Gearing towards Jewish education in private practice

Again, I have not posted for a long time. This time I am blogging to see again how many people still read or write blogs - it seems to me that all of my friends that used to do so are gone. I am slowly aproaching the time when I will (all being well) leve school for maternity leave - around Pesach I should leave not only my job but also Prague to move to our house in Mukov and to start a life at the end of the world taking care of our house, garden, Moshe and the expected little winemaker/teacher (not in this order). I already have several activities that I am looking forward to do during the maternity leave on my list. So I wonder if there will be anyone interested in reading about them here in case I promise I will never write about my baby´s digestion, sleep, crawling and the like:-).

Facebook versus blogs

Every now and then I browse back to my old blog mainly because of the bookmarks I have on it to click on my friend´s blogs to see what is new. Most of the time, I find out that...nothing much. Most of my friends stopped writing on their blogs around a year ago, undoubtedly because all of them have moved to Facebook. What a shame! Yes, I now know who woke up late and who left his work early thanks to the status changes, but where are the decently long elaborate articles that I used to enjoy so much?

While I have been a very frequent user of facebook too (let along Moshe´s unhealthy usage of facebook while he was sick at the beginning of July) I wish to say - yes, but enough is enough. I will try to get back to normal blogging and continuous text. Let´s see if there are still any readers left.-)

The bride you always wanted not to be

I haven´t posted anything for almost half a year. I am at home with flu now, which means I need a time killer, so why not droppong a couple of lines again?

There is a lot of new. First of - I have a new job; or better to say I have a new possition in the same place. I now coordinate the Jewish program in our school. This is a very challenging experience - I have to learn a lot of new especially in communication with others. Most of the time I enjoy having to come up with new things and being creative. Sometimes I find it hard to get over mistakes I make. In general, however, I very much feel this is a change for the better.

I have a new baby-cat. Her name is Mushka and I brought her to my home a day after Yom Kipur. She is very sociable though incredibly wild. However, she is a great company for most of the time and I enjoy having such a fine flatmate.

Last but not least - I got engaged two weeks ago. G-d willing, Moshe and I should be getting married on Lag ba-omer on his family vineyard. During my „always a bridesmate never a bride" years I learnt that brides can be incredibly annoying in informing everybody about the progress of their wedding preparations and I wish to make a public vow and promise I will not become one of them. In fact, when we decided to get married, we sat down and within 3 days agreed on all the wedding arrangements. What do people make such a fuss about?

And the angels were laughing

Recently, the structure of my spendings have slightly changed - I have more or less finished the major investments into my flat and and it is the time to change the way I think about my money now. Today, I put on my make up and the most self-confident smile I could find and I set off to my bank to meet my financial consultant. I sat down at the counter, leaned rightwards on the chair and started to discuss my plans and prospects for the next couple of years. Lenka S., my financial advisor, who has known me for the last 8 years, very carefully listened to what I had to say. She asked me a couple of additional questions about my life and investment plans and expectations for the nearest future, made some further suggestions and then we closed the deal. As we were signing the contracts that sent my monies in different directions it downed on me what a chutzpah of me it was to plan what is going to happen to you in the future. When you make financial decisions of this kind, you decide to give up your money for some time and let it work, because you think you will not need it. You put the money into different places for different periods of time guessing: When will I have kids? Will I keep my job and vages? Will I get a promotion? What are the chances I will need some extra money to spend on unexpected expenses? These are things you surely try to plan but you can naturally never know what life will bring in the end. My today´s bank appointment reminded me of the old Jewish joke: How can you make G-d laugh? When you tell Him what your plans for the future are.

Well, well. I made my guess, let´s see what happens.

You never know

Last summer I bought an olive tree (a bit childlishly - to remind me of my Israeli holiday) and put it on my terrace. It was all leafy and green the whole summer and fall, but during the winter, when I put it indoors, it regretfully shook down all its leaves and it seemed it dried up completely.

I had slowly started to give up on the plant when the other day I came home to find out that it has a few fresh green leaves. In a couple of the following days it began to bud also on a few other places and started to shoot fresh sprouts in all directions. I know it will sound silly, but not only was I happy the plant didn´t die, but I couldn´t help thinking what a telling sign it was. I had actually almost thrown away the plant a month before. Sometimes things look gloomy and hopeless. However, you never know when they´ll take an unexpected better move.

