Rosh Hashanah

Eating, sleeping, and playing Rummikub can sum up my weekend and Rosh Hashanah holiday. Rosh Hashanah was an interesting experience. It coincided with my first visit to my host family. My family was very warm and friendly, and loved to feed me. I was constantly eating the whole time I was there, yet they seemed shocked when after a massive amount of food I was still not hungry. They spoke little English, which made it a bit difficult to communicate this early in the year. I used a combination of Hebrew, English, and gestures to get my points across and usually was fairly successful.  I definitely need to work on my Hebrew though, and having a host family that doesn’t speak English will definitely help give me a push to really study and learn quickly.

            My family was orthodox and therefore shomer shabbat/holidays, which meant they did not do any form of work or use electricity. This meant a lot of naps, eating, and praying (but only for the men). While some of the men went to pray, I stayed with the women and non-religious men to play with the babies and relax outside. The family is composed of the mother and father, and their 3 grown kids. The youngest is in the army, and the older 2 are married with babies and live 2 doors down from their parents. There are 3 children, the oldest- a little girl named Shir (which means song in English) who is almost 2 years old, bubbly, happy, and adorable. She has a little brother that is only a few months old and cousin Osher (which means happiness) who was turning 1 right around the holidays. The kids were so cute and fun to play with, they were so much better behaved than the kids at Beit Canada-- it was refreshing. In my spare time between eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids, I played rummikub with the older “kids”. The grown kids and I played countless games in the few days I was there, it’s a good thing I’ve had lots of practice, as my grandma taught me how to play when I was little. Overall the weekend was very nice, the family was welcoming, kind, and it was a nice relaxing break with endless amounts of food.