a balloontwister’s aliya saga

Chodesh Sameach!

Chodesh Tov!

Its nissan. For some its going to be the longest 2 weeks of the year. For the rest its going to be difficult… trying to get out of the way of your wife cleaning the house, car, etc. For me, its going to be a real vacation. I get to be home for three weeks. Columbus is ending at the end of April and I get to work the last three weeks from Israel. WOO HOO!!

So this shabbos its off to Staten Island where I ‘ll fill up a suitcase filled with… stuff.. to take back to Israel. I leave Columbus Thursday afternoon next week and fly to NY and then to ISrael. This shabbos I’ll be at Kasirup and Litchy. The truth is I think about Yanky more than anyone from SI. Every morning I wake up and I think up yanky. HE tackled me 2 months ago and sprained my ankle. So every morning when I hear a crack and wince. I think of yanky. I’m sure every time he gets pinched he thinks of me…. oops… probably should have taken that out.

Last night I attended a meeting and had a nice time. Approx. 15 people and the Columbus Shaliach sat around a living room in someone’s house and talked about making aliya.. the challenges. A gentleman who is a lawyer spke for the most part and talked about living in Israel..and other challenges. Then some guy spoke about aliya but working in Columbus. Some short guy with a NJ Nets shirt. I had a nice time. I actually saw a Ba’al teshuva who is making aliya, that I met in Columbus a few months ago. He went on a pilot trip a little while ago so it was nice to see him again. Gives me a little inspiration to hear other people making aliya as they ask questions that can only be answered by an oleh chadash. Nefesh b’nefesh….Red tape…etc..

Yesterday was a big day. Bec. we don’t have a TV in Israel. I signed up for MLB.TV so we can watch the Metsies on the COmputer. So today, I have ESPN radio, Yahoo music, and the Mets / cardinals game on…. Its a wonder I get ANY work done around here. Its shocking that they are upset that I’m cutting out at the end of April and not extending my contract another Month.

Well, I’m going to sign off… get SOME work done.

J

well, we had a rainy day in COlumbus. No big deal but without a raincoat… or regular shoes… it can be.

A few things I don’t have here in COlumbus:

a coat, a raincoat, weekday shoes..

THe last time I came I forgot my coat at Burger Bar in Beit Shemesh. I vowed not to buy one. So I took penina’s fleece and off I went. my coworker gave me a sweatshirt that looks like it could fit Kenny. Wore it once.

Well, this week I was without 2 other essentials.

My phone charger and deodorant. I left them at my parents house in Brooklyn. My mother is sending the charger to columbus. SO it leaves just one question.

How long can I get by without deodorant? I’ve been coatless for 10 days… and I figure I can go deodorantless for at least that long as well. (INSERT A NAME HERE) goes twice that long without deodorant and a shower.. so 10 days isn’t that bad.

Today was election day in Israel. Penina took the kids to a museum in Rehovot and they sound ok. Election day is a national holiday although according to exit polls, less than 60% of the people voted. I have no idea how long it will take to get results, but I’m a bit nervous. What we went through and continue to go through with disengagement, if kadima gets enough seats and forms a bloc.. we may g-d forbid have more of the same. ironically, today a stonger rocket as fired out of gaza today. From Kassams to a katushya. Hopefully we will have good news.