Tax declaration

The beginning of spring is usually marked by the early birds that start to sing with the rising sun, the more agreeable outdoor temperatures, sudden rainshowers, the first humble blooms of spring flowers and - the many friends who complain to you about the fact that they have to declare their taxes.

I have just finished counting mine. My accounting is usually rather simple because most of my taxes are done by my employer anyway. Therefore I have never used a professional and I have always done my taxes by myself. For me - counting the taxes follows the same sequence of emotions every year:

1) Filling in the personal information - name, ID number, phone-number ... and thinking - yey! It´s easy after all!
2) Counting all the money I earned that year and thinking - a) "Gosh! I must be the worker of the year when I made that much money" b) "Wait a minute - where is it all gone?"
3) Opening the "numbers part" of the form and realising a) there are loads of changes in the law compared to last year and therefore b) a number of new lines.
4) At first patiently and later on a little bit impatiently trying to find out my way through the form.
4) The "aha-moment" (usually after 3 or so hours and after having consulted several guidelines.) I finally got it and I fill in all the numbers.
5) Realising that I have to pay the amount I have just counted. Realising that it is actually really not that bad.
6) Realising that the fact that I have to pay taxes and I am not in red numbers actually means I am an independent, working young woman who can support herself. Not bad :-)

Great - I hope I counted it right. I will send the money tonight. Until next year then (all being well:-)

Living in a museum and going to Israel

During the break, I fell a bit ill, which ruined my plans to go to Berlin for a 2-day trip and to spend the New Year´s eve in the mountains with my friends. Trying to use the time at home as well as I could I thoroughly cleaned my flat. I cleaned it so well that today, when I returned back home from a short visit at my parents´, I wasn´t sure I was actually at home. I guess I cleaned far too much. My flat looks more like an Ikea museum than a place where people actually live. But I will cook a bit and I hope I will mess it a bit to feel like a human being again.

During the break, I decided to accept the invitations of a couple of my friends and bought a ticket to Israel for Pesach. I am planning to be there betweem 22nd April and 2nd May. So if you are around, let me know :-)

A short update

I guess I have lost all my readers by now, but still - I am now on my winter/Christmas break, which means I have loads of time to answer all my long neglected mail, to finally furnish my study, to take care of my plants, to spend some time with my friends and with my family and - to write my blog.

I hope to start to write short posts regularly again. Today, let me update you on the last couple of weeks before I start to post short, witty and opinionated posts again.

The last weeks have brought only little new, which I consider very good news. I continue to teach at the school. I am so organised now that I can spare even 3-4 hours of free time every day, which is a very pleasant change. So far I have been using it - like all normal people - for meeting friends, going to the movies and spending time in coffee-houses reading. Recently it struck me that I should probably try to do something more organised and I decided to learn French. In fact, I made a public vow in front of several of my friends that by the time I am 30 I shall be able to spend my holidays in France speaking the local language. This was not a very wise public commitment. A-it is very difficult to accomplish, B- many of my friends consider it an unhealthy reaction to the partly interesting but largely frustrating shiduch marathon my dear and caring friend Shmil has prepared for me in the last three months. Be it as it may - I have the book, I have the tapes - we shall see what happens.

As far as the school is conserned - the teaching goes quite well. Apart from the usual stuff - this Chanukah we put up an all-in-Hebrew Chanukah play with the 1st and 2nd-graders. I was very proud of them, because we had been learning Hebrew together with them only for 3 months by the time of the play. It was a tremendous success, the parents were moved and the rabbi said we did a great job and I was enormously happy :-)

I have largely fixed the one but last room in my flat - my study - I have bought a new set of shelves in Ikea, which I all put together by myself (yey!). Now I only have to finish putting all the books and papers in it and I can move onto planning my terrace - wow - how very strangely adult and non-hip of me - an I growing old and boring?

Anyway, now I have ate least 9 more days of the holidays in front of me. The good thing about Christmas when you are Jewish is that you have all this extra free time and you dont have to do the holiday stuff that makes everybody else exhausted and over eaten - wonderfull. I have already done a lot of house and paperwork, I guess I have to save some time for fun too. We shall se how this goes. For the time being, I am off to my French text book. See you soon!

