Back at school

I must admit, my buddy Erica and I have been a bit bummed lately. Ugghhh, school is starting. Not that it isn't great ... it is. But, truthfully, we still feel tired from last year... Eighteen hours of classes per week. The expectation we will study "two hours" for every hour we are in class. Twenty hours of work work on top of that.

Just thinking about it made us want to role over in our respective beds and pull the blankets over our heads. I, for one, wanted more sun time eating funnel cake on the Jersey shore.

Like all things in life though, no matter how much you dread something, the fateful day will arrive. And it did. The alarm woke me up way earlier than I wanted to get up. I played bumper cars for 45 minutes of rush hour City Line Avenue traffic to arrive in time for Shacharit. I wearily walked into the building, made my way to the assembly area, and was stopped dead in my tracks when I discovered I could barely get in the door.

It was Opening Circle, the one day a year when virtually all of the 70+ students and 20+ faculty and staff converge, and there was nary an empty seat in the house. Crammed into our humble daveening space, the room positively hummed with energy. There were so many people in there, we ran out of the Kol HaNeshamah siddurim, and then, we even ran out of the Orthodox and Conservative siddurs kept for backup.

Ahhhh, it was great to be back. And, as another classmate who was in Mekinah year with me last year commented: It's a great feeling to be out of Year Zero and officially in Year One. Now, just five more years to go ...

My classes for the semester:
Biblical text (Torah text study)
Biblical Civilization (Learning the history and social contexts of the Bible and its authors)
Leshon Hazal (aka rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic)
Lifecycles (aka how to officiate at lifecycle events)
Modern Hebrew (It's Greek to me; only in Hebrew)
Ed supervision (aka teachers and education directors get together and swap stories)