Well, I’m signing off…

Wow, a busy weekend….
Parents, Brother, sister, inlaws, nephews, nieces, Friends from Staten Island, Litchy…..busy… just jam packed…
The capper was the Sheerei Shalom concert that Yudi Zuller puts together to raise money for terror victims in Israel. Its interesting how living there we don’t think about it alot. We have so much on our minds in Israel. Our OWN security. Gush kativ refugees. Elections. I also see how the concert has taken a different tone. Its a bit more festive and less somber… for better or for worse.. I’m undecided as to how I feel about that. On the plus side with the concert and with all the money being raised the victims in Israel must feel that they are tops in our minds and it gives them chizuk. It was only a few weeks ago that I saw the COhens on Purim. A family that was on a few slides in the slideshow last night. I thank g-d that they look ALOT better then they did on the slides. The kids are healthy. Only the little one has any “major” noticible damage. Without Yudi and Zalman Indig I never would have met them. My kids would never have met them. And we wouldn’t have this tremendous bond that we share. I strongly urge everyone who goes to israel to take just a few hours out of their trip to visit a family that can really use chizuk. It will be the highlight of your trip. I guarantee it. You’ve been at the kotel. You’ve been to ben yehuda. You’ve seen Masada. You’ve been to all the major places. Visiting with a family like the Cohens or going to a hospital will literally change you. It gives me chizuk and an appreciation to H-shem every time I go.
call / email yudi and get involved. No money required. Just a few chocolates for the kids perhaps… and an ear to listen to their story and how they are coping.
Another highlight was seeing my nephew on stage. It was incredible how he was able to sing AND give me the raspberry when I made a face at him. A Talent I’m sure his father stays up nights teaching him.
It was alot of fun seeing the gang from SI. THe concert was and IS a true testament to Willowbrook. How we / they all have Israel in their hearts and mind. I also got a kick out of seeing my friends Jenn and Brad at the concert. 2 of their sons sing, and the third dances like Michael Jackson on speed. Everyone around me wondered how that little kid in the yellow GAP shirt was. I dont think Brad has ever made a split in his life. I know he’s been on the GW bridge in his drawers… but splits … I don;t know. I also will try harder to appeal to my younger readers… chavi and yehuda like when I write about throw up. Chavi, my niece will be visiting Israel for pesach and my nephews, yaacov and Choir boy will be visiting use in august with Aunt RUthie. Looks like my drums will get some more use out of them.
My folks made a gala evening Sat. night to welcome me back to the US … for the 6th time… or 7th… so I got to see little reeva. ALmost picked her up…
“SHE”S SLEEPING.. DONT TOUCH HER…. ”
Good luck yossi, she’s all yours….
Saw moshe and heard about his day camp adventures. Its always more fun when the off season is more exciting than the actual season itself. Its 8 weeks of summer and 10 months of politics and fighting. YOfey!
The funniest thing besides the little league game… .which we’ll get to later…. was the shabbos morning davening and kiddush at Rabbi Rubin’s shul. Sasregan. MOshe Fox, father of my cousin Rebetzin Rona Reich, had yahrzeit for his father so he had a table or two set up in the back of the shul for a tikkun after davening. Ok, thats fine…
They made a second minyan in the side room so he can daven for the amud. I saw this and wondered. what will happen when his minyan finishes 10 minutes before the main minyan does….
well, I shouldn’t have wondered.
HIs 10 or 15 people from his minyan made kiddush, made lechaim, ate the p’tcheh.. (NO idea that it is either)etc. while the main minyan was still in the middle of mussaf. Excuse me…. um…. we’re like…. davening here…..can you put down the glenlivet 15 year for a minute…
What was more startling was that the people near me… dissapeared… I look around and they had their taliesim away and they were eating as well… Its a long davening people but… come on….
SO at the end of mussaf there were maybe 15 people with their talesim on… the rest were at the kiddush table. Typical.
Looking around I noticed that only 1 of my friends from my childhood was there that morning. All the rest…. Chaim weiss, Tzvi weiser, zev beinstock, Dovid Roth, kivi schuck…. no one, except Alex Gold davens there. Draw your own conclusions..
And now the sad / funny part… Watching Fishy leave his son Yitzchok in to pitch and walk home the winning run. Yeah… well… about that….(office space)… I thought the tough part was 2 years ago when fishy took him out in the middle of the inning. This according to fishy was worse.
Theres nothing more to say. At least Kenny’s kid after making an error at first WON the game and made a good plays in the field. When you walk home the winning run… its just silence. Its so Mets.
“SO yitzchok, besides that…. does you hat fit well?”
Kind of like… so besides that Mrs. Kennedy, how did you like the parade?
At least Fishy has turned the corner in a big way.
No more “I own a fish store… so I’m going to coach the marlins.. get it? MARLINS… its a fish.. I think” I guess after 10 years everyone kind of realizes and knows that fishy owns a fish store. I mean just smell him. Actually, thats not 100% accurrate. The first time I met him I thought he worked in a smelly sock store…
He now coaches the Indians.
Maybe he opened a cigar store somewhere and we don’t know about it yet…
Well, Thats about all I can think of at this time.
(the smelly sock joke JUST came to me as I was going over the blog for the second time…. After a second cup of jo….)
J

