Purim

Purim turned out pretty well this year. It's never a holiday that I find entirely comfortable, but this one worked out. I'd spent Sunday afternoon hanging out with H, finishing up some baking, doing some origami and talking. We had dinner and then I headed home to get my costume on- I went with th eextremely traditional this year and went as Queen Esther, since very few folks in my age group seem to do those costumes, and it was something that I could put together with some shabbos clothes, jewelry and a scarf. (I hung a necklace under my scarf so the pendant hung on my forehead, and did the scarf up with a sort of crown effect- I thought it was pretty nifty. Really, those sorts of costumes feel like a way for my inner child to get a chance to play dress up in a classically girly way. Hey, I'm not much of a drinker, so I've got to metaphorically let my hair down in some way for the holiday.)

The evening megillah reading went well (although I was late to davening, which given my usual tendency towards being quite early was not a good thing for me to do to the poor gabbayim). Afterward, I tagged along with some friends to a Purim party given by someone whom I thought I didn't know, and then realized I'd met at a Pesakh lunch a few years ago, in Boston. (I remembered it, she didn't, although she thought it was quite plausible.) We were there early on, so it was pretty quiet and reasonable. On the way home, we ran into a whole bunch of people I knew- Pardes folks primarily.

I messed up in a rather silly way during the morning megillah reading, and generally just felt like I wasn't quite focused enough. Still, it wasn't terrible. Afterwards, I delivered one or two mishloach manot of my own, and met up with H and we walked together to deliver a few of his. Then, after dropping some stuff off at each of our apartments, we went to a Purim party some friends of mine were having. And in the evening, almost right before Purim was over, we went to seudah at the home of an older couple that he's friends with. We were six people total, and while everyone was encouraged to have some wine, it was quite reasonable. There was good Torah discussed, and I felt quite comfortable being part of the discussion. It was a much better sort of Purim seudah for me than the big communal events, which are generally a lot of fun but also often overwhelm me. It's also nice to get a chance to be with some folks from a different generation, here and there. These folks are a bit younger than my grandparents, but very much feel like they're in that generation. So it turned out quite well.

First Day Back at School, And Other Adventures

Today was the start of second semester, which ended up meaning me checking out two bible classes, one on the Wisdom Literature (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job), and the other on the stories of the prophets- i.e. on stories about them rather than the contents of their prophecy. Both were interesting, and I should really choose one, and I don't know which one to choose. The former had some nice proof texts, and was very easy to follow, but didn't feel likely to be very intellectually intense, besides being a class in Hebrew for Israelis. The latter was a bit more intellectually involved, and I think I'd have to stay pretty well on my toes to follow it- but I've spent more time on the material before.

The other class I had was a medieval mysticism class that I thought would be mostly stuff I knew, and might or might not be- he won't give us a syllabus until next week. I think it'll technically be stuff that I haven't studied before, but the first class did not really impress me. Also, class is in the Beit Midrash which is also where davening takes place, and our teacher was packing up when mincha began. His response was "oh, what is this? mincha? I'm out of here- I don't pray". It was not the smoothest or most comfortable thing to hear from someone who said at the beginning of class that he specifically was interested in teaching rabbinical students... (Also, I think he might actually be Israeli, unlike pretty much every other teacher we have, who are all English speaking olim- so of course, he's teaching in English.)

After school, I headed out to brand new territory for me in order to be part of a panel on different Jewish movements, as a favor for my Talmud chevruta's girlfriend. So I got to represent Conservative Judaism to a bunch of 18 and 19 year old Australian Jews. The kids asked some pretty tough questions, but were delightfully respectful and thoughtful in doing so. We were invited to stay for dinner, which I did, and had some one-on-one conversation with some of the kids, who were very thoughtful and remarkably interested in what I had to say. I've never been a panelist before- it was quite an experience. Invariably, someone would say something after me that I wish I had said, or that I wanted to counter or argue with. After dinner they did a creative ma'ariv service that was cute, although I very much had to put on my interfaith service hat for it to work for me.

Then I decided to walk home, because I didn't feel like waiting for the bus. On impulse, I reached for my phone to see if I'd gotten any calls, and lo and behold, H had called to see how my day was. I called him back, and it was a good thing that I did- I got a little bit turned around while walking home, and he stayed on the phone with me, with map in hand, and got me re-oriented and back on familiar turf before we hung up. I keep being surprised when he calls or otherwise does something nice- it's kind of exciting, although it also sometimes feels like I'm not quite realizing that this is real, on some level, yet.