Our place

It’s official. All the residents in our apartment have cast their votes, and the verdict was unanimous: We have the coolest group of gals on the University of Haifa campus!

Laura is 34 and comes from a working class Catholic family in the Netherlands. In two months, she is flying to London for her conversion ceremony because her Conservative shul back home doesn’t have a rabbi. This is her second summer studying Hebrew in Israel because, she believes, it’s important to know Hebrew if you’re going to be a Jew. In her other life, she works as a laboratory technician in a research facility. Since coming here this time though, she’s strongly weighing her options. Rabbinical school maybe, or at a minimum, moving to New York and earning a master’s in Jewish education at JTS. Next year, she says, she will come to the U.S. instead of Israel, to scope out her options.

Trish just celebrated her 50th birthday – though she has the skin tone of a 35 year old! She lives with her husband and three nearly grown daughters in San Francisco, where she is earning a master’s degree in sociology. She’s thought on and off over the years about becoming a rabbi, but because her husband isn’t Jewish, there’s no where she can go. And, as she says, “I still think he’s kinda cute.” She’s not sure where her new degree will take her, but most importantly, she is enjoying the journey.

Monique is about to begin the third of her fifth year of rabbinical studies at Leo Beck in London, although she is an American. Her new husband, an Irishman, manages an animal sanctuary/camp-type facility a few hours outside the city. Nigel is in charge of the facility, and when she’s home on the weekends, she helps out. She’s also had the chance to officiate at several weddings there. They have about 40 children – all of them with at least four legs. I’m so jealous. Hopefully I’ll get to visit them someday!

Favia, also in her late 40s, is a French wig master and makeup artist for the Paris opera house. She used to be a professional acrobat, but after a serious injury, she learned her new craft and stayed with the theater. She travels around the world several times a year to accompany them on their shows. She’s here to learn Hebrew, in part because she’s Jewish and in part because her boyfriend has many friends here and might, someday, like to buy a vacation home in Israel. Her English isn’t super strong, but she actually learned hairdressing in Germany, so she talks to me in German, I answer her in Eng-Ger-Brew, and between all that, we eventually figure each other out!

Finally, our one brave Israeli roommate, Hadass, is an undergraduate student at Haifa, studying psychology. Her English is pretty impeccable and she has shown gracious patience listening to the rest of us slaughter the holy language on a daily basis. I’m a little confused by all the seemingly disparate school schedules everyone has here, but from what I can figure out, she is still taking exams and is preparing for a big exam to apply to the psych master’s program in another year.