Its wednesday afternoon. and QUITE cold here. We didn’t get the 3 to 5 inches… rather 3 to 5 milimeters… and some ice. it is COLD here… around 20 degrees….
Last night I went to a different shul and then went to the rabbis house for dinner. Rabbi Sholom hammer from Beit Shemesh is a rav here in Columbus. Mrs. Hammer, who runs 2 hotels in Israel on Pesach invited me for homemade pizza. It didnt occur to me until later that there is no other pizza here in Columbus. Several places to eat… but no Pizza shop. I turned down the pizza but I had campbell’s soup instead. My first campbell’s… yay…
Other than that…. kind of quiet around here.
Have a good one.
j

Well, I guess the jacket I left in Burger Bar in Beit Shemesh is going to be missed as its snowing here in Columbus Ohio. I have penina’s Fleece jacket that looks like it would have fit me in HIgh School. A co worker took pity on me and brought me a jacket so I’ll be fine I hope.
This shabbos I’m heading to Brooklyn to the folks. I had them in Israel so they get to host me in Brooklyn. I’m sure they’re thrilled.
“Him again?”
Not much is going on here. Its a bit sad…well, maybe not sad… but .. the Men’s Basketball team was defeated in the second round of the NCAA tournament so its only the Lady Buckeyes that are left. Its big news here as Ohio State Sports is a big deal here. The bigger news I just read is in Israel. A van was stopped after a long chase. Inside were arabs with a bomb. They were finally caught near Latrun, near Sha’alvim. Just 15-20 minutes from my area. Very scary. Just when you think its quiet.
The other news out of israel is the chicken / bird flu. Several hundred thousand chickens had to be killed. Besides the virus, I think there are bigger problems on hand.
If Israel has a schnitzel shortage… we’ll have riots in the streets. Headed by my son, yoni.
well, I’m heading out…oh, if anyone is going to the Staten Island Yudie Zuller concert on Sunday.. make sure you cheer for my nephew Yehuda ZImberg. He’s in the yeshiva boys choir.
Have a good day,
j

Busy day yesterday…..

I went on a trip with Yakov lazar. He is working to raise money for a program that teaches yeshiva boys and residents in the gush and shomron on how to defend themselves to prevent attacks. We went to a base near allon shevut and showed me a team of 15 teenagers… from a yeshiva that is going through intense training. How to deal with terrorists in a yeshiva… behind doors… very intense. Scary but this is how they have to defend themselves. I got to fire a m16… Im not that bad. I hit the target most of the time and right by the bullseye. Not bad for the balloon guy.

For supper we went to burger bar and then we went with dovid’s family bowling in Petach tikva. I think my 141 was a mirage…as I got no where near it this time. Dovid led everyone with a 160 I think… I made it to the airport in time and gave my cell phone to Yehuda perlowitz who didn’t make the flight as he was on standby. His ticket for for SAT. night (sunday) at 12:30. I think everyone knows someone who made that mistake. The flights are usually 12am, so its the NEXT day. I didnt see him on the plane so I guess he’s still in Israel. I hope he didnt sell my phone.

well, the flight was good as the sleeping pill did the trick so after an hour I’ll be on my way to COlumbus and getting back to work….

Speak to you soon.

J

a P for effort
Friday I had a special moment.. I got pinned. Not that kind. I got a Yeshiva University Alumni Pin from the president himself. I was at the alumni shabboton making balloons erev shabbos and he gave me one. I was so proud. I also remarked to someone. If I would have actually GONE to YU perhaps I’d be invited as a guest and not have to stand on stilts making balloons and godawful jokes. well, it was a good gig and I made it back to Beit Shemesh in time for shabbos.

Fast forward 28 h0urs…

Its Sat. night….. estie buchsbaum and 2 other of her friends are over watching some DVD. THey were at the Berkowitz’ for shabbos as we were supposed to have 4 yeshiva boys and a family from the US that was here on a pilot trip.

The yeshiva boys cancelled and the family no -showed. One of the yeshiva guys broke his ankle jumping off a van while drunk. Speaking about drunk one of Staten Islands finest hurt his hand on purim… yup… alcohol.

Shabbos was a special one in Ramat Beit Shemesh. And a not so special one as well. Special for 2 families on my block that had boys this week… so 2 shalom zachors. A not so special one for the people who davened at the 8:30 minyan this morning at the Mercazi shul.

I layned.

My first time layning an entire parsha. I’m not too sure they are going to ask me again in the near future. I said h-shem’s name correctly though (ask fishy schonfeld about that reference). I got the silent treatment after I finished. Kind of like when a pitcher gets taken out of the ball game and the TV camera shows him all alone on the bench. That was me this morning. I went to sit down in my seat. It was kind of quiet around me. Maybe it wasn;t too bad.

On a positive note Yehuda and elky hampster was still alive. They are getting used to living in Sun Gardens and they are getting some attention. Around 10 kids were in and out of the house look at them.

On another positive note. Our daughter is doing quite well being toilet trained. Soon we’ll work on Tamar as well. Some misses… but usually its in the bowl. Takes after me I guess.

Well, I think I;m going to do some work.

U.D.

What better way to end purim with another day. YOni, michal and I spent shushan purim making balloons and giving out candy in the hospital and then visiting our adoptive cousins, the Cohen family in Ramat Eshkol. The cohens are terror victims that was adopted by the Staten Island community. We keep in touch… but havent really seen or spoke to them in months. so….what better time than purim. We finally made it back around 3pm. Jerusalem was really interesting. Certain parts of the city its almost like it wasn;t even Purim. Other parts was VERY purim. Drunk people on the buses. People collecting tzedakah in the street. Others delivering shalach manos. There were many cars / vans / trucks hat had loud purim music blaring. There was also alot of firecrackers in our area as well as in Jerusalem. According to many this was alot more than past years. I also heard from a doctor in town that there were several cases where kids got burnt. LAst night we had a get together with Doovid’s family, and our real cousins the reichs’… we all gathered at the apartment my folks stayed at. Besides Tamar missing and Natan making a mess of the place we had a really nice time. Even though we live only 20 minutes away we hardly see them. With school 6 days a week there is really no time to get together …so its was nice to see them. We also went out to the burger place and we made a huge baalagon. We all took up half the seats… and made a huge commotion. In the matter of 2 minutes Natan managed to knock over 2 bottles of soda and waterlog 2 burgers. Dovid has his hands full this week as Sara Baila flew back to the US.

Afterwards it was an emotional goodbye and my folks said goodbye to the kids. Its difficult to stand and see the goodbyes. Making aliya really causes alot of heartaches. YOu need to have amuna that this is truly the best thing, which we feel it absolutely is.

Today I had 2 balloon gigs. The second one was for Yanky Ehrman’s Grandson’s upsherin. His daughter lives in an apartment that squeezed about 10 times the legal amount. In a closet of a living room thre were about 50 people…. Does anyone know how to say fire hazard in hebrew?

Tonight we welcome to new members to the family. Oger. Which is hebrew for gerbil or hamster…. well in any event, we have 2.

Due to Yoni and Michal’s progress in school we decided to get them a pet. I just found out… michal named the boy Yehuda in my honor. Not sure if I feel honored though. Yoni named the girl ELky. Its around 3 hours since we bought them and they’re still alive.

