In the begining there was nothing

This week P'tite Soeur organized a family trip to London. All four siblings and Dad, which is quite a feat of logistics even if we didn't manage to also include partners.

( London )

Another thing I was able to do due to not being in Israel was to visit the community I'll be spending Yom Kippur with, the amazing Kehillat Kernow, a peripatetic community covering most of the Cornwall peninsula. (Yes, that's me in the news article at the top of their website, they are very prompt at reporting!) The long train journey was not as wonderful as I had hoped, because the trains were very very overcrowded in peak season, but at least I had a seat and got to enjoy the lovely views. And read a bunch of novels, which is definitely making my brain happier.

They invited me to dinner Friday evening, and had a very Liv conversation about dealing with racism in education and medicine, with the other guests having direct professional expertise, not just setting the world to rights. And put me up in a super nice hotel in a neo-gothic pile that used to be a convent, and were gracious enough to invite me to stay Saturday night as well so I even got a little bit of time in Truro, which is where they held this particular service. I walked along the river a bit, I found a teeny-tiny Pride festival in the town centre, but it was packing up by the time I had finished dinner at 7 pm, so I wasn't able to get dessert from one of the sparkly rainbow doughnut stands.

In between I lead a Shabbat service, with very enthusiastic participation from the community, and they even appreciated my somewhat political sermon about whether we can still be Zionists in this moment. Because it was the new moon of Av, I got to read from their super-exciting Historic scroll. Well, actually I chanted the verses about the creation of the sun and moon; it's still a big deal for me to do that in public. I'm pretty pleased with how all that went.

And now I'm back and I have another month of relatively uncrowded schedule. It's very nice.

It's been a full and emotional couple of months, friends. The main thing to report is that I was supposed to be in Israel as of a week ago, but Israel bombed Iran and Iran retaliated and the go/no-go date for my summer programme was right in the middle of the 11 days when Israel was in full lockdown due to lots of missile attacks, so they really had to cancel it. I have a whoooooole lot of emotions and thoughts about this, and I also have an unexpected summer month with almost no commitments.

( rab student life in interesting times )

I will fully admit that I'm glad I didn't end up getting on a flight two days later. Intellectually it goes without saying that I would far rather Israel was in fact safe enough for me to be there, and that it had been consistently obvious it would be over the past couple of months. But personally, I am absolutely delighted to be at home. And have a chance to see my family and do fun summer things like go to concerts and have picnic dates and sort out practical things that I've let slip with the intensity of everything since Mum got sick. I even managed to overlap in London with redbird and her partners this week, which was an unexpected and wonderful bonus. Among many chill, non-urgent summer plans I am hoping to be a bit more present here.