Hello! Today was another exciting day! Hard to believe, I know. Unfortunately, Jenna Bazelon had the stomach flu today so she couldn't join us. We are hoping she gets better soon! We started off at Neve with classes from Rabbi Marcus. He was starting the Hebrew alphabet over with the letter Aleph. Aleph represents G-d and oneness, and is therefore the only letter in biblical language to be soundless. Many words in the Hebrew alphabet have meanings that have to do with each individual meaning of the letters that make up the word. For example, the word "Adam" means man, but if you take away the Aleph, it just spells "Dam", which means "blood." You can tell that we are just physical beings without our spiritual aspect, the part that G-d puts in us.
Next we had a class from Mrs. Levitan, who is an expert on relationships. I especially loved this class because she sort of touched on one of my personal mantras, "We choose the way we react to the tings we cannot change." When we wake up, we can choose to be in a good mood or a bad mood. Similarly, we have to choose to love people that we are in a relationship with, including ourselves. She also talked about how when you get married, you should not count on your spouse to change, or you may be disappointed (I'm sure we have heard all that before, but it's still hard to put into practice).
Our next class was with Rebbetzin Heller, who talked to us about the oral and written Torah, and how it all began. I was really useful to get a background in the five books of Moshe, and then the oral Torah, which is made up of the Mishneh, Gemarah, Midrash, and Zohar. These also correlate to the levels of the Torah, from most shallow and simple to most deep and kabbalistic.
Lastly, we had the very sweet Rabbi Liff, who shared about how Jews are viewed both individually and as a whole. He focused on us as individuals. One quote we all liked was (see if you can follow), "If I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I, then I am not I and you are not you. But if I am I because I am I and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you." Phew, a lot of words, but it has a powerful meaning. We need to be ourselves as we are, without having to compare to others, and then we are our true selves. We also discussed how easy it is to be influenced negatively (media and such) and therefore develop a negative self image.
After class, we headed to the old city and Ben Yehuda to do some shopping before we did the tunnel tours. It was nice to spend some time relaxing and shopping there. We then went to the Kotel to meet the big Meor group for the tunnel tours. The Western wall that we all know is actually only a fragment of the wall. But a city was built over the remaining portion and foundation of the rest of the wall surrounding the Bait Hamigdash. There are tunnels that were dug out going along the rest of the Western wall, and we got to walk along them! There is even one point in the tour where you are standing by the wall directly across from the Holy of Holies. This means we were standing at the holiest place in the world, mamish. Amazing! We were also shown some really cool models of the Bait Hamigdash when it was first built, built the second time, and what it looks like today. It was a really touching experience.
After that we came back to the apartment and had some dinner and hung out. We took the free night to relax because we have a busy day tomorrow, if you can believe it. So that's about all for now! We miss you all, but we are looking forward to the next ten days here!
Lots of love,
Ashley
No comments:
Post a Comment