Fitting In (Article# 92) 9/18/08

A few days before everyone got back to school, my brother Ely invited us to join his family at the Kotel for our nephew Yishai’s Hanachat Tefillin. Although we have attended other family smachot in Israel, this was the first time that we were able to join as a family, which was cool. With all the Katz siblings living in Israel, we can finally enjoy major events as a complete family, kids and all.

We were joined by Joel and Rachel Maryles who were having a Hanachat Tefillin for their son Yair. Joel is also a former Chicagoan who we have known since we were all babies; Joel’s grandfather responded to an advertisement for a shoichet for the Toledo, Ohio community where my grandfather was the Rav of the community (he succeeded his father in law, my great grandfather, as Rav) anf the Katz’s and the Maryles’ have shared a familial bond ever since. So it was a real treat to share our simcha together here in Israel, especially since we had the chance to see the grandparents, Jack (who helped teach me how to daven for the Amud) and Anne Maryles and have them join us for breakfast in celebration of the dual simcha.

Now that school has actually begun, I have found that somehow our lives seem even more hectic than during the summer. Chaim came home from camp and the next day he started yeshiva – in almost 3 months we have had him home for one Shabbat and a Shabbat meal (and brief visits to watch the Bears play). The other kids all have their new school schedules (Mordechai’s school opened a new building and Batya’s school moved into the old boys building) and with “meet the teachers” nights and the arrival of students at work, it has been quite a hectic couple of weeks.

Of course, the arrival of new students means several things to me. First is having to learn a whole slew of new names. While this used to be the thing I dreaded most, this year’s crew has 7 younger brothers which has helped tremendously. I was also much more deeply involved in the registration process which led to more familiarity with the names as well. Another part of bringing in new students is the “orientation” activities and tiyulim we run to help the guys acclimate to the schedule and the surroundings.

Many of these are tiyulim that I will never tire of. Any visit to the old city is a special occasion. Visiting it with newly arrived students in anticipation of a special year of growth in learning is much more so. I have been to the Ir David excavations and water tunnel four times in the past 2 years and it is exciting each time I go. To walk in the places we have learned about in Tana”ch helps establish a true connection and is something that cannot be duplicated elsewhere. Hopefully the students will find it interesting as well.

The morning of our tiyul to Ir David, I traveled by train to the Yeshiva. Although I would normally work on the computer on the train, since I was going on the tiyul, I had only my knapsack and a drink. To occupy my time on the train, I took one of the free daily newspapers that are distributed at the station and prepared to enjoy reading the ads (since I never understand the paper).

However, an article about the Yerushalayim mayoral elections caught my eye and before I knew it, I had both read it AND (to my amazement) understood it. It was really amazing and somewhat relieving to see tangible evidence that my Hebrew skills were improving. I tried to read other articles and I would guess that I was able to understand more than half of them. I still can’t understand the news on the radio (they speak too quickly) but progress is progress.

Unless you have been on vacation in Alaska all year, you probably know that we have had some famous 5 Towns olim this year. Well, this past Shabbat we had the inaugural minyan for Bet Shemesh’s newest shul (we still haven’t decided on a name yet). We had been anticipating the opening for weeks and once Rabbi Rosner moved into his house we had a big push to get started. Since we plan on eventually buying a home in the new neighborhood, Goldie and I decided early on that we would be joining the new shul once the Rosners arrived and minyanim started.

Former 5 Towner Joshua Rudoff had arranged shiurim and was instrumental in getting everyone together. I was able to help make the connection with the administration of Mordechai’s school (which is right next door to the new neighborhood) and we suddenly had a home (at least for Shabbat and Chaggim). We put out the word that there would be davening and silently prayed that we would get at least 20 people (so it wouldn’t be a total disaster) and tried to cover all bases in making arrangements.

There were definitely hiccups (like finding out the room we were supposed to be in had no A/C) but we got everything set and showed up Friday night. And were overwhelmed. We had something like 30 men on Friday night (it was a standing room only crowd) and before we went home we decided to add more chairs in case more people showed up the next morning.

On Friday night the Rudoff’s hosted an Oneg Shabbat for the shul at their home, which also had a couple dozen people (I left early – so there may even have been more). So we were confident that we would see an OK turnout the next morning and were pretty happy about it.

Shabbat morning we were once again overwhelmed. I would guess that in the end we had something like 100 people davening with us (men, women and children) – the crowd was worse than standing room only – we had people setting up chairs in the hallway. It was great to see so many people come to see what the buzz was about and to meet several of our Hebrew speaking Israeli neighbors who were thrilled to finally have a minyan close to their homes.

Rabbi Rosner spoke in a very understandable Hebrew and made sure to intersperse it with a small amount of English translation to make sure that even the new Olim had a chance to understand him. The whole experience was simply terrific, and definitely uplifting to the people who worked to organize everything. As part of the Shabbat, Goldie and I sponsored a simple Kiddush after davening and it was a bit embarrassing but also quite exhilarating when we realized that so many people had turned up for the minyan that we would not have enough food.

It was a long time coming, but I think that finally we might be seeing some progress toward making the long term acclimation to our surroundings. The language is much less of a barrier than it used to be and in many ways we have adjusted our expectations to better fit the Israeli system and psychology. We will always be different, extremely different from the majority of Israelis. Yet somehow we are definitely becoming more like them.