One Year Anniversary

One Year Anniversary...Plus
October 4, 2005

I had originally planned to write something for our one year anniversary, but the summer got hectic and here it is with Rosh Hashanah fast approaching. So it will have to be one year plus...

I guess like many other periods in life, looked at in reflection, our first year here seemed to go by amazingly fast and slow at the same time. In general, the week here seems to fly by. I think part of it has to do with the fact that Sunday is a regular day, but whatever the reason it seems like we've just finished cleaning up from Shabbos and we're already getting ready for the next Shabbos. OK, I readily admit that sometimes that actually IS the case as we have been known to put away the last of the Shabbos dishes on a Wednesday!

When I last wrote back in June, Randi was about to embark on her first trip back to the states for Elisheva's high school graduation. The trip went very well, especially if you own stock in Visa or Target. Elisheva's graduation was beautiful and we are very proud of her. Especially since, as she was fond saying all year, that we abandoned her and moved to a third world country in the middle of hot desert. (Elisheva did receive a "shout out" at graduation for her "special" situation.) She had planned to stay in the states for the summer. Her plans to work in camp changed and she ended up working in a Bridal shop in Flatbush which she enjoyed very much. Could this be a future career?

The last of our "first" holidays here was Tisha B'av. I guess I was kind of hoping that the previous year's Tisha B'av would have been the last one. After all, I thought, if the Lipkins are making aliyah then Moshiach must be around the corner! The fast day was even more solemn than usual with the disengagement looming in the air. There was a palpable sense of loss and yet we are still hoping for the best.

We had the pleasure of hosting 3 of our nephews from Brooklyn for a few weeks this summer. We went on some nice day trips with them, but I think their favorite activities were lying around on the couch, reading "Zits", and watching videos. (Please don't tell anyone because it might affect the quality of their shidduchim down the road.) "Unfortunately", their original plan of staying for a whole month was sabotaged by their brother's wedding. More on that later.

OK, it's later. So as I mentioned last time, our nephew Yitzy got engaged to one of Etana's closest friends, Avigail Slanger. As a consequence, our summer vacation plans naturally revolved around the wedding which took place at the end of August. Though I don't think we would have decided on our own to go back to the states as a family after only one year, once we realized we "had" to go we all, with the exception of Etana, really got into the idea of seeing friends and family. (Of course Etana was excited about the wedding, but she is so competely attached to Eretz Yisroel that it actually pains her to leave.) And really that's what the trip was about. I think the only "vacation" type thing we did was to go to Great Adventure.

We were graciously hosted by our good friends Russell and Nitza Adler. They were so gracious, in fact, that they even built an addition onto their house just to make our stay more comfortable. On top of that they arranged for us to have their house to ourselves for the first week and somehow even got Katrina to pass through Florida first, delaying their return even more! Since the Adlers live on the same street we used to, there was this surreal feeling of just slipping back into our old lives. I think we all felt very at home in our old community or as we say in Ulpan "Anachnu Hayinu Babayit". Of course we also got to spend some quality time with my Dad and our special metropolitan aunts, Vivienne and Sandi. Needless to say, but I will anyway, Randi got in a good amount of shopping at, you guessed it, Target and other fine stores.

One of those other fine stores was Bed, Bath, and Beyond; "beyond" being the key word here. Everyone is probably familiar with BB&B because they mail out gazillions of coupons. (Interestingly my spell checker does not have a problem with the word "gazillions".) Randi discovered that they have a very liberal redemption policy so she posted on the Highland Park/Edison e-mail list that she was seeking extra BB&B coupons. Without blinking she had 20 coupons and also without blinking, she used all 20 of them!

The wedding itself was beautiful and lively. We spent the shabbos before at Yitzy's Aufruf in Brooklyn and the Shabbos after in Lakewood for Sheva Brachos hosted by the Slanger family. It's really nice to see such two fine families get together. We raced from Lakewood right after Shabbos to get Raanan and I to a midnight flight at Newark. He had to be back in Israel for the start of school that Monday. Randi and the girls stayed for a few extra days and as a bonus got to go to two more weddings!

