2nd week 2nd post

Here's an overview of the school. It's Conservative and I'm not but there is no pressure to go to services or conform to unreasonable behavior. Everyone is nice, helpful, and I don't sense an hierarchical attitude. The student body is diverse in experience, perspective, age, and country of origin. Age range is 17 to 89. It's just a nice place to be. And I would recommend it to anyone wanting to study Jewish for a limited time in Israel. For the first week we took a class at 7:30 which was an introduction to the morning, Shakarit, service. I was familiar with the service but wanted to understand it and I was not disappointed. After that class the regular school day started with 3 hours of Ulpan or conversational Hebrew. We had taken a placement test and I ended up in A+ or Aleph Plooooos with teacher Oozie, The class is wonderful with about 10 students at comparable levels. I can't say that I will be able to speak Hebrew by the time I leave but I have learned and when I continue at Hunter in the fall I will be at an advantage. There are a variety of choices for the afternoon. Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday was one block and Monday and Wednesday was another block. The only problem I had was realizing that I could not be in 2 places at one time. After some false starts and some anxiety about making the wrong choice I ended up in a class whose goal is formulating a Human Rights Theology. The conversation and the readings are fascinating and the teacher graduated from Highland Park High School my alma mater 30 years after I did. Believe you me, it is hard to wrap your mind around that bit of coincidence.

  "if a little is good, than more is better, and even more is best." Well, so much is pushed into the service for one who does it by the rules there might be too much to do to actually get a moment alone with God.