 |
| We caught the northern lights in Bergen! Photo courtesy of Andreas |
At the first cheider this year, we covered Tanach. The main bits, anyways. Created the world, argued over how to divvy up the Ten Commandments, and performed a skit about the drama in Melachim Alef. One of the boys kept calling the asaret hadibrot “the Ten Commitments”. Which sounds easier on the twenty-first century ear than “commandments”. Maybe we English-speakers should switch. Next up: building the Beit Hamikdash.
Thea, Odelia and I met up to write the Purim play the cheider kids will put on for the community. Maybe I’ve just watched one too many Purim spiels, but I basically wrote the whole thing, offering them options as we went like a Purim play buffet. Let’s be honest—this is Bergen’s second Purim play ever, so I don’t think we have to worry about repetition.
Walking home this afternoon, the fjord sparkling beside me and the snowy peaks of Bergen shifting shape as I passed them, I had the eerie thought that perhaps this entire year is simply a dream. That as I near spring, it will thaw, melt, dissolve into a dew, and wash away across the Atlantic. When I get home, I will tell people I’ve lived in Norway for a year, and that will mean precisely nothing to them. Or else a weird mash-up of skiing, Ibsen and knitted sweaters, that in fact merely danced around the periphery of my reality here without being the substance. How can I catch this in my hands and take it, palms cupped, back home to show everyone, without it running out between my fingers? How can I save it for myself? Wind strands of Norway into Grieg’s “Morning Song,” and tuck snippets into the souvenir troll I’m bringing back to sit on my desk as a paperweight, and forever change my midwestern “yeah” to a Scandinavian “ja”? Will that save Norway for me? Or memorