Israel has such low numbers of Covid-19 infections (b''H) that I heard someone describe it as "we flattened the curve and then we jumped up and down on it a few times". So the big thing this past Shabbos was that shuls opened up for the first time in two months. Our synagogue, although it holds about 100 people, chose to allow only 15 people in by invitation only. This meant that the male Board members and some people who live on the same street as the synagogue were able to come in. Shalom Shachne, as one of the Board members, 'made the cut" (although, nice guy that he is, he said he felt terribly guilty going into shul as the rest of the street davened outside and/or tried to listen in through the windows).
The rules are that everyone who enters needs to use hand sanitizer, wear a mask, bring their own prayer book, and be 2 meters from another person unless they live in the same house. It's been quite lovely having him home for the past eight weeks, and having him davening at home has certainly brought our house to a higher spiritual level. And those "mirpeset minyanim" (did you remember your ulpan word from the last blog post?!) have brought the whole neighborhood to a higher level. I'm glad he/they are back in shul--it's where they're supposed to be. But I will miss hearing so much davening around me, miss hearing the late night singing from across the valley, miss hearing Bircas Cohanim from just a few houses away. For me, these were definitely "silver Covid linings".
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Back to School (!)
I know this probably sounds CRAZY to those of you who already know that your school is done until the end of the year, but most of Israel is back to school, now that the numbers of those infected are "down to a trickle".
Ilana went back to 8th grade a few days ago. Penina just had her first matriculation exam and that led to the first time she walked back into school in 67 days (she's been counting), although we expect her to sometime this week rejoin the rest of her class in being back full-time. The challenging thing with starting this past week was that we were in the middle of a really strong heat wave leading to temperatures in our city of 106 f. And it lasted for six days (thankfully, not at that level of heat. But you know it's bad when we say things like--"Wow, it's ONLY going to be 91 f on Friday--that's ten whole degrees colder than its been"). This led the Ministry of Health to temporarily lift the requirement that students wear masks at school. Which everyone seemed to take as "do whatever you want, go wherever you want, what the heck, we're all done with this thing". Or maybe not QUITE that bad, but something like that. We'll just say that our kids were part of a minority wearing masks in school and good for them (personally, I think all masks should have "I'm Wearing a Mask Because I Care About You" printed on them. Might make it easier for people to deal with wearing them).
The heat wave finally ended, but the crazy weather is still out full-force because this morning we got a downpour of rain, the likes of which are unusual after Purim, rare after Pesach and almost-miraculous the week of Shavuot.
For those of you who are reading this on the Blogspot page, you've probably noticed the blog's spiffy new header. My thanks to Chana C of New Hampshire, who made our original header, which showed people at the Kotel.
I asked her to update the header since we haven't been to the Kotel in a looong time (on what turned out to be my last day of work in the Old City, I was so intent on high-tailing it out of there and getting home that I didn't go to the Kotel, although had I known I wouldn't be back for months, I would have likely made a different choice....). Interesting side note: davening at the Kotel for the holiday of Shavuot at the end of this week is by lottery. I think it's beautiful that I live in a country that you win the lottery and get to pray at the holiest site! Anyway, the new header shows the view off our mirpeset (there's your new Hebrew word for the day so you can impress people saying "porch" in Hebrew), since that's where we're spending huge amounts of time. To follow-up to a long ago conversation with our pal Damon, who told us how he was spiffing up his Manhattan porch, we gussied ours up by sweeping (aim low is my sometimes motto), buying two lounge chairs (ooh, they come with cup holders AND cell phone holders now!) and getting a new hanging swing to accompany our glider swing.
Ilana went back to 8th grade a few days ago. Penina just had her first matriculation exam and that led to the first time she walked back into school in 67 days (she's been counting), although we expect her to sometime this week rejoin the rest of her class in being back full-time. The challenging thing with starting this past week was that we were in the middle of a really strong heat wave leading to temperatures in our city of 106 f. And it lasted for six days (thankfully, not at that level of heat. But you know it's bad when we say things like--"Wow, it's ONLY going to be 91 f on Friday--that's ten whole degrees colder than its been"). This led the Ministry of Health to temporarily lift the requirement that students wear masks at school. Which everyone seemed to take as "do whatever you want, go wherever you want, what the heck, we're all done with this thing". Or maybe not QUITE that bad, but something like that. We'll just say that our kids were part of a minority wearing masks in school and good for them (personally, I think all masks should have "I'm Wearing a Mask Because I Care About You" printed on them. Might make it easier for people to deal with wearing them).
The heat wave finally ended, but the crazy weather is still out full-force because this morning we got a downpour of rain, the likes of which are unusual after Purim, rare after Pesach and almost-miraculous the week of Shavuot.
