From One Home To The Next!

b"H

My whole life, as I'm sure anyone reading this will know, I have been living in Toronto (minus a couple of years spent in Port Perry) and now I am, for the next 6 months, going to be living in Israel studying at Yeshivat Torat-Yosef Hamivtar, in Efrat, approximately 20 minutes south of Jerusalem, in the Gush Etzion area. This first entry is actually coming from Israel. I have been here for just over 1 day. This entry will recollect, to an extent anyway, the events of my trip to Israel, and of my first day here.

I was taken to the airport by my parentals and my brother, went through the check in process, and got to the baggage exray / body scanning metal detector thing. I hate that thing. I have never made it through one of those without beeping. This trip was no exception. As I was emptying my pockets into the litle basket, which actually wasn't that little at all, I found something very important: my parents' van spare-keys! It is a good thing they waited until the last second that I was in sight, so as long as they could see me, and I them, I could run back and give them their keys, which I did. I think they appreciated it. Anyway, I went through the metal detector, beeped as usual as I had forgotten about my belt, took off my belt, held up my pants, went through again and was successful on only the second try. I put my belt back on, repacked my bags - my computers had to go through separately - and proceeded to gate 174. I looked back a couple of times and noticed my family still watching. When I turned the corner and knew I was out of sight, I decided to give a phone call to my mom to let her know I was okay! She didn't answer.... I started to wonder "I hope SHE'S okay!!!"

I prayed for the best and continued to the gate. I picked up some food (which I still haven't eaten) and a coffee...mmm...Tim Horton's has some great coffee! Espeially when you know it is your last Timmy's coffee for quite some time. I'm not sure how this turned out, but let me show you what a guy who is leaving everything he has ever known and loved and is about to drink his last Tim's looks like:



So, apparently not all that great, but not a back picture given that I took it myself. I always find that anticipation of travel while sitting at the airport very unnerving. All these random people are looking at each other seemingly thinking "Are you going to be sitting next to me? Well, if you are, you better not smell bad after 11 hours in a cramped little seat..."

Luckily for me, I didn't have such a cramped little seat. Thank you very much to Keith Silverberg at Suntastic Travel in Toronto, on Bathurst Street in the same plaza as Richmond's bakery (yes, that was a totally shameless plug and here's why) for hooking this brother up with a window seat in the front row of economy which means extra leg room and not having to worry so much about getting up during the flight and getting around the guy next to you. It made for a very pleasant flight experience. How pleasant? Well, let's see another self taken picture - this will be the last one though, I assure you all. Well, the last one for this post anyway, but enough of my yammering on. Here is the picture:


Wow...my eyes are scary and my beard is uneven. Love it! :)

The guy sitting next to me, was a yeshiva bochur, who was in Toronto for his brother's wedding -a big Mazal Tov to him and his family- who grew up in Toronto but has been studying in Yeshiva his whole life. It actually bugged me a little bit. (And pardon me as I transition now into a bit of a political statement.) I asked him a few questions of halacha and he answered me with much uncertainty. He for sure knew better than I did, which is why I asked, but for a guy who has been learning his whole life, it should've been an easy answer. I also asked him what his plans for the future were, if he had any. He didn't - well, nothing beyond learning. No thoughs of business, of finances, for anything beyond the yeshiva learinng. Now, as a guy who is about to embark on a few years of yeshiva study, I find it incredibly commendable that he is so into his learning. But that is just the thing - he wasn't so into his learning. He had a gemara and an Aryeh Kaplan book with him. He had the entire masechet (tractate) of daf yomi (daily page) lessons on his new iPod, none of which got listened to, and in the last 2 hour of the flight he picked up the Kaplan book and read 3 pages before leaning over and telling me how he was zoning out and couldn't focus on it. I started discussing with him a whole bunch of issues that were in another Kaplan book on a related topic until something dawned on me. This guy, who has and is planning to continue learning in Yeshiva for his whole life was able to waste a 10 hour flight, with next to no Torah at all. It seemed like his life long learning had helped him establish a total desire to avoid Torah! He watched 2 and a half movies, ate (without making a single bracha), davened a full shacharit (morning prayer) in about 10 minutes flat - I'm pretty certain that is impossible to do, but whatever... , and ultimately it really seemed like everthing he did that WAS based on Torah was done totally as a force of habit with zero feeling and zero intention. Now, I know this happens, and I don't fault him for it. I watch movies too, and I don't fault him for that either. I sleep and eat forgetting to make brachot constantly, daily, sometimes even neglecting it, when I DO remember. But what did bother me is that without having any above average drive towards Torah and mitzvot, this guy was never planning to ever contribute more than his force-of-habit Torah study to the world. Similar to prayer, it is recorded by sages that learning without intention has no benefit to the soul, even though it might affect the mind. Even doing work is a Torah commandment.

In any event, this whole thought process made me realize how easy it is to get into the yeshiva world and yet to totally lose touch with the world at large! It was almost like a divine warning telling me to keep my head on my shoulders. I have been staying since I got here with my dad's cousin. I mentioned some of these thoughts as well as other opinions I have about the Jewish world in general and they gave me a bracha (blessing) that I should go to yeshiva and come out with the same thoughts on this topic that I have now! I said amen, and then told them that I am praying for the same thing!

Okay, back to the trip. We left a half hour late, but arrived a half hour early. Baruch HaShem (thank G-d) going through customs was no problem and the second I approached the baggage line, it took about 30 seconds until I had both my bags on the cart. I changed some money, the Canadian exchange blows, but it is what it is, and I got myself a train ticket. My big bag was too big for the aisle on the train but I yanked it through anyway and came to my dad's cousin in Binyamina, between Tel Aviv and Haifa. The train comes right across the street from their house, which is great, but there is a big staircase down and then another one up to exit the station. Now, that is all well and good, except for that big bag I mentioned earlier weighing 70 pounds! Oy, that was painful! The bag survived, I survived, I was covered in puddles of shvitz - eww - and after crossing the busy street that has major construction going on I was here. I took a moment, sat down to relax and waited for cousins to return home. We caught up a bit, ate a bit, had some tea and then I went up to my room and eventually slept. Depending on how things go, I might decide to fill you all in on "eventually". :) For now though, I think this will suffice. tomorrow evening, be'ezrat HaShem (with G-d's help), I will give an accounting of the events of today and tomorrow!