Livre d'Or

As posted under lock, my mother died on 11 March. She had been seriously ill for a long time, but on a level where she was able to power through with her considerable willpower. And then she more or less speed-ran the last stages of illness and decline in just a few weeks. She had the sort of funeral that you earn by being deeply involved in all aspects of the community, and then my family sat shiva to a greater or lesser degree. Being a rab student meant that I was encouraged and supported to actually sit through the full thing, I put my life on hold and more or less stayed in my parents' home for the week.

There was a weekend in between and I went back to college, which is full of people who are professionally experienced at looking after bereaved people. My extremely wonderful partners arranged for me to join morning prayers on Zoom for every day of the 30 when I didn't have access to in-person services. I would definitely never pressure anyone to say Kaddish every day but I found it really helpful. By the last week I realized I was starting to think creatively about the little services, and how to engage the kind people who showed up to help me through the mourning ritual.

The traditional 30 days of intense mourning for a parent ended precisely on the eve of Passover. My siblings had agreed that we wanted to have as close as possible to the kind of family Pesach we have always had with Mum. I was very afraid of trying to do this, both practically and emotionally. But actually P'tite Soeur took over the project management, something she is very good at, and we shared out the cooking between us. And we compromised by not inviting anyone beyond immediate family, so we were 15 around the Seder table rather than 20 or more. Thuggish Poet lead the service, and took the radical step of reading excerpts from the actual story in Exodus, but with a recognizable rabbinic Seder structure as well. I found it really hard, probably more than the funeral in some ways, but I'm also really proud of how well we managed.

I didn't have time to be overwhelmed by that, because I had signed up to lead both the first day of Passover morning service, and the community Seder, at a community in North London. jack made this possible practically by driving me down from Cambridge in the morning so I actually got eight hours sleep between our Seder and a fairly intense professional gig. It wasn't ideal to lead a complex service as my first introduction to a new community, but on the other hand only the real keenies show up first day Pesach. I came back to the flat in the afternoon and more or less stared at walls for a few hours, with supportive hugs and cups of tea from jack, and then lead a very successful community Seder for about 80. They came from a very wide range of backgrounds with different expectations of what a Seder should be, but I think they mostly liked me.

Partly because of my recent bereavement, but mainly because of extremely awkward timing with Easter, I didn't manage to run a second Seder with family of choice this year, and I was a bit sad about that, but it was quite nice to have a relaxed week once the first intense day was past. Since then I've been getting stuck into my course again, and doing more community work and generally continuing like before but more sad.

My next big thing is that college are insisting we absolutely have to spend the summer in Israel. I don't want to, mainly because I don't think it's ethical, partly because I'm not convinced it's safe, and a small amount because I just don't want to be away from my people for several weeks, especially not far enough away that the only way to get home is several hours' flight. After much soul-searching I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to burn the amount of goodwill it would take to refuse to go. So I'm going to spend a few weeks studying at the pluralist yeshiva, Pardes. I think the actual studying will be great, even if I don't want to be there.

If you want to tell me I'm a horrible person for allowing myself to be pressured into going, well, you're probably right. If you want to be helpful, please recommend me good resources for working on my modern Hebrew over the next couple of months. I know about Duolingo and will probably put in a little bit of graft there, but ideally I want to listen to and read Hebrew media. At the moment I'm putting on Kan Bet (Hebrew language talk radio, I think more or less equivalent to Radio 4) in the background, and it is definitely helping with immersion, but I could do with something more interesting, basically. Indie radio or podcasts or a series or something. My language skills are at a rather awkward level; I am not a beginner and my strong classical Hebrew helps quite a lot, but I can't exactly follow spoken Hebrew at natural pace, I can sometimes get the gist depending on the topic and the accent of the speaker. So I think that means I'm at a level where I will get better with just lots of exposure, but any more structured recommendations would be welcome.