Family updates

We are coming up to exactly three months since our arrival back in Israel, and we've just finished all the chagim, and I haven't posted for a while, so here is an update that is less "pithy observations about Israeli society" and more "what breakfast cereal the kids are eating these days".

Eshy: Quaker Cinnamon Squares without milk.
Aviv: Cheerios and Quaker Cinnamon Squares with milk.
Melilah: baby mush and Cheerios.

We have had a really good festival season, and we really feel as if we are settling into Modiin, and slowly finding friends and community.  The synagogue thing is kind of annoying: there are two Masorti/Conservative congregations in Modiin, which were originally one congregation but split apart a couple of years ago.  Now they both struggle to survive, but won't speak with each other.  You couldn't make it up.  Anyway, we have been bouncing back and forth between these two minyanim, and actually seem to be finding our place in one of them.  Simchat Torah was really great.  We used a Sefer Torah that we brought to Modiin from Jerusalem, and at some point I will post a blog about our experience carrying the Sefer Torah through downtown Jerusalem, which was quite something.

The kids are back at school tomorrow.  Eshy is doing wonderfully: his Hebrew is improving the whole time, he is making friends, happy, enjoying school, etc.  We had a belated birthday party for him on Friday morning, which was nice for him.  Peri, ever the madrichah, did a whole "science-themed" party with different stations doing different experiments and stuff.  Aviv is also doing really well, although he is finding gan a little hard.  As luck would have it he is the only English-speaker in his gan, and he started out not speaking any Hebrew at all, so he has found it tough.  He is beginning to come out with Hebrew words and even sentences, though, and hopefully within another month or so he will be able to communicate more effectively.  For now we are trying to get him together in the afternoons with other English speaking kids.  Anyway, he still has his Avivi spark and twinkle and grin, and as long as those are still there, we are not concerned.  By "we", I of course mean Peri; I am neurotic and worried sick that he will be scarred for life.  Thank God I married someone sane though.  Melilah is babbling (in English) and beginning to cruise and is just the cutest thing on earth.

We have been spending our free time looking for houses/flats in Modiin, which has so far been a little frustrating, but we are continuing.  Other than that, the past month has been pretty busy with all the chagim.

I am going to be in the US next week for a week, doing some work for JTS.  I will be in Caldwell for shabbat parashat Noach, and at JTS on Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday.  So if you are reading this from one of those places, I look forward to seeing you soon!!