Weekly Update

Not that I've been posting weekly, but maybe this title will encourage me to start a trend.....I do think it's interesting to have a diary of what life is like here, and my friend Heidi (hi Hids!) told me she likes to "compare and contrast" life in the US with my reports of life here, so here are some random thoughts:

First off, the public school year ended with a bang.  Or maybe that was more of a whimper.  It seems the teacher's union representing middle- and high school teachers was less-than-thrilled with the mandate handed down to them to work nine extra days at the end of the year to make up for "corona days".  When negotiations broke down, a lawsuit was brought, and last Friday, an hour before Shabbos, the court ruled in favor of the union and BOOM, just like that, school had ended for the year.  Most people didn't even find out until after Shabbos ended Saturday night and, based on what I saw on the local groups, there was a general feeling of "WHAAAAT?  Yesterday was my kids' last day at school?!  There was no closure! They didn't even take home their stuff!!!"

For our family, it hasn't made any difference.  The ruling only applies to Penina's grades/school and she was only going in for bagruyot matriculation exams anyway.  And they'll still be having those until the end of July (where's that eye roll emoji?!)

Speaking of bagrut exams, here's some crazy news: Currently there are almost 1000 corona patients in the educational system and over 23,000 people in quarantine from schools. Yet the District Physician's office today announced that quarantined students can sit for bagrut matriculation exams, which, as Dr. Eliana Aaron (you can join her daily Whatsapp update group at https://chat.whatsapp.com/EewEcjXLjY39MRSpXC4qcj) so aptly notes: "makes no sense epidemiologically unless they are in complete isolation from other students.  University exams will be given over Zoom, not in-person whenever possible.  It is reasonable to ask why high school students can be sacrificed to COVID sitting in a testing room with 'quarantined' students, while university students remain protected?"  YEAH--you tell 'em, Dr. Eliana!  Is the Israeli educational system's motto "Bagrut uber alles"?! 

Ilana is preparing for 8th grade graduation this week.  Since they have been together at school for the past few weeks, it is not as challenging as the virtual graduations students had in the US (although I loved how our friend Eitan's school made a video of each student walking with cap and gown and giving a speech).  The school originally announced that they would be making a video of the play and song/dance the girls had put together, and that Thursday's official graduation ceremony would only be for the girls and school staff.  I'm hearing whispers that they're trying to find a way for the mothers to attend. Meanwhile, here is the class picture (thanks to Meyrav's Boutique Photography), which makes me want to burst out laughing and crying at the same time:

Ilana is bottom row, second from right.  MAZAL TOV, Ilana!

And, lastly, the puppy update!  His name is Percy (officially "Sir Percival of [our town]), but, yeah, there's a little bit of Percy Jackson homage in there as well.  Here is my favorite picture of him.  He's playing "the tickle game" with Chana, which he looooves to do:

Who even knew dogs had armpits?!  He had his first vet appointment and we found out he weighed 800 grams.  That's less than a package of flour! We really saw it when we gave him a bath--that puppy is all fluff and very little else!  Ilana has not disappointed as a pet parent, getting up early in the morning with him (and a few times during the night) and showing endless patience. Here is a photo she took yesterday:

Bidud Redux

Yesterday, I started a blog post talking about the dissonance between what the Ministry of Health recommended and how it's all playing out in reality, since 17,000 (!!!) students and staff are in quarantine now.  The basis of my draft post was from Dr. Eliana Aaron's (aka "my boss") daily Covid-19 Whatsapp updates.  The info is Israel-centric but covers worldwide issues (to join, send a whatsapp message to: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Hdho9y6lAIj0OfKZKGH5eW):

"The Ministry of Health made recommendations regarding the safe return of children to schools.  This included capsules of 15 students, masks, distancing, hygiene and other measures.  The problem is, the Ministry of Health has no authority in the schools.  The Ministry of Education decided that these measures were not possible in a school environment, so capsules were eliminated and regulations were not enforced.  The idea of having a capsule system, similar to what many work places are doing now, is to expose limited numbers of staff and students to a potentially infected person.  The maximum quarantine needed for a sick student would have been14 other students plus teacher/s - so 15-17 others.  With the current situation, we are seeing a breakdown of the school system because of mass quarantines needed."

