a balloontwister’s aliya saga

Well, its been an interesting first week in Baltimore. Not much work but it was nice to get a head start on the new project and get a bit settled in before the real work starts. Baltimore is a very nice community. I have only seen pieces of it but from what I’ve seen it is very nice. The jewish community is pretty spread out. So its not out of the ordinary to see frum people up and about for several miles. In Columbus you wouldnt see a kippa except for a small area.

I drove up friday to spend shabbos in Brooklyn as my brother Yossi made a kiddush for his daugher reeva. I think that means jam or jelly in hebrew. Despite the 3 and change hour drive both ways I was happy to be part of the simcha. I feel bad that Yossi had to have the kiddush without the rest of the family in attendance. Its times like these that I feel regret about aliya. NO two ways about it. Its not all fun and games in Israel. WE do miss the family back in the states and every simcha that takes place in NY we wish we could be there but …. we have to go about our business of living in ISrael. Its work every day. Its a balance everyday between making sure kids are doing their work.. and making sure the kids are getting used to the land. Interestingly enough I came but my sister who lives in NY was not there. She had a Bar Mitzva in Jersey but send 3 of her kids. It was nice to have yaacov, yehuda, and Chavie. I miss what it felt like to have 2 brothers torture their sister. I heard a certain familiar refrain all shabbos.

“sound familiar?” “look familiar?” I missed that.

Saw Yudie and Mrs. Zuller and the kids there as well and shmoozed with them a bit. Gives me chizuk to speak to Yudie. I don’t know anyone who works as hard as him and still gives more of his time and energy to terror victims in Israel than anyone I know.

My folks got a birthday cake for me as my hebrew bday is today. So while I have mine in NY, Tamar is having hers today in her gan. Yoni was the balloon guy in her gan. TOmmorrow is Penina’s Bday and I’ll be missing that too. I’ll be missing YOm hazmaot and Lag Bomer as well. Going to be a weird week. I’m not sure we will be having the same celebration at Johns Hopkins as there will be in Israel. I hear penina will be taking the kids to cousin Eli and ROna in Nof Ayalon. More about that later.

LAst night I attended my first Rabbi Reissman navi shiur in person. I attended several video taped shiurim, but this was my first live one. I was impressed as it was an entertaining shiur and it was good to see that most of the crowd DID stay awake. the shiur was over at 11:15pm and I saw at least 15 people sleeping, Out of several hundred I think that is pretty good. Not sure which group Abe Zlotnick was in. He did seem a bit peppy so he MAY have been awake for the entire shiur.

Kind of taking it easy today before I drive back. trying to get my glutes muscle a bit of rest so I stayed out of the Staten Island game. I’ve been emailing to try and find a softball league in the Baltimore area so if I can rest myself a bit… it can;t hurt.

Well, I’m going to sign off and get ready to head south. Speak to you soon.