School

is overwhelming. The first week of orientation was wonderful, but absolutely draining. We had High Holiday prep, which meant literally going over each page of the prayerbook, singing specific bits of High Holiday music, and taking sessions on how to write a sermon. We had orientation for the Education program, for the Pulpit program, for the Liturgy (prayer services) program. We had tours of the library, of the American Jewish Archives, of the Skirball Center, of the Holocaust museum. We had presentations from Youth Programs, from the Rabbinical Student Association, from the Development Office. You name it, we covered it. Thankfully they fed us food throughout!

Every evening we had social programs, as well: dinner at the Dean's house, BBQ with the rabbinical and graduate students, pizza at a nice restaurant, and schmoozing with everyone.

One great thing to note: last year, before HUC officially started, Jonathan and I went on an archeological dig to Tel Dan. We made friends with an HUC Cincinnati Ancient Near East grad student who was on the dig for the experience. Lo and behold, who do we see at the BBQ but this same grad student and his wife! We talk a bit, and then tell them the area where we live. They say, oh, cool, we just moved from there. We tell them the specific area where we live. They say, cool, we were there too. We tell them the street where we live. They say, huh, is it house number X? We say yes, how did you know that? They laughed, and said, because we just moved out of there last month! They then proceeded to tell us all about our landlord. Apparently they moved out because it was too small after the recent birth of their second baby. Otherwise, they loved it. We promised to invite them over to Shabbat dinner soon so they can see what we've done with the furniture. :)