So how did Israel get to 17,000 students and staff are in bidud? Because as soon as one student tests positive, the entire school is shutdown and everyone is in quarantine.   Weeeeell, today we saw this up close and personal when Penina's school became the latest with a student who tested positive.  The girl is two grades younger than her (that's all the info we know) and we've only been sending Penina on an "as needed" basis for bagrut matriculation exams.  As she was walking home from one today, her phone went berserk with messages from her class: the police had come to shut down her school, with one class being herded out while in the middle of a bagrut exam.  Although, by the time she got home, it wasn't a surprise to us since OUR group chats were going nuts too.  She gets to be in "house bidud" since she's not in the girl's class, so we'll think positively about it being a two week vacation from going outside (the students in the girl's class have to be in "one room bidud").  

Some nice news is that she'll at least have extra company while hanging around the house: we got a puppy last week! He's a very cute and tiny Maltese.  Still working on the name (although my mother's suggestion of "Corona" was spot on.  We had actually planned to finally cave to Ilana's years-long desire to own a dog when Penina graduates high school next year.  We even thought we'd call it "Penina", just to keep things simple.  But worldwide lunacy moved the schedule up a fair bit).

Penina says she's part of the "Pup-Parazzi" ("Puppyrazzi"?).  And although I'm likely going back to work part-time (two afternoons a week) starting next week, I'm delighted I'm still home, as it's enabled me to do "Mutt-ternity Leave" and work on house training him (he's a natural!).

Of this photo shoot with Chana, Penina says, "It's JUST like doing a newborn shoot!!!"

Back to Shul (!!)

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".

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.  

New and Improved!  Thank you, Chana!

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.

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? 

What's Cooking Here

I'd say the main things that are cooking are some yummy dinners because, hey, I've got all the time in the world now (having all the ingredients is, however, another story.....Israel has still not recovered from Passover's "Eggmaggedon", when, during the most egg-use-intensive holiday of the year, there was a national shortage.  Importing 12 million eggs from Europe was supposed to solve the problem, except that this meant that each citizen got 2 eggs.....On the plus side, the country's been holding up just fine in the toilet paper department).  Anyway, we even made potato latkes by hand (like, with a hand grater!) because, well, did I mention we have some extra time on our hands?

The girls started back to virtual school on Sunday.  Ilana's going a half day and Penina is going about 3/4 of a day.  They attend classes on Zoom, which I think is great, as it encourages getting out of pajamas.

Here are some random thoughts I'm having:
--Growth hormone is released only during deep sleep, so I wonder if children are growing more now that they're getting additional sleep since they don't need to wake up so early for school?

--I wonder what the rates of traffic injuries and other "accidents" are these days?  How much have they decreased?  (I took a great course in nursing school, the premise of which was that "accidents are injuries, and injuries are preventable".  *I* thought it was great.  Shalom Shachne says it changed our lives, and not for the better 😂)

--I'm telling everyone who will listen--ie my family and now all of you--that I suggest taking Vit D supplements, unless you're someone spending lockdown suntanning in the backyard.  I imagine relatively few of us are getting enough natural Vit D at this time

Yesterday, Ilana's school announced a two hour window for parents (only) to come pick up everything their children had left at school.  The school had one pickup time right after lockdown started over a month ago, when students (only) were allowed to go in and get specific books the teachers asked them to have at home.  It's too bad they didn't initially ask them to take everything, which was what Penina's school had done (then again, the very first night of lockdown, there was a severe wind- and rain storm and part of the roof of Penina's school blew off (!), so, from the beginning of all this, her school wasn't sure if they would be up and running again before the end of the year). It was surreal to be in Ilana's classroom with other parents, all of us wearing masks and gloves and throwing books and pencil cases in bags so we could get out of there as soon as possible.....Definitely not like PTA night a few months ago, that's for sure!

Nefesh b'Nefesh just started online Hebrew conversational groups, which I started taking to supplement my twice weekly ulpan which is now "listen only".  Today was our second class, and I found out that 3 out of 10 people in my class had made aliyah in the last few months, and one arrived in March and had 1 1/2 weeks of being out and about before lockdown began.  That's some unusual aliyah.....(Interesting that there are people continuing to make aliyah now.  Then again, if you're coming from Europe [like the three people in my class], between the antisemitism and the rates of coronavirus, you're probably only improving your life by making aliyah). 

As someone who loves to stay home, my days feel pretty reasonable, as long as I look at it one day at a time and just think that I'm having a Sunday day (not that those exist here.....).  And then I go out and see people wearing masks, and, wow, it all hits home what a time we're in the midst of.....