On a side note, its over 7 months, and I’m still blogging…. shocked? well, I’m signing off. I have a balloon gig tommorrow at the YU alumni reunion shabbaton….Pretty fancy no?

whew…. Just getting over the day….. getting ready for round 2…

Last night I heard the megilla for the first time in around 8 or 9 years. I always read in shul, but last night I only layned at two places for women, so I went to hear the megilla. This fellow layned a bit closer to the aicha trup than I do. For better or for worse. The night started off with a kid throwing up in front of me. What a way to start the drinking. Then a neighbor’s daughter fainted… I guess the drama of the megilla with the throw up is too much for some people. My erev purim was spent writing up some “shtick” for the shul and getting it printed to hand out in shul. NO one got offended… so I guess better luck next year. We had a huge purim event last night. Every shul just about has a purim event. Mostly for the kids… music, clowning, etc. We had a magician, Yudie Ballooney and a keyboard guy. The keyboard guy got paid as much as the balloon guy. Actually you all made as much as I did at last nights event. It actually was alot of fun. So I layned twice, twisted balloons on stilts for almost 2 hours. I think we had over 100 kids and maybe half that many adults. We went until midnight at which point Mendy Newman passed out his wife’s MEAT hamantashen. I guess anything triangle can be called hamantashen. ALthough in israel its called oznei Haman.

Who knew?

This morning I layned twice more. For a ladies reading and for someone who has a home bound father in law. Then some deliveries and an early seuda at Doovid’s house. Between the first reading and the seuda I think I had 6 or 7 drinks which got me to my purim “crash and burn”… an hour nap.

Also this morning Yoni and I tried to hang haman and his ten sons. We made 11 sculptures, made faces, a gallows, and wrote the names of the sons on them. Sounds good so far.

The problem arose…(pun intended) when Adalya took flight and freed his father and 5 brothers in the air and across the road. Then the rest of them detached and ended up somewhere… well.. Shaul couldn’t do it. I guess I couldn’t either.

Well, I’m going to head to bed a bit early tonight. We’re heading to Jerusalem in the AM to see how purim is there.

Purim Sameach!

u.d.

Its been a REAL busy few days.

First of all Happy Birthday Abba. We had a surprise birthday party for my father Thursday night after a Pizza thursday. We had rain thursday night so the softball game got cancelled. Oh well. hopefully friday we’ll have some nice weather.

Friday Penina and I went out to eat at Aroma. A fancy type of breakfast joint where we met up with the Mayor of ramat Beit shemesh, Jay Berkowitz. He is organizing a purim seudah with 15 other families…. but we are not going, perhaps for the dessert. We are actually having an early seuda as our cousins are coming in from jerusalem. They have to be back early to hear the megilla as their purim in a day after ours.

Shabbos was nice as we had the whole mishpacha at our house. LAst week It was at dovids because Penina was away, this week we hosted both meals.

Sat. night was an busy night. The balloon chug sponsored a pizza and balloon party at the orphanage in Jerusalem. I wanted to end the chug on a high note so we did. We had a party AND had a chessed trip at the same time. We had 18 boys and girls make balloons for 30 kids. 300 balloons and ten pies of pizza later… we made our good byes. Several parents chipped in with me to pay for the pizza and we had a great time. The girls were happy that we came and it made us feel good to bring some smiles to them. After we came back to RBS there was a melave malka in shul. Its not like the typical shul melava malka. Here, there is singing, music, dancing…. no speeches.. so its a alot of fun being able to hang with the fellas in shul.

Today, Sunday I had a balloon gig in Jerusalem at the fancy sheraton. I made a few balloon clowns, an arch and twisted balloons for a few hours. Its like flatbush over there. Fancy tourists…. its really not like israel. Its so funny. Then a bus pulls up… Dr.. somebosy christian tours…etc.. at its blacks, white people from ..somewhere… I saw a woman wearing a packers jersey with farve on the back… I said… oh oh… Cheeseheads in Israel.. Look out…

well, its 11 pm and I just wanted to catch up with everyone on the latest in Israel… only 25 hours to purim and you can feel it in the air.

All the schools in the area had parties so all the kids were dressed up. I think half of israel dresses up like army soldiers and policemen…. but its still nice.

Have a good day and chag sameach!!!