Shabbat in

On Friday I got to go to Alison's brother, Harry Tawils bar mitzvah. It was beautiful! It was on the roof of Beit Shmuel which overlooks parts of the old city. The minyan was on the roof which was really stunning. 

The crane ruins it? I was thinking the same thing. But listen to what the rabbi had to say about it... He said that were so lucky to have the זכות (merit) to be able to witness Hashem rebuilding Jerusalem in order to get ready for the coming of Mashiach. Beautiful way to look at the situation. I kind of felt bad in the beginning that all of this construction was going on during their bar mitzvah but once the rabbi pointed this out, watching that crane move back and forth got me so excited. 

Anyways, it was a magnificent party, great speeches, amazing food, and even better people. 

It was so refreshing to be surrounded by people from the community. I really felt like I was at home. This really made going back to school hard for me. 

I was getting ready for Shabbat when I realized that ALL of my friends were with their parents at hotels this weekend. It was such a rotten feeling to know that I'm stuck In school for Shabbat while everyone else was together. FOMO to the MAXXXXX. Kabbalat Shabbat was so emotional for me. I couldn't deal with the Ashkenaz minyan. I miss Shaare Shalom like CRAZY. I got to hear a normal Syrian minyan for the first time in months on Friday morning and then I had to go hear the one that I'm not used to. I actually went into shock. I just wanted to be back with my fellow community members. Knowing that everyone was on Davod e st just killed me. I felt trapped in school and it's even worse because my Mom (hey mom) is coming tomorrow and I had to just sit and wait it out. (I had permission to leave to the hotels whenever I wanted but no one had a solid plan so I couldn't meet them)

Anyways, I probably didn't miss out on much. I got to learn a solid amount of Torah this Shabbat, so in the end it was worth it. 

It's really so important to make the best out of these situations. So I did. 

Have a great week people!

Parashat Miketz

In this weeks Parasha, Pharoh had a dream. 

This juxtaposes Yaakovs dream from a previous Parasha 

In Pharos dream it tells us where he is standing, which is by the Nile (which is their God) Someone worships Avodah Zara stands over their "God". In Yaakovs dream, Hashem is standing on top of the ladder.  Their Avodah Zara takes on all sorts of forms and shapes and they do whatever they want. Man was created in the image of God. God wasn't created in the image of man.

Just a quick thought 

Shabbat Shalom! 

Last weekend

Sorry this is so late but it's been crazy here between learning, planning a chanuka party, a fundraiser, (and having a social life) I had like no time to write 

But anyways last week Jen called me and invited me to one of her teachers for Shabbat, so I went. It was in Beit Shemesh which is beautiful! There are parks everywhere, like a lot of parts of Israel. So we took the kids to play 

They're all red heads. Adorable!

Anyways the host and hostess were great. Mr. And Mrs. Hauchauser (probably spelled that wrong sorry)

The food was excellet 👌

We had some convos about the Parasha until we found out that the host teaches dating classes. That's when the subject changed. Hahaha. Classic sem girls asking a teacher about dating. 

Anyways Jen and I stayed up ligit till 3am talking but we got up for shul anyways. 

The whole afternoon we just walked the streets of Beit Shemesh which is great because I love seeing where I am. I love seeing as much as Israel as I can. 

So yeah. It was really a cute weekend 

Stay tuned 

פרשת וישב slash I went on a tangent about my love for shabbat

Shalommmmm

Here's a quick idea from the Parasha that I feel like sharing with ya people in Eretz America. 

So in this weeks Parasha Vayeshev, it says 

(After Joseph told them his dreams In Which they bowed down to him)

Why does it say שמר?

Rashi says he was looking out. There were 11 stars in Joseph's dream. It's a prophetic dream signaling Hashem's plan  to bring about fulfillment of ברית בן הבתרים

Another opinion is that we use the word שומר to know if someone is a religious Jew who keeps Halacha. In order to find out if someone is religious we ask of they're Shomer Shabbat. What does it mean? That he observes it properly and everything? Nope. It means that he looks forward to Shabbat. We should be doing everything correctly but we should be looking forward and so excited. We don't do it to say we do it. We do it because we love it. 

This is my little rant now...

Shabbat is really the best. Every week we celebrate our eternal anniversary with Shabbat. We should care about it and love it just as much as a husband loves his wife.

 

It's not the Jews that keep Shabbat, it's Shabbat that keeps the Jews.

Yeah. Let that sink in. 

