42 (the meaning of life)

Hi everyone... sorry I haven't written yet about the interview... the honest reason is I've been sick. Ugh. Not sure if I was sick beforehand and just willed myself not to be, or if it was the sum-total of the stress/lack of sleep before the interview, but anyhow, I basically left the interview and was tired and sick. Such is life, eh?

The interview itself went pretty well (I think). I was actually asked very different questions than I imagined. I expected a lot of "why do you want to be a Rabbi?", "Why Reform Judaism?" type things, but instead got lots of specifics about my essays... I was asked to go into depth about my book-review in particular, which I have to say, suprised me (though I got to tell the story of how I picked it, which, for those of you who don't know, is as follows)...

it was probably around mid September, and I was awake at night, not able to sleep for a bunch of reasons (I probably hadn't graded papers that I should have, etc...), but most of all I was stressing because I felt like I should have gotten a better start on my application. So I figured the one thing I could do was go downstairs and at least pick out the book I was going to read for my "critical book-review on a book dealing with a Jewish topic". Well, I went down to my shelfs.......

When I was around 14 or 15, Grandpa Dan had given me his copy (I think it might actually be an original printing) of "As a Driven Leaf" and told me to read it... He said it was the most influencial book on his life.

He probably asked me 6-7 times if I'd read it yet, but being a pretty typical 14-15 year-old, I never did...

Well, as I'm pretty sure everyone knows, Grandpa died not long after that, and instantly this book was too holy to read. I couldn't read it just any day. I kept thinking that some Yom Kipur (Grandpa's Yarzteit) I would sit down and read it, but I never did.

Back to that night, not-sleaping, down by my bookshelfs:

There it was, looking right at me, and I knew that this of all times would be the perfect time to read it. So I picked it up, and there it was.

That was the story I told everyone there.

So it was questions like this that occured during my interview. I'm not really sure what to feal about the process itself, as it was very different than I had expected, but my overall vibes, I guess, are pretty positive.

****

I'm not really sure if it's the let-down from the interview being over, being sick, or what actually is going on, but I'm also feeling more sour about the Ulpan program.

The director of the Ulpan called me up in Jerusalem (while I was there for my interview), and asked me where I was. I told him I was at my interview, that I had told him (and we had talked about it) roughly 10,000,000,000 times (i think I said 5-6, which is probably correct). Well, long-story short, he denied it, and when I got back he proceeded to tell me that my punishment for not telling him (for the record, the first time I ever told him was at the FIRST MEETING THE TWO OF US HAD) was that I had to work Friday night in the Kitchen (filling in for, this being the part he didn't tell me, the 1/3 of my Ulpan group who has quit so far...)...

I don't mind the work, per-say, and in fact I really like the people who work there, and while I'm working, really enjoy it. It was just the fact that I really felt like I was being taken advantage of (in fact, when we later checked HIS written schedule, I would see that my name was written down on both of the days I was gone... He said he only saw it on one, until I pointed it out to him on HIS schedule. This didn't make him happy, and he proceeded to explain something to me until it was my fault again, the exact line of reasoning, I never really followed.). Then he told me that since Dov (hahaha---the French roomate comes back to haunt me again!) quit, I was going to have to work in the market instead of with the kids. At 7 in the morning. And that I would no longer have a lunch break (I would get lunch, it just wouldn't be on their time...which everyone else gets). I asked him if this was a punishment, and he viehmently said no, that his hands were tied, which I can understand...

It just meant that all of a sudden because 1/3 of the people had left the Ulpan, I have to move away from the job I love (and that they love me at), to a new job, with worse hours (and 4 more hours a week of it, to cover the people who left)... Ugh.

Sorry about the complaining, I just needed to rant a little on that...

That being said, outside of that part of it, I'm really enjoying everything there. The people are wonderful, my host family is wonderful, and the Hebrew is really going well....

In particular, I keep being suprised at how well liked I am by my fellow Ulpanists (though I think they think I'm a little lame....I walked into a party the other night (I'll admit, I was going to ask them to turn down their music so I could sleep....), and they were screaming and jumping in excitment that I was there... It was a little as if I had walked into an off-campus party last year, and my residents from Macalester were there.... I guess once an RA, always an RA... I ended up having a lot of fun, and even stayed up TWENTY-FIVE EXTRA MINUTES!


Hope everyone is doing well---

Much love,


Daniel