Back from Israel

I am back from Israel - I didn´t post anything during the time I was there mainly due to the poor internet connection. Sorry :-)

Well, I am starting to make a very bad blogger. Israel was colorful - hot, full of friends, in many ways reassuring and naturally also anoying in many others. I spent the first 2 weeks in the Conservative Yeshiva. I decided to take mainly ulpan classes with my old teacher Meira, which was a true delight. I also liked the advanced halachah class tought by Shlomo Zacharow. The yeshiva was a bit of a surprise to me - it was very different from the year program I took part at a year ago, but I still enjoyed it. On the 3rd week I took a course for techers of Hebrew in Ramat Rachel and during the remaining time I visited my friend Ram in Hebron, spend some time with my friends Hana and Ruven and their kids and rested a bit. It all seems a bit distant now as I quickly returned to my Prague life after I had gotten back. So let me just say - I really enjoyed Israel, but I will not write about it as I didnt manage to write about it when I was there and now it seems too silly.

The good news is I bought my sukah today (yey!) and on the top of that I bought also a brand new olive tree. Yes, I admit it is a bit weird in Central Europe. But I saw it in the shop where I bought the sukah and I could not resist buying it. It comes from Germany (believe it or not). We shall see how long it lasts on my windy terrace.

Slowing down

In the process of slowing down, I did something unheard of yesterday: I stopped working already at 8pm, went home and instead of marking essays I went to my neigbours to pay a visit. It was great - we sat on their balcony, ate babovka I brought, they smoked, I talked and it all felt marvelous. They told me they were getting married in September (Mazal tov) and also shared with me their worries about our new Chinese neibours. They claim that they already have a second dog within a very short period of time and that there is a strange smell coming from their flat. They say they keep a kind of chau-chau dog one breeds for meat in China and that they surely ate the first dog with which they moved in. Well - what do you think? Is this at all possible?

Just a thought

This weekend, after it had gotten warmer in the town, I redescovered how great it is to live in a flat with a roof terrace. To do your work siting in the sun watching birds flying around is priceless. To go out to drink a cup of tea at night and watch the starts is calming and beautiful.
Today I finally made friends with my terrace neighbors. Their names are Andela and Stepan. I hope this is a start of a good terrace to terrace friendship.
There are 6 more weeks of school to go. I am counting the days.

Aviad in Prague and leaving my job

Aviad has just left back home after his 10-day visit in Prague. During his visit, I successfully aspired for the title of "the most terrible host ever." When he came I lost my voice and wasn´t able to speak to him for at least 2 days. For the rest of his stay I worked all the time, had no time to sight see with him, painfully left my Masorti job, during the process of which I kept updating him about all the difficulties and pains connected with it, I hardly cooked, I refused to go to shop to H and M with him (those who know him will see how painful this is) and I forced him, the poor Israeli, to observe Shabbat with me. On the top of it all when he was leaving Prague at the airport, the security people took away from him the Czech Tatar sauce he bought and carried with care and love to the Holy Land. But I hope he enjoyed the stay at least a little bit. I certainly did.

Last week, I decided to leave my Masorti job. I was exhausted and realized I cannot carry on having two jobs any longer. My leaving unfortunately causes many problems in the community because at the moment there is nobody to replace me and this poses some hard questions about the future about the whole kehilah. Well, not nice and very painful.

The striking Prague news apparently is that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are staying for 2 months in the town to shoot a movie called "Wanted." Well - what more could one wish for, right?

Silence continues

This is my third day of being speechless. It is a very interesting experience. People are actually very nice to you when you have such a handicap. They smile at you, they are evry helpful and they wish you all the best. The bad thing is that when you need somebody to move in a crowded bus you have to touch them and whisper into their ear, which not many people interpret the way you mean it. Well well. I am abck at school today whispering to all my students, who find it absolutely amusing. Great. In the evening I am heading for the Paideia alumni conference. I will be silent again. Well, scilence is golden, isn´t it?

