Almost Rosh Hashana

We just had our last ulpan class before the holiday today. We had class for half the morning then we had a large party/gathering in the auditorium.  We sang jewish and israeli songs led by a group of ulpan students who had volunteered about two-three weeks ago to be in the ulpan “choir.”  I have to say they were not bad considering they’d only been together for a couple weeks. Then there was some dancing afterwards.  They even had a guy blowing shofar.  And this is not a religious group; its just the city ulpan.

In other news our girls are now almost done their first week at their new school.  We moved them from the secular school to the all-girls religious one where they have to wear skirts.  Keep in mind we initially wanted the pluralistic school which is a mix of religious and secular but that was full, so then we had to choose one way or the other.  And although they attended a Jewish school in the US, it was co-ed and without a dress code.  We felt that the culture shock of just moving here would be enough and we didn’t want to add to it by making their school so different from what they were used to.  We were willing to sacrifice the Jewish studies part of their education for the sake of their just being in Israel.

Well it turned out that although it’s supposed to be a good school academically and although its known to have a good ulpan track, there just aren’t a lot of english speakers there. So the girls were finding it difficult to make friends.  Most of the other kids in their ulpan class were from other countries like France, Turkey, Brazil, Colombia, etc.  And while that may sound cool to me as a grown-up, for the kids it just meant that they had no one to talk to all day.  It also turns out that several of the parents we’ve met, some through our shul and some through our ulpan, have kids at the girls religious school and spoke very highly of it.  There are a lot of english speakers there, specifically in the girls year.  The school is also closer to where we live so the girls can easily walk to school.  And, they will finally be getting the solid, text-based, Jewish education that i’ve actually always wanted for them anyway. (for free, i might add).

Their first day was this past sunday.  It was horrible.  Although the other kids were nice to them, some of the teachers didn’t know who they were and so yelled at them thinking they were in the wrong class and actually told them to get up and leave.  They didn’t have the right clothes for the physical education class they didn’t know they had that day, so showed up in skirts when the rest of the class had work-out tights, etc.  Seeing them come home that day was not a pretty sight.  However, each day since then has been a steady improvement and their faces are brighter now even only a few days later. And two nights ago they came right home, opened up their ulpan/hebrew homework and started working on it together, even using their computers to log on the ulpan website they were given.  All without being told or prodded to do so. Yay!  So all in all, the trajectory is definitely upwards.

Anyway, Shana Tova to everyone, and may this new year bring blessings to us all…