Despite not being in America, Thanksgiving is a very popular holiday in certain (limited) circles in Israel. And by that, I mean, American ex-pats generally still celebrate Thanksgiving, but not necessarily the way it would be done in the US of A. One usually has all the traditional foods, but it doesn't necessarily have to be on Thursday. In fact, this Thursday night, we went our for Sushi.
Despite this, we still had THREE full Thanksgiving meals. Thursday around lunchtime we stopped by Pardes, the school in Jerusalem where we met, and we were invited to join their Thanksgiving themed community lunch (although without Turkey since it is a dairy-only institution). Friday night we attended a traditional and delicious Thanksgiving/Shabbat dinner hosted by my "sister"/good friend and her husband in Jerusalem. Making Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday becomes challenging in Israel since we don't get that day off of work or school, so Friday night combo T-day/Shabbat dinner becomes the more logical option. Then, for Shabbat lunch we were invited to one of our former Pardes teachers. He described Friday night dinner at his house with his kids as "survivor" (like the tv show), so he tends not to invite guests for dinner. Instead, they decided to host their Thanksgiving meal Saturday at lunch time. After our third full Thanksgiving dinner - we are thoroughly stuffed.
Besides being thankful for good friends and good food, we are also extremely thankful for the cease fire that went into effect just before our American holiday. The last few days have showed a relative peace and quiet in the country and we hope to see no more rockets flying into Israel from Gaza, amen.
Last, but not least, the big news from here is that I (Stef) got a job! Don't get too excited, it's just part time, which means the job search continues, but I've been told that having multiple part time jobs is super Israeli. This is epitomized by a joke I recently heard: Why does the Israeli have 3 jobs? Because he couldn't find a fourth! The job will be running logistics and education for a program called "Career Israel," that brings American college-age participants to Israel for internships in a variety of fields. Until now, the program existed only in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. My job will be to run a new branch of the program here in Haifa. We are very excited about this opportunity as well as other coming our way.
Wishing you all a happy post-Thanksgiving and a great weekend,
Stef and Matt
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