מַרְבֶּה תוֹרָה, מַרְבֶּה חַיִּים. מַרְבֶּה יְשִׁיבָה, מַרְבֶּה חָכְמָה

I guess if this week’s blog has a theme it is education.  Mine and others.  

So as I have mentioned, a good deal of my time right now is spent working.  I got through the November 1 deadline for college applications and am now working toward the final one on January 1.  While I finished with most of my Farber students, I ended up taking on more Israeli students.  I now have 10 or 11, but I have also done workshops at the Tel Aviv office for students on the Common Application,  so I have worked with about two dozen more there.  This has been an education for me, but I was thinking that the theme of education relates more to the Israeli’s themselves who are looking to get their B.A. in the States.  A couple of my students have dual citizenship but most do not.  Most are 22 and have done the army and spent another year traveling, working and testing and applying for college.  My Arab-Israeli student is younger since Arab-Israelis do not have to go in the army.  Sometimes I wonder if it is a good fit for these students to do undergrad in the States, but I get that they want an American experience and any opportunities that come with it.

I cannot talk about any of them too much (confidentiality rules) but it will be fun to let you know how they do in the end.  Money is an issue for almost all of them, which I tell them is true for Americans as well, although there is little financial aid for international students.  They are an amazing group of people.  The army tends to be the most important experience for most of them and some of them have been in intelligence units and so their work is classified.  They all travel as a matter of course and are just solid and independent.  Their English is very good and, as I mentioned previously, their math skills are impressive.  (Zoe can also tell you that the math education here is very different and very good.)  I have one student who was a commander in the army and if I ever were to be stuck on a desert island, I want him with me.  He is the craziest combination of competent, tough and sweet I have ever encountered. Another student was the Israeli national champion in a solo sport (don’t want to give away too much) during all of high school and still competes internationally.  They all have very different personalities but if I had to note one common characteristic they all share, it would have to be that they are all crazy honest, to an extreme.  

So there is my contribution to their education.  And then there is my education.

I started taking two classes at Pardes where Seth is studying.  My Wednesday class is “Sages of the Mishna” with Leah Rosenthal who is also Seth’s Gemara teacher.  This is a fun class where we get introduced to different figures of the Mishnah and see how their personalities are created through the stories and their interpretations that are passed down.  We had the third class this week and are up to Hillel.  Last week we had a field trip for the class.  We went to Moshav Beit Meir to their Shabbat Farm where you learn about the 39 melachot (prohibitions) of Shabbat and where they come from.  Learned all sorts of agricultural stuff and how to make wool, etc.  It was about a half hour outside Jerusalem and the area around this moshav is gorgeous - tree covered hills surrounded by winding valleys.  We then went to a women’s craft cooperative in Ein Kerem where women are reviving ancient crafts of weaving and basket making. Neither place had too much to do with the class except for showing us common work from the time we are studying (the Tanaim.)  The tour guide was very good and gave us a history lesson on the bus which was my favorite part, but I was happy to get a field trip and see more of the country.

My Monday class is called “Soloveitchik and Exodus” and is taught by Rabbi Reuven Grodner who was a student of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, or the Rav.  I have tried reading The Lonely Man of Faith about a dozen times and can’t understand a word, so I felt I needed to learn some of Soloveitchik’s wisdom some way.  The fun of this class for me has been all the stories that have been told about the Rav, first by Rabbi Grodner and then by this week’s substitute, Rabbi Aharon Adler who was not only a student of the Rav’s but his personal driver for three years.  Both of them told many stories about the Rav that were very inspiring.  Rabbi Adler happened to mention that the Rav and the Lubavitcher Rebbe were very fond of each other and had gone to school together in Berlin in the 20’s.  

He told us about the time that the Rav and the Rebbe met

and sent us to youtube to see a movie of the event which I did after class. It was a special moment to see if any of you are interested.  Just go  here. It is clear how important these two figures were to post-war American Judaism and how they breathed life, in very different ways, into Orthodoxy at a painfully low point in our history.

I have been thinking a lot about leadership lately and how sometimes in history people are blessed with exceptional leaders who get you through the mud and from one place to another, propelling history forward. Through my mishna class, I have developed two new heroes: although I knew about them before, I have decided that Yochanan Ben Zakai and Yehuda HaNasi were tremendous and greatly contributed to the survival of the Jewish people - Yochanan Ben Zakai during the darkest days of the destruction of the Temple and Yehuda HaNasi about a century afterwards. And then there are the Rav and the Rebbe.  Those who had experience with these two always say that you knew you were around greatness when you were in the same room as them, and I feel a sense of loss not having ever had the experience of being around someone like this. Maybe if we are very lucky, we will get the privilege of having a great leader in our lifetimes.  Whether we deserve it or not.

So this is some of my education going on.  I am struck by how much learning there is in Jerusalem.  One can spend all of one’s days studying with exceptional scholars.  And everyone seems to pass through this city so that there is a cultural richness in the air.   Jonathan Sarna is here for the year and is doing a four-part lecture series at Pardes starting next week on American Jews and politics that I plan on attending.  But there is always someone to see.

And last week I spent one of the most extraordinary nights of my life at a lecture at the Israel Museum.  The ceramist and author, Edmund De Waal was in town speaking as part of a conference on ownership and provenance at the museum. He was mostly speaking about his book, The Hare with Amber Eyes, which is one of my favorite books I have ever read. For those of you who have not read it, it is a family memoir of the Ephrussi’s, De Waal’s family on his father’s side, as told through the whereabouts of 264 Netsuke figurines from Japan,

the sole surviving possessions of the family’s vast fortune from before the war.  

The book is really like nothing else I have ever read, in part, I think because De Waal has an artist’s eye and is so thoughtful and perceptive.  The lecture, to a sold out crowd, was a retelling of the book and his efforts to write it, as well as a post book discussion of his art and life.  He has had major exhibits in Berlin and Vienna since the success of its publication.  De Waal’s art is also very interesting and is so much about loss and hiding and refuge and what you take with you; he incorporates Walter Benjamin and Paul Celan and is always grappling with the past.  The room was captivated by him.  It was a fascinating story filled with personal insight, but what added to the night’s emotion was the fact that De Waal had never been to Israel before and he had just spent his first day there.  He was so emotional about being here and kept having to stop his talk because he was weeping and we were all weeping with him.  When he ended, we were on our feet, practically cheering.  It was a night I hope to always remember.

So there is much learning going on on General Pierre Koenig Street (that’s us!)  Besides our own learning, Seth and I could not be prouder of Zoe and Hannah.  Zoe is doing amazing at Horev and works hard as usual. Hannah is taking nine classes at Tel Aviv U as required.  These classes are in incredibly hard academic Hebrew and she is surviving.  Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that she is an immigrant; she came here on her own when she was 18 and she is making a life for herself.  Even with her visiting family, this is her immigrant moment.  And so learning is essential.

We wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving.  If we do not partake in turkey, I suspect that we will still give thanks.