Talmud and still in ulpan
Well we’re still in ulpan. Our hebrew is improving slowly – I think I’m up to maybe 60% understanding of the Rabbi’s talk at shul on Saturday morning. This ulpan runs through mid February. When I first started I was planning to do it for a month then decide if I needed another one or two months before starting to work at the hospital nearby. I had this illusion that “my Hebrew would come back to me.” After realising that my paltry level of Hebrew had already “come back to me” and that there was no more left, I decided that I in fact would need the entire five month course to gain any ability whatsoever to speak the language.
Interestingly, they do offer a medical ulpan which is specific for health care professionals and focuses on medical Hebrew. Its a three month course starting after the current regular ulpan session. While that sounds nice, it would mean being in full time ulpan for a full eight months. That is simply too long to go without working.
In Netanya, a larger city about twenty minutes north of here, their ulpan is on a slightly different schedule. They have a medical ulpan which starts in December and also runs three months, ending at the end of February. Technically, you have to be level bet (level 2) or higher. I’m currently in level bet, but haven’t finished it yet. But I decided to take the entrance exam for that medical ulpan in Netanya, just to see if it was possible that they would let me in – if I could pass the test and they would let me in, I could just switch out of my current ulpan midway through and change over to the medical one, finishing at the end of February, only a few weeks later than I would finish anyway. But let me tell you, that exam was tough. I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. So as it stands now, I will continue my current ulpan which ends mid February, then start working for my three month observation period at the hospital which the Health Ministry requires to get an unrestricted medical license.
When I was back in the US I used to learn talmud once a week (most weeks…) in a small group with one of local chabad rabbis. Since moving here I have not done any talmud learning. Of course I’ve been busy with other things (like moving countries, for example 😄) so I didn’t feel too bad about it. However, in the back of my mind it did feel a bit weird to be moving to Israel and actually learning less Jewish stuff than I did before.
But two weeks ago we were invited to shabbat dinner at a friends house (the daughter is one grade above our girls at their same school and they moved here one year before we did) and the dad told me about his talmud study group. So I decided to give it a try. They meet at a local small shul that I can walk to from our apartment in about 10 minutes. (There are at least 5-6 shuls that I know about within a 10 min walking radius from our apartment. And those are only the one’s I know about) They daven maariv (evening prayers) at 8:15pm and then shortly after, the group meets with a British rabbi who comes in from Bnai Brak (a haredi – ultra orthodox community on the north side of Tel-Aviv, which is such an old community that its actually mentioned in the talmud – much older than Tel-Aviv itself, actually) and does the class in English, which ends around 9:30pm. There are about 15-20 guys there, mostly British, some South African, and most much much older than me and some of whom have been attending this same class apparently going back to the current rabbis predecessor, for close to 30 years! Anyway, its very good and I surprised myself that I could even follow along pretty well. We’re currently learning tractate Berachot, learning about the laws of all the different blessings we say in Judaism.