For those of you who are reading this on the Blogspot page, you've probably noticed the blog's spiffy new header. My thanks to Chana C of New Hampshire, who made our original header, which showed people at the Kotel.
I asked her to update the header since we haven't been to the Kotel in a looong time (on what turned out to be my last day of work in the Old City, I was so intent on high-tailing it out of there and getting home that I didn't go to the Kotel, although had I known I wouldn't be back for months, I would have likely made a different choice....). Interesting side note: davening at the Kotel for the holiday of Shavuot at the end of this week is by lottery. I think it's beautiful that I live in a country that you win the lottery and get to pray at the holiest site! Anyway, the new header shows the view off our mirpeset (there's your new Hebrew word for the day so you can impress people saying "porch" in Hebrew), since that's where we're spending huge amounts of time. To follow-up to a long ago conversation with our pal Damon, who told us how he was spiffing up his Manhattan porch, we gussied ours up by sweeping (aim low is my sometimes motto), buying two lounge chairs (ooh, they come with cup holders AND cell phone holders now!) and getting a new hanging swing to accompany our glider swing.
New and Improved! Thank you, Chana!
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Chana
Chana, for some reason, was offended surprised that she was not mentioned in the last two blog posts, so I'll make up for it by devoting an entire post just to her (although I'm not sure why she would have been included in a post about schools in Israel returning to in-person studies, but anyway.....).
When Chana graduated college last spring, she accepted a fellowship at her college in Online Education. So, basically, she's got a job in THE field of the moment and, although she was one of the only people to work in the almost-empty department every day (job requirement, it wasn't by choice), she is working remotely here and it's going fine. Since we're used to Shalom Shachne working US hours (approximately 4-midnight), it's all good. She spends her mornings jogging or riding her bike and spends a huge amount of time developing a nefarious plot to make us all, umm, huge by baking tons of pastries. Yesterday she made mini apple pies and apple turnovers, and last Friday afternoon got on a huge (there's that word again) baking kick and made a vegan lemon-blueberry loaf and coffee cake AND she and Ilana made the most adorable gingerbread cookies. My favorite was based on this photo of SS and Shrek-the-hat-wearing-Horse
And here's the cookie (yes, she probably does have too much time on her hands)
Today, Chana had a very big day (in Covid-19 terms, that is). She went TO THE LIBRARY. Today was the first day it's been open and it was by sign-up (and the 16 slots open over this week and next got filled in VERY fast. I was very grateful I was on my computer when the email came in so I could snag her a slot in the very first time slot [super clean books!]. Only 4 people at a time were allowed in (one per family, masks and hand sanitizing required). Each group got only 30 minutes in there, which was significantly cut into by the book return and checkout process. In order to keep the process "no touch" (the librarians sat behind plexiglass with no openings), the librarians used each person's name to open the patron's account and "check in" their book returns by having the patron read off the book names. The books themselves were put into a box to be left for three days before library staff touches them). The checkout process was similar-but-worse in that patrons had to read off the bar code on each book in order to check them out. I guess this is the positive side of only being able to take out ten books at a time. But it sounds like a LOT to do in only 30 minutes.
Overall, I'd say one of the "silver coronavirus linings" is this unexpected time with Chana. She lives in the college dorm in Manhattan (job perk) and, since it's unclear when the dorm (or the college, for that matter!!) will open again, we'll hopefully have her here through the summer, at least.
Overall, I'd say one of the "silver coronavirus linings" is this unexpected time with Chana. She lives in the college dorm in Manhattan (job perk) and, since it's unclear when the dorm (or the college, for that matter!!) will open again, we'll hopefully have her here through the summer, at least.
Monday, May 4, 2020
School. Or Not....
On the super plus side, Israel is doing great with coronavirus infection rates. "Spread of Covid-19 Halted" blared the headline of the Times of Israel two days ago. This great news, however, is leading to one of the next logical questions: "when can kids go back to school?" Which is odd to hear when my MA public school-teacher friend Kerry has just told me that there will be no more in-person school in Massachusetts this year.
Sometimes I feel like we're on different planets than everyone else--we locked down so much earlier and had such stronger restrictions on our movement (MA just announced that everyone has to wear masks starting mid-week. We've been at this for over three weeks as a law, and close to two months as a suggestion). But now Israel is opening up the economy and here we are talking about kids going back to school.
On Friday afternoon the government announced that, starting SUNDAY, many students would be returning to class. Given that a vast swath of the country is Sabbath-observant, this timing seemed INSANE to me. How on earth would they be able to get things ready (even basic things like covering the water fountains)?! This crazy timing led some mayors to rebel and refuse to open their schools on Sunday.
