Second Week

The second week of classes also went very quickly. The ulpan class is moving rapidly and we were happy to go back into a bigger classroom. On Tuesdsay, after the Legacy Heritage meeting I had the opportunity to have coffee with Sally Klein-Katz, who in addition to being one of those in charge of the Legacy Heritage program, is also a lay leader at Kol HaNeshama in Baka. She is very involved with her community and we had arranged to get together after our Legacy group meeting, because she had mentioned some of the initiatives her congregation was taking in order to help build community. Sally was very generous with her time and information and there are some ideas we can definitely implement at Tifereth Israel. I also shared some of the things we do and she was very impressed with what she heard.

We had coffee at the ‘Cup of Joe’ by the Inbal hotel and this worked out perfectly because afterwards I had planned to meet a friend from my ulpan class at the Inbal hotel across the street where they have a lovely courtyard that on Tuesday and Thursday evenings has a jazz group playing. After our meeting I walked across the street to the Inbal, and had a very nice dinner while we went over our Hebrew work. While walking home after dinner I saw Steve Kerbel, education director of B’nai Tzedek. I should also mention that while having dinner at Caffit on Emek Rafaim on Monday night I ran into Shaiel Yitzchak, son of Linda and Razi, and Rena Fruchter. Emek Rafaim seems definitely to be the place to meet fellow DC Jewish educators!