Second day without a sound

This is my second day of being speechless, literary. I can´t talk, I lost even the last trace of my voice. I know very well that this is a sign of me working too much. Yesterday, after the meeting with the parents during which I whispered only, my boss asked me to stay at home today, which I am happily doing now taking care of all the paper work I have not been able to do during the past couple of days. I am horrified to see that I have become a burn out victim of my own work. I have become the kind of person you read about in life style magazines. Scary. But ayway, today, my long time Israeli friend Aviad is soming to Prague so that´s something to be cheerfull about. We wont be able to talk - we will have to write to each other. But still, I hope it will be fun!

She gmalani kol tov (who has bestowed to me all kindness)

Today in the shachrit service, I was honoured with the 7th alyiah (I was called to the 7th part of Torah reading.) This was the first time after I had come back from the States that I took part at an egalitarian minyan. Rabbi Hoffberg encouraged me to recite the Gomel, a blessing that we recite after coming back from a dangerous journey or after surviving a dangerous situation. I have always found it rather strange to thank for surviving a dangerous situation when nothing dangerous actually happened (which was the case of my US trip.) But I said the appropriate blessing and continued to follow the service.

Tonight, after the end of Shabbat, my father came with his car to pick me up in my flat to take me to my parents house, where I planned to spend the Sunday. We drove on a highway. At one point we came closer to a truck. My father started to overtake the truck in the left line. All of a sudden, the driver in the car behind him started to speed up, which is the common way of idiot drivers in my country to tell the other people on the road "how dare you drive so slowly in MY very left line?" My father overtook the truck, went back to the right line and as the mad driver overtook us, my father gave him a quick blink with his lights to say "I don´t aprove of how you behave." At this point we all were driving at a 100 km/h speed. The other driver, at this point cca 20 in front of us, went back to our line and suddenly stopped his car in the middle of the road. I have seen such behavior in movies, but I didn´t know there existed idiots that did things like these in real life. My father stepped on the breaks and so did the truck behind him. Luckily, we managed to stop about a meter behind the car. In what seemed to be ages to me I waited for the hit of the truck from behind. All of a sudden the expected noise came from the right as the truck, obviously unable to stop with its weight and at this speed, decided to overtake our car from the other side and hit our wing mirror.

My father and the truck pulled to the side, got off, looked at each others cars, inspected the broken mirror, calmly said to each other "Oh boy, what an idiot," and went back to the cars. At this point my hands started to shake, but I said "Thanks God nothing serious happened, it could have been much worse." My father nodded in a strangely calm way and said "Yes, you are right. I will have to have the mirror changed." We saw that the driver of the other car stopped 200 meters in front of us and looked in our direction to see what happened. He never came closer to us, he just looked. My father started the engine and slowly moved ahead towards him. In what I now realize was fear, we decided not to stop to talk to him and drove on. As we were passing him, I saw how he hesitantly waived at our car.

Human mind works in a very weir way, we came home and only then fully realized what happened. For an hour we sat in the livingroom realizing that we could have been - God forbid - squashed in our car from both sides. We kept repeating how glad we were not to be dead. In the end we drank a shot of vodka and for the first time in my life I have to admit I felt it helped to release the preasure.

I dont understand why anybody would want to stop in the middle of the road like this. I dont get why anybody would want to put the lives of 3 other people and his own under such a danger. I don´t.

When I sat down to the computer now, I read the text of birkat ha-gomel again. It says: "Blessed are You O Lord our God ruler of the Universe, who bestows kindness on those who are committed, and who has bestowed to me all kindness." Perhaps it makes sense to thank God for His kindness when you are in a situation when something dangerous may happen and it actually doesn´t. It makes sense to say it even if you are not even close to it. It makes sense to thank for the fact that nothing happened. In a situation like the one tonight you realize that "nothing happened" is great and it is worth acknowledging.

Another short update

Time flies. Incredible. I am going to the States in a week´s time. In the past couple of days, my 7th graders started to get all very sensitive and teenagy and puberty like and I am worried. On the other hand, my biggest troublemaker David K. calmed down and became the student I have always told him he can become - witty, challenging and simply good. I swiched to first names terms with the headmistress of the school. My brother passed a Russian language exam (miracle!). Shmil, my boss, has had a son born ( The brit is tomorrow.) My community and school has successfully survived a visit of the Presidents of Major Jewish organizations last week and I had my students over for a Tu bi-shvat seder today. Well, that´s about the most important news.

Lights and a TV

For some time now I haven´t been updating you on the progress of my moving in. Today, my father came to put up new lights we bought together 2 months ago in Ikea. Bit by bit my flat starts to look like a home. And - one more thing: my parents bought me a TV set. I was very angry at first but now - frankly - I cannot wait to swich it on for the first time. I managed to live without one for 7 months. Now it is the time to stop being brave and face the music. It should arrive on Tuesday or so. Yey!

New year´s resolutions

As the year slowly comes to its end, I started to think about new year´s resolutions. Don´t worry, I will not start to give reasons why you should or shouldn´t make them or whether Jews should make them in January or at Rosh ha-Shana :-) – I just recently remembered Robert Fulghum´s book "From Beginning to End, the Rituals of Our Lives" that I liked when I was a teenager. In this book Fulghum describes his personal custom of new year´s resolutions: At the end of each year, he would write down a list of things he managed to do during the previous year. When he is done he heads the piece of paper with a title “My new year´s resolutions for...” and adds the previous year. I think it is an excellent idea. So here is my list:


My New Year´s Resolutions for 2006:

1. Learn to lain (read from the Torah).
2. Learn to be a synagogue gabai.
3. Return from Israel and settle back at home.
4. Buy a bed and furnish my new flat.
5. Find a decent job, which I would find meaningful.
6. Fix my favorite brown sweater, which has been torn for 2 years.
7. Read Virgina Woolf´s "To the Lighthouse."
8. Not to get married to a freak.

Great:-)

I admit

Ok. I admit it. Being sick and being home alone is not an awful lot of fun. Quite on the contrary. If I was not as well behaved as I am, I might say it sucks. I still have fever, which means I still have a few days to go.

There is a good side to being ill. I read The Little Prince again and I started the World According to Garp again and I finally made a compot out of the Rosh ha-Shana left over apples (dont laugh.) The bad side to it is that I have not seen a living soul for far too long, I started to talk to myself and what is more, I am scared of the loads of time I have to ...think. I found out that if you have time to think and you have nothing to disturb you, you actually really think and what you think about is unfortunately not always what you think you would want to think about. Well - scary.

Before the tooth ruins my life

Last shabbat during my granny´s 84th birthday lunch my tooth broke. Today, I went to a dentist to ask him to fix it. He said there was nothing elsto be done - the tooth broke so badly that it had to be pulled out. He first cut it into four pieces and then spend close to an hour taking it - very gently - piece by piece out. He said that the tooth (more specifically the hole that remained) would possibly ruin my life for some time now so I am using the last minutes before the anestesia stops working to write a post (I am exeggerating as always:-)

The three pieces of good news this week are that my yeshiva friend Tovah got engaged, my friends Ruven and Hana from Jerusalem have a new baby boy, who was born on Shmini Atzeret (a Jewish holiday) and who was circumcised two Shabbatot ago and called Usher. Moreover, Lex Friedman and his wife Lauren have a new baby girl called Anya. Mazal tov to all. :-) In fact - there are two other new babies that were born in my home community in the last 14 days too - so that makes five pieces of good news.

In my house, there are also a couple of new members of the household, even though they are not nearly as exciting as the newborn babies :-( - anticipating the visit of my friend Seth later this year in December, I started to buy my meaty dishes (dishes for meat dishes:-) on Sunday.

Believe it or not, yesterday I spent a pleasant evening chatting with Michael Pomeranz, the famous Jerusalem bookseller, who stopped in Prague on his way from Los Angeles back to Israel. We have agreed to meet in Prague last spring during one of my shopping visits in his shop. Last night we went for dinner together and I enjoyed being with an Israeli friend again a lot.

Other than that, I continue to teach with all its excitements and downsides :-) I keep collecting interesting quotes of the kids. The best one I have heard recently is today´s Xenie´s comment on my decent dress code in the school on which I demonstrated the way orthodox women dress in her class. We discussed the question of tzniut (modesty) when Xenie with all possible honesty and sincerity said - "well, you should dress a bit less decent. In case you dont I doubt you will ever get married."