The wonder of Site Meter

Go to the very bottom of this page. Can you see the little colored cube? That´s the site meter of this blog. If you click on it, it will tell you who and where checked the blog in the past couple of days. It is a great way of finding out who reads the posts even if the readers don´l leave any messages. This way, I can guess that yesterday, the site was read by Aviad in Tel Aviv, Josh in Dalas, Tom in Notre Dame, two of the many people I know in New York and New Jersey and probably Ondra and Anna and perhaps Shmil here in Prague (just click on "by location" in the left hand column.) I love technology!

Just a brief note

Thanks to Ondra for helping me to change the timezone on this web! Now the time at the end of each post shows the time in Prague and not in California. Great! Thanks a lot.

The pros and cons of living in Prague

Last week I met my friend Pnina in the Beit Midrash of the JCC to start what we plan to be a regular once-a-week chavruta for the study of Mishna (we started with Kiddushin, which will be a much needed chazarah (revising) of my last year´s class of Mishna with Josh Kulp. ) Pnina spent the past year in Israel studying history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She came back to Prague a couple of days ago only to finish her studies at Charles University in Prague before going back to Israel to make alyiah (to immigrate to Israel.) When we met, Pnina shared with me her discomfort of being back in Prague. She misses Israel a lot and finds it hard to slip back into her Czech life. Naturally, I understood her mixed feelings very well, especially knowing how much she wants to move to Israel and how much this is important for her. As I have mentioned earlier, as much as I miss Israel and my friends I left there, I am very grateful I am back home again. Thinking about what Pnina told me and also about all the things I don´t like about being back home, I thought I would put down a few pros and cons about living back home in Prague:

Pros:
-Being with my family and friends - does not need further explanation.

-Sunday - Sunday is a great invention that Israel lacks. Nobody can persuade me that the free Friday in Israel is the same. It is not. In Israel, I always spent most of Friday cooking and cleaning for Shabbat. The more time you have before Shabbat the more time you spend preparing for it. Here, I manage to do everything within 3 hours on Friday afternoon and can enjoy the whole free Sunday.

-Recycling - In Israel, I have always been frustrated by the fact that it is impossible to recycle anything except for plastic PET bottles, newspapers and card board. I went back into recycling everything including yoghurt plastic cups, plastic bags, TetraPak cartons , different kinds of glass and all kinds of paper. I bought the most enviroment friendly fridge I found on the market and I feel much less guitly again.

-Being able to go anywhere by bus - In Israel, I did use the bus system occassionally, but due to reasons that need not be explained, I used my bike most of the time (great for my orange skin, by the way.) Entering buses without checking out my co-travelers suspicciously is a great relief.

-Speking Czech - awesome! People actually laugh when I tell a joke.

-Summer rain - which cools down the air, but does not turn the whole country into a freezer.

-Green lawns and forests - while in Israel people are able to keep their gardens and parks green by means of very clever irrigation systems, walking in a forest that has a moist scent of needles is priceless.

-Secular people - It is great to walk back from the synagogue on Friday and see people having fun, watching the World cup on a huge screen on the Old Town Square, going hiking or roller-skating. As my chavruta Ales says "secularity is a very important part of religious experience."

-Living among Czechs - while I hate many features in Czech national character, I still love living among Czechs immensly.

Cons:

-Being the fat one again In Israel, there were many women who had wide hips and size 42 or 44 like I do. Buying skirts and pants was a piece of cake. I am back in a country of anorectic looking women with sizes 38 and lower. I feel fat and big-nosed.

-Lack of parve cookies - many Americans and Israelis are horrified to see how kosher-eating people shop for food here. Food with hechsher (certificate of an authorised rabbi confirming the food is kosher) is hard to find; we shop according to a kosher list, which lists food with no non-kosher ingrediences, i.e. most people eat "kosher style." Kosher yellow cheese and kosher meat can be bought only in the JCC etc.) This is not such a big deal for me - once you get used to it it becomes quite natural for you. What I miss is parve cookies. After having meat I am forced to eat healthy food like oranges and bananas.

-Not being with my friends from Israel - does not need an explanation.

-Not being able to pray with an egalitarian minyan - except for Friday night - but this makes me daven at home on the terrace on my own overlooking pretty green hills of the Prague suburbs, which is beautiful.

-Not living among Israelis - while I hate many features in Israeli national character, I still love living among Israelis immensly.