It was great picking the women up at the airport knowing that Elisheva was going to be coming home and for the first time in a year we would all be together again in the same country. Of course "together" is a relative term. Elisheva is off in Jerusalem at seminary. Raanan is in his brand new, beautiful, multi-million dollar dorm during the week, and I just moved Etana into her apartment where she'll be living with three other Highland Park girls while she attends Bar Ilan University. (Yes, she transferred out of Michlalah. Remind you of anyone???) So as if Meira isn't spoiled enough, she's now an "only child" during the week. Still, we're all here and will often be together for Shabbos.

Our house is coming along nicely. The outflow of cash for various and sundry items seems endless. Before we went to the states we selected a contractor to do a small addition we had planned when we bought the house. (You may ask why we have to do an addition on a newly built house. You may, but don't.) We gave him the go-ahead to begin work while we were away. As I've mentioned before, there's no finesse in altering a house made out of concrete. No sooner had we heard that he began work than did I receive a very polite and only slightly panicky e-mail from our "attached" neighbor that something happened and there had been some damage to their house. Without going into too much detail, when I returned I discovered that my contractor had done something to cause the wall in their brand new kitchen to bulge, knocking off some of their tiles and pushing their countertop away from the wall. Thankfully my contractor fixed everything and he was back at work this week knocking pieces off of my house!

Meira is back in the same Gan as last year. Since it's a two year gan she is now a "senior" and gets to boss around all the 3 year olds. There are a lot more Israeli kids in her gan this year so we're hoping that her Hebrew will grow at a faster pace. Speaking of Hebrew fluency, our Hebrew speaking star, Raanan, is doing quite well in school this year. He's either making stuff up or he's actually understanding his physics class in Hebrew!

Raanan is also quite proud of his new "kosher" cell phone. That's right, his yeshiva, for reasons I will not delve into now, decided that if the boys wanted to have cell phones they had to be kosher. No, they're not edible, but they actually do have a certification seal on them! Basically it certifies that the phone is just a phone and not an internet portal.

Randi started ulpan again soon after her return from the states. I thought I was ready to move on from ulpan and do something more constructive with my morning time, but I was quickly to be proven wrong. One day, a few weeks ago, I had to call the cell phone company of have them fix a problem I was having. I figured I'd be brave and not say right of the bat, "at medaberet anglit?". (Do you speak English?) This had been my habit most of the first year. After all, I've been through 7 months of intensive Hebrew study, I should be able to speak to a customer service person from the phone company. Well it started off fine. She then proceeded to ask me something I didn't understand and, being a guy, rather than just asking her to repeat what she said more slowly I just surmised an answer. I still have no idea how far off I was but her immediate response, in very broken English, was, "I'll get you someone who speaks English". So here I am back in ulpan with Randi 5 days a week hoping that I can gain the confidence to once again say to a customer service person, "at medaberet anglit?"!

Eight years ago, when we moved into our house on Edgemount Road in Edison, the nearby shul had just begun construction on their new building. A year later the congregation moved into the new sanctuary for Rosh Hashana. Last year when we moved here the congregation of our shul was davening in the basement of an unfinished shell. One year later we'll be moving into our new sanctuary for Rosh Hashana. What's my point? Good question. I guess we're available, for a fee, to move to your community to get your shul finished.

Somewhat seriously, our shul has been wonderful. A whole new slew of olim arrived this summer, making us feel like seasoned Israelis. (Of course I just have to try to speak Hebrew to remind me that I'm not.) It's a very New Jersey-type shul. We have programs like a Malave Malke to welcome new members (http://www.bmtl.org/members/) and a "bake auction". At a bake auction members bake their regular Shabbos desserts and other members pay ridiculous prices to buy them. The Lipkin family was well represented with Randi's Chalah and lace cookies, Etana's peanut butter brownies, and of course my chocolate chip cookies. All together our stuff brought in over 1,000 NIS! (The whole auction made over 26K.)