molt" has also appeared from time to time. Because when they're not casting a line, the children are clearly watching their pet toucan lose its feathers.

Of course, we do the same thing in English. Many of those "early reader" books love to include words like "jig" and "rig." Yes, easy to read and fits with the rule, but not words first graders have a whole lot of experience with.
(From my early reader, Reading Fun with Aliyahbyaccident
"Come on kids, hop into Dad's rig for a fun day on the lake!"
"Do you have your fishing rod?"
"We'll leave Matty here; he's molting."
"Mo-o-o-o-o-m, Meg is dancing a jig again! Can't you make her stop!"
"If you kids don't stop fighting, I'll turn this rig around right now!!"
Reading comprehension questions:
1. Do you think it's safe to "hop" onto a rig? Explain.
2. How do you think Matty feels, being left all along just because he's molting?
3. Do you think Meg is dancing on purpose, to annoy her siblings? I do. Discuss
4. Did your dad also threaten to turn the car around "right now?" Did he ever actually do it? Mine either. Yet the threat worked, every time.)

But onto Ariella. She doesn't care that she doesn't understand the words. As long as she can
A) Read the words correctly
B) Answer the questions correctly

For example, in one story, a cow kicked over a pitcher of milk. (Those darn cows!) Ariella had no idea that the word "ba'atah" meant "kick." But, using her powers of deduction, she was correctly able to answer the question, "What did the cow do?" In a strange way, we're very proud of her. Though we continue to look up words in the dictionary. In case she ever adopts a macaw.

Meanwhile, Yaakov knows and understands lots. But he refuses to impart his information to us. If you ask him a question, he screws up his face in concentration, makes up a totally nonsense word, then laughs hysterically at us.
"Yaakov, how do you say 'share?'"
[Pause.] "Savta skantooza!" (This is Ariella and Yaakov's favorite phrase.)
Maniacal laughter.

It's just not right. He should really savta skantooza his knowledge with us.

Lunch

Breakfast is easy. Cereal. Lots of it. Ariella and I probably go through 3 boxes a week. Yaakov eats too, but nowhere near the cereal consumption of his sister and me.

But unfortunately, a few hours later I am hungry again. The mid-morning snack of yogurt did little to tide me over.

Time to do the Lunch Dance.

A two-step to the fridge. Anything leftover from dinner last night? I think hopefully, knowing the answer in advance because it was I, of course, who made dinner last night.
Nope, nothing there.

Well, since I'm already here at the fridge, let's see what other glorious treats will present themselves to me! Yogurt....cucumbers.....oranges......sliced cheese.......3 containers of tomato sauce because I keep opening cans and not finishing them and putting the remains in a container, only to forget about it the next time I need tomato sauce, so I open a new can, and don't finish it....2 containers of olives (see above)....ewwww, what IS that, let's just toss that right now....expired cottage cheese.....one chicken leg from last Shabbat, well, I'll just keep that in there until the Great Erev Shabbat Fridge Clean Out....and....we're closing the fridge.

No problem! I'm just going to look in the freezer! Surely all manner of culinary delights await me in there! I do the Jig of Anticipatory Happiness.

Okay...what can you do with two raw pieces of chicken, some frozen corn on the cob that's may have actually come with the freezer, yeast, and half a bar of dark chocolate? Uh-oh, the half-finished container of Ben & Jerry's that I bought as a "treat" (new flavor - Banana Split, totally worth the 30 gazillion shekels I spent on it. For Donny and me of course; don't show the kids.) It's staring at me. Quick, close the freezer before that becomes the "all-finished container of Ben & Jerry's." And the Jig is up.

We're moving on to the pantry. A little twirl and pirouette or two (I did take ballet, you know.)There is going to be something soooo fabulous in that pantry, that when I see it I will let out a shriek of unadulterated joy.

Jelly. Peanuts. More tomato sauce. Tea bags. Polenta. (Not sure what I'm going to do with it, because I've never cooked with it before in my life, but it seemed interesting. Still sitting there, unopened.) All manner of uncooked beans, pasta, and oats. Ketchup. One...two....no, three bags of opened petitim! DON'T LET ME BUY ANY MORE AT THE STORE NEXT WEEK!

We now begin the Slow Waltz of Lunch Letdown.

Another yogurt, anyone?