Joseph goes to Poland

An hour ago, I said final good bye to Joseph, my Mishna chavruta and a very dear friend from last year. Tomorrow, he is leaving the country and continues with his group to Poland.
During the past three years of living abroad, I found meeting new people and making friends from different countries and cultures one of the most enriching part of the experience. The fact I always had to leave them when returning back home is, on the other hand, undoubtedly the biggest downside. Joseph is one of the people I met in Israel I will miss the most - we became very close friends and I value his friendship immensly. All the new rabbinical students in UJ - you are very lucky to have him :-)

America goes to Prague

As I mentioned to you earlier, Tovah (my friend from the Conservative Yeshiva) and her friend Jess wisited Prague at the beginning of the week. It was a very quick visit, they spent just one day and two nights in town, but it seemed they enjoyed it nevertheless. A day after Tovah had left, Joseph Robinson and Yael Buchler (also my friends from the Yeshiva) came to Prague with their American pilgrims. I came to meet them in their hotel today in the morning, davened shachrit with them (the first time after I came back from Israel I had a chance to participate at an egalitarian shachrit) and joined them for their walking tour around the Prague Castle area. To see Joseph and Yael again was a pure pleasure, I am sure I do not have to explain why. To be among Americans felt very familiar – and I think I dont have to explain why either:o)...during the breakfast, everybody talked about milk products, proteins and about what kind of tuna they eat or don’t eat – it will never stop surprising me, how much time Americans can spend talking about food... I enjoyed spending time with the kids a lot - they kept asking me all kinds of questions about the town and the country, I told them all kinds of stories from my life, taught them how to say "Hi", "Good morning," and "Thank you" in Czech and - most importantly - I taught them how to open a TetraPak box of milk. For me, the most moving moment of my time with the group was when we walk down the Castle hill. After we passed a park with huge lime trees that obstructed our view, we came to a terrace of the Strahov monastery, which overlooks the whole Old and New City of Prague (you can see a part of it behind me and Joseph on the picture. Unfortunately the photo does not do justice to the real view.) The view is truly stunning, even for me who has seen it dozens of times. Today we were also very lucky with the weather and the town spread before us in all its splendor. All the kids with their mouth open started to run to the railings at the edge of the terrace in excitement to take pictures. Joseph, obviously taken aback by the sight as well, stopped walking and stared at the town for a couple of seconds in awe. Then he looked at me calmly and said: “Gafna, you do live in a beautiful city.”

The first week of being back home

I am back at home. I suppose many of the readers of this blog will be my friends from the past three years, who have all had (or will soon have) the experience of coming back home after a long time. Therefore, most of you will know what it is like – waking up in the morning and needing a few moments to realize where you are and what language to speak, initial diarrhea caused by the minerals in food you are not used to anymore, excitement about going to your favorite cafés with people, who are „still not done with school, but - seriously – will finish in fall“ and the immense pleasure you take in reading your beloved weekend newspaper supplement in real tangible hard copy.

Being back home feels like waking up after a long time and slowly rediscovering all the things you know so well, but still having in mind the live dream you dreamt during your sleep. I think of Israel and my Yeshiva time very often, especially when I talk to my Prague chavruta Aleš, who came back from Pardes a few days before I returned from the Yeshiva (and who will soon go back to Israel for his second year) I honestly loved being there, but I am glad I am back at home. Being back home is a special kind of smooth, touching pleasure. Most things are the way I left them: the guy from across the street that works all night and who is usually my only companion at late night hours has not given up his habit of walking around half naked in a fully lit room, Café Louvre still serves Earl Gray on tables with small note pads saying „The place of all your appointments,“ my neighbors still grow weed on their balcony, only the bush is a little bigger now.

Most of my time, however, I don’t even have time to think about what it is like to be back home and whether I miss Israel or any of the previous countries for that matter – most of the time I try to deal with my current life, settle and handle my flat and job.

I am sure I mentioned to many of you both of these issues perhaps more than you would have wished – but still: 14 days before I left for Israel last September, I had moved out from my original flat to an attic apartment, which was built on the roof of the building of my original flat. The flat is an investment of my parents, who feared that their savings would lose their value once the Czech Republic enters the EU/ join the Euro monetary union. For reasons connected to this issue, the flat is 3 times bigger then the original flat I used to live in, i.e. I live on my own in a space that is 3 times the size of what I used to share with three other adult people. This is a very weird experience, especially at night during the current summer thunderstorms, but I love the flat and take immense pleasure in furnishing it bit by bit – putting on hangers for towels, going to Ikea trying out different beds and mattresses, buying all kinds of kitchen utensils – there is nothing like creating your own living space.

My job has recently started to slowly lose a character of a nightmare and began to get a clearer shape. All being well, I should start working very soon for both of the institutions I planned to work for while still in Israel. I will surely let you know if as soon as I know anything more tangible. The downside of having to wait for a couple of weeks before I get employed is that being 26 and not being an official student of any EU university any more, I had to register at the employment office as an unemployed in order to get my health insurance paid by the state before I start to work. After filling in a couple of forms at the registry, I was given an official blue ID card of a registered unemployed and was given an appointment with a job specialist, whom I have to see regularly as long as I want the state to pay for my insurance, despite that fact I have found a job already (this is the way the sate makes sure that while they pay for you, you are actively looking for a job.) Again, all this is a very new experience for me, hopefully it will also be very short and I will start to work as planned. My first meeting with the job specialist was scheduled for the coming Wednesday – I will let you know what it was like.

Last but not least, my yeshiva friend Tovah Honor came to visit me in Prague for two days last night – a bit of my old yeshiva life in my new flat :-). Joseph Robinson, my Mishna chavruta and dear friend from Jerusalem, should come to Prague on Wednesday with 44 Jewish teenagers on a USY pilgrimage. I cannot wait to see him again.