 

Shabbat gives us the ability to have clarity (if you do it right!) It's really such a spiritual day. You can keep Shabbat fully with every Halacha and you may not feel the resonating אור in your soul. You can miss the whole fundamental thing. Hashem blessed the seventh day. When we turn around in shul on Friday night and say בואי כלה, בואי כלה were welcoming in Hashem- not Shabbat. Were supposed to be thinking about ourselves and our relationship with Hashem. We need to prepare for shabbat. We need to let go of the physical and get to the spiritual. Use your ערב שבת the right way. Were dealing with the physical all week so we need Shabbat to let go, be spiritual, and think. If you do Shabbat correctly, you get אור

Thanks for reading through this 

Have a meaningful Shabbat 

Millie  

Masadaaaaa

So we climbed Masada today. It was chill. 

We learned a lot about the history of this place. In short, we fought the Romans, we lost, and we committed suicide. 

Herod built these palaces on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. We usually see Herod as a great builder but he was really such a horrible man. He built these palaces because he knew people would want to kill him. They say you had a better chance of surviving if you were his pig rather than his child. Why, you may ask? Because the man killed 13/15 of his kids. 

Most tour guides show their group all of Herods stupid bath houses where he sat and filed his nails thinking about which Jews to kill tomorrow. Thankfully my tour guide had a good head on his shoulders and he taught us about what really went on. The tour was long and rough (really sad stories) but here's a thought that really stuck with me. 

So 70 years after Herod built this whole thing on top of Masada, Jews went up there to hide. 

They needed Mikvehs which is what you see in the picture above. You see the pretty mosaic floor in the middle? That was built by Herod. The Jews broke right into it in order to build the Mik. They broke into the physical to get in touch with the spiritual. Today in this day and age we get so distracted with the physical that we don't even stop for a second and think about what we really want for ourselves. We have to take a break off of the physical and have that spiritual time to think. (Sorry if I sound like a hippie- it sounded better in my head)

This was a powerful message for me and I hope you can all take away from it. 

There's a lot more to be said but I don't want to bore you guys.

After hiking down we stopped for a while to wait for it to get dark out for the next part of our Tiyul. 

These are sooo edited but I just wanted you to see where I was in the dark. We hiked (or walked) (or scaled a mountain) in the pitch black night. We sat down at one point and sang while our tour guide played guitar. We got glow sticks which was cute. A good time to reflect. So up my alley. Really great way to end our trip

Peace out everyone

Have a great week! 

😄

P.S. Happy birthday to Norman and Adele Greenberg and Jeanne Franco!  Wish I was there to celebrate with all of you. Ad 120 😘

Flatbush seminar??

This weekend my Gemara teacher from highschool invited some Flatbush kids over for Shabbat Lunch. (She just made Aliyah)  Ms. Anzaroot, duh

So we had ten girls sleeping in Brovenders on Friday night. It was amazing! I was expecting a chill weekend full of sleeping but it was really so meaningful. We all came together and set up a whole meal. I had the honor of making Kiddush and Liba made hamotzei. WE HAD KIBBEH

okay so one reason why I loved this meal was because (we didn't realize this until after) but we didn't talk about anything non Torah related for the whole meal. Afterword we went around the table giving Divrei Torah and discussing our opinions and interpretations. May I remind you that we were under no supervision at this meal and no staff member from the seminary was prompting this. I am proud to say I sat at a table of Flatbush graduates and we elevated the table to a table of Hashem. We sang some zmirot before we got up to chill upstairs.

.......

We all got up for shul in the morning and then walked to Ms. Anzaroots apartment. My counselor from ILEAD Janice Mizrahi was there too- they're good friends. So were Elliot Shalom and Ariel Shammah because Elliot's her cousin.  It was so nice to be all together. Lunch consisted of Lachmegene, (I don't know how but my autocorrect just suggested the spelling) and medias. Some classic Shabbat staples. We chilled for a while until we went back to Brovs to read and relax before havdalah (which was done by Ariel) 

I love our independence. Such a great Shabbat. 

Week in review

Had a pretty exciting week here 

Went to The Kotel alone on Sunday night. I recommend this to everyone. Go for an hour (after 10pm when it's not to crowded) with your phone off ALONE. 

 Went to go see Doctor Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks speak at the Great Synogague on Tuesday night. Basically my whole school went so we were excised from classes. He spoke about Kiddush Hashem. He's amazing. Such a smart man! He really blew me away. I love how modern and down to earth he is. I bought one of his books after and got it signed 

I was standing right behind him for a solid 10 minutes waiting to get it signed. I felt like I was meeting a celebrity. My British friends thinks it's hilarious because they see him all the time 

So we had a Henna party on Wednesday 

School hired a Teimani woman (yeah, fr Teiman) to come teach us about this party. Basically she taught us the history behind it and the culture. We learned the dances and got costumes

Afterwords we basically reenacted a henna party. 'Twas fun. I love learning about all of these different Jewish traditions that I've never heard of. 

This morning (Friday) I went to Tel Aviv with some friends to run a 5k for Yachad. Time was 24:59- I Think it was my fastest. 

Great time. 

Excited for a relaxing weekend phew

Peace out friends