In the educational framework that Ilana's school is part of, the plan was to start with grades 6-8 (no explanation of how they chose those grades. And it can't be that the kids have to go back to school to get the parents back to work because the preschoolers aren't back yet, and the 6th-8th graders are a totally useful age to have at home, especially if there are younger kids). Ilana's school, however, said yesterday that they were planning to open the whole school (grades 1-8) this week and wanted to know how many students to plan for. Classes would be split into groups of 15 (which is about half of the normal class size in her school). I was asked to find out how many of the parents of her classmates were planning to send their kids back to school, and was pretty surprised to find out, after a day of talking with parents, that only 5 parents were planning to send their child back at this point, and 22 said an outright 'no' or that they would wait two weeks and see what was happening with the infection rates and then re-evaluate (that's the group I fall in). That seemed to be the upshot in the other grades as well, and, in the end, the school is going to remain "Zoom Schooling" for at least the next few weeks. WHEW.
However, then there's Penina's school. Her school is part of a different educational system with different grades being sent back (because why should the entire country be doing the same thing?!). In her school system, it's grades 1-3 going back and also 11-12, which includes her grade. I was hoping, hoping that maybe her school would also poll parents and find similar things to Ilana's school, but no such luck (Ilana's school is a private-public mix and Penina's is straight public, so the parents have less say and the government more/total say in Penina's school). Why grades 11 and 12? Because here the students have to pass a series of bagruyot. These matriculation exams are necessary for graduation from high school, and the government is concerned about getting off-track with the bagrut schedule (thus saith Penina, "they're teaching the students to value test scores over their lives"). The school just announced tonight that it is reopening Wednesday. Sigh. She will not be going back at this time. Parents are not required to send their child back to in-person classes, but the student will have to go in for the exams themselves. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I really hate feeling that the children of this country are guinea pigs in a very big science experiment, and that someone high up in politics missed the class about "change one variable at a time". Okay, Israel--you want to open up most of the stores this past week, and let malls start opening on Thursday--FINE. You say we can now have weddings and funerals with 50 people rather than 10? GREAT! But can we please not do everything all at once and send a million children back to school the same week? Can we please just take this slow and see how things play out?
Sometimes I feel like we're on different planets than everyone else--we locked down so much earlier and had such stronger restrictions on our movement (MA just announced that everyone has to wear masks starting mid-week. We've been at this for over three weeks as a law, and close to two months as a suggestion). But now Israel is opening up the economy and here we are talking about kids going back to school.
On Friday afternoon the government announced that, starting SUNDAY, many students would be returning to class. Given that a vast swath of the country is Sabbath-observant, this timing seemed INSANE to me. How on earth would they be able to get things ready (even basic things like covering the water fountains)?! This crazy timing led some mayors to rebel and refuse to open their schools on Sunday.
In the educational framework that Ilana's school is part of, the plan was to start with grades 6-8 (no explanation of how they chose those grades. And it can't be that the kids have to go back to school to get the parents back to work because the preschoolers aren't back yet, and the 6th-8th graders are a totally useful age to have at home, especially if there are younger kids). Ilana's school, however, said yesterday that they were planning to open the whole school (grades 1-8) this week and wanted to know how many students to plan for. Classes would be split into groups of 15 (which is about half of the normal class size in her school). I was asked to find out how many of the parents of her classmates were planning to send their kids back to school, and was pretty surprised to find out, after a day of talking with parents, that only 5 parents were planning to send their child back at this point, and 22 said an outright 'no' or that they would wait two weeks and see what was happening with the infection rates and then re-evaluate (that's the group I fall in). That seemed to be the upshot in the other grades as well, and, in the end, the school is going to remain "Zoom Schooling" for at least the next few weeks. WHEW.
However, then there's Penina's school. Her school is part of a different educational system with different grades being sent back (because why should the entire country be doing the same thing?!). In her school system, it's grades 1-3 going back and also 11-12, which includes her grade. I was hoping, hoping that maybe her school would also poll parents and find similar things to Ilana's school, but no such luck (Ilana's school is a private-public mix and Penina's is straight public, so the parents have less say and the government more/total say in Penina's school). Why grades 11 and 12? Because here the students have to pass a series of bagruyot. These matriculation exams are necessary for graduation from high school, and the government is concerned about getting off-track with the bagrut schedule (thus saith Penina, "they're teaching the students to value test scores over their lives"). The school just announced tonight that it is reopening Wednesday. Sigh. She will not be going back at this time. Parents are not required to send their child back to in-person classes, but the student will have to go in for the exams themselves. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I really hate feeling that the children of this country are guinea pigs in a very big science experiment, and that someone high up in politics missed the class about "change one variable at a time". Okay, Israel--you want to open up most of the stores this past week, and let malls start opening on Thursday--FINE. You say we can now have weddings and funerals with 50 people rather than 10? GREAT! But can we please not do everything all at once and send a million children back to school the same week? Can we please just take this slow and see how things play out?
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