A Real Expedition

To our dearest Loved Ones,
Holler from the homeland! Unfortunately for all of you, I'm following Ashley's incredibly articulate and detailed blog post at 1 AM, when we woke up at 7 and will be waking up at 7 again (yay!!!). Anyways, today was awesome.

The first awesome part of the day was waking up at 7. The second awesome part was going to school. The third (legitimately) awesome part was classes! Rabbi Marcus continued speaking of the Hebrew letter Hay, emphasizing on how the role of women in society has changed drastically since the 1950's, with the Women's Liberation Movement in the 60's.

Next, Rabbi Kass spoke of the commandment that says "love thy neighbor as you love yourself." What it really means is that you should "generate love" for your neighbor, in that giving to your neighbor will transitively invest a piece of you unto her, and because you love yourself, when you give a piece of yourself to someone, you grow love for them. Deep, right? Right!

As if that weren't enough brain food, next we learned from Rabbi Liff about Tzedakah, commonly translated as "charity", but the root of the Hebrew word actually means "justice". G-d created an unjust world so that we can make it just. Rabbi Liff also spoke of the different levels of giving, the highest in which you give so that the receiver doesn't need to be given anything again (i.e. teaching someone a trade, giving him a job, etc). Beautiful concepts.

Drained? So were we. But don't you dare think our brains were full because we haven't even gotten to Rebbetzin Heller yet. She spoke of Judaism's views on mending a marriage, divorce, and child custody. Very interesting!

After classes we had a delicious pasta/tuna salad lunch (courtesy of the fabulous Bayla Burnham) and headed to the Kotel. We met up with our favorite tour guide, Basha. She took us on an incredible archaeological tour of the Second Temple. We traveled through time to the beginning of Jewish history, walking on the very same steps that Rabbi Akiva, King Herod, and others once walked on. We made our way through the remains of the homes of the Byzantines, with our tour guide relaying amazingly detailed explanations of every archaeological find in the past century. IT WAS SO COOL!!!!

Upon stepping back through the time portal to 2010, we stopped by the market to grab some groceries and returned to our five star apartment where we were greeted by a great chef named Gabi. We turned on some Jewish jams and prepared an incredible feast of vegetable dishes, couscous salad, stuffed peppers, savory chicken, and of course, hummus and pita. Following our dinner we spoiled our taste buds with a mouth-watering dessert of date pastries made by our very own talented chef, Sydnee Chavis.

After dinner, we played the Love Game in which you go around and say something you love about every person. Let's just say, tears of joy and immense appreciation were shed. All in all, our day ranked 11/10. Shalom!