I don't even know what to put as the caption for this. Per usual, it's been an incredibly fun and busy week. This week marks the end of our summer session, which means that I successfully completed Ulpan (my modern Hebrew intensive) and all I have left to wrap up are a cantillation final (chanting from the Torah) and a biblical history/archaeology final in a couple weeks.
Aren't these pretty?
Which means right now, I get a teeny tiny summer vacation. Which totally rules. But first, let me tell you about my week.
And also I'll tell you a love story involving me and a pomegranate.
Monday a few of us ventured to the International Arts and Crafts Fair in Jerusalem. We paid a small entrance fee (around $10) and got to browse all these different local and international artists and their cool creations. Since I'm an avid people watcher, this was a really fun night. There were people representing Israel, South Africa, Korea, and so many other countries. There were also performers; we got to see a couple of different dance groups perform, and there were circus performers wandering around all night.
One thing I'm realizing the longer I'm here is how hard it is to speak Hebrew in Jerusalem. Everyone speaks English. Last week at the Wine Festival and this week at the Arts Fair made it even more apparent to me how much English there really is here. Sometimes I'll overhear a conversation and be really proud for understanding it (thinking that my Hebrew has improved) and, alas, the conversation was happening in English. It means that it's easy to communicate with basically everyone here, but it also means that I'm not really using my Hebrew. So, I'm setting a goal for myself to really try to speak Hebrew with Israelis and not give in to the temptation to speak English, even though that's way easier.
How cool is this?
Tuesday was a really great day. After a remarkably successful trip to Sushi Rehavia (there may or may not have been a boat involved) I met up with my friend Micah from college! We met at Mamilla and I got to hear all about his recent Israeli/Parisian adventures. It was a really nice opportunity to see someone from home and ALSO someone who isn't one of my 37 classmates. Don't get me wrong--these future leaders of Reform Judaism RULE, but it's nice to have a break sometimes =)
Sushi on a boat. Delicious. Even though it was crustacean-free.
Wednesday I had my Ulpan final. Luckily my teacher, Osnat, is totally awesome and we got our scores back almost immediately so we didn't have to worry about our test too much. My class got pretty attached to Osnat over the last 6 weeks, and while we're excited to have Zohara as our teacher next semester, we will definitely miss Osnat. She is awesome. All 3 classes combined after the final exams and we did an end-of-Ulpan-spectacular...basically all 3 classes wrote parody lyrics to songs we learned over the summer. We took beautiful Hebrew poetry and changed the words to include inside jokes about grammatical constructions. It was delightfully nerdy, and it meant we got to hear the song Halavai again. Which is always a treat.
Most of my ulpan class with our awesome teacher Osnat!
Wednesday night was, you guessed it, awesome. For two years at The Ohio State University Hillel, I was able to work with and get to know Kasa. Kasa is one of the coolest people ever. And, luckily, Kasa lives an 8 minute walk away from me in Jerusalem. Last night we met up and went to Cafe Yehoshua, where we talked about everything from Ohio to Israeli politics and back again. It's been a good week filled with familiar faces! Also, the OSU Hillel birthright trip gets to Jerusalem tomorrow which is going to be a delight!
So, everything is great as I head into this little chofesh (break) for the next week. I'm looking forward to reading (both for fun and to catch up in my history class) and relaxing and even travelling a little bit! Also...9 days until Buckeye football =)
So that was my week.
And now it's time for the love story.
I really, really love pomegranates. And there are pomegranates everywhere in Jerusalem. In fact, right outside my apartment there's a tree with pomegranates. And on campus there's a teeny tiny tree with teeny tiny pomegranates (it could be a children's book).
What a beautiful fruit.
In Jewish tradition, the pomegranate רימון (rimon) is a special symbol. It's mentioned in the book of Exodus (39:26) and supposedly each pomegranate has 613 seeds, one for each of the commandments in the Torah. (You thought we only have 10? Oh no. No way, friends. 613. And no, I cannot list them for you.)
Gorgeous joyful pomegranate seeds.
While these Jewish traditions about pomegranates are nice, they are not the motivating factor behind my love of pomegranates. I think it's the excessive amounts of Shirley Temples that I drank growing up (grenadine comes from poms--the word comes from the French word for pomegranates--grendade!) or maybe just the really delicious pomegranate juice. Who knows. But the fact of the matter is that I really love pomegranates and so this week I decided to go on a pomegranate seed liberation mission. One day before school I cracked open a pom that I had bought at the shuk, and it was the best pomegranate ever (until the one I will probably buy next week). The color of the pomegranate seeds is so pretty and the juice is so tangy and, while I realize this is out of control, I also promised you readers a love story.
Who wouldn't love this?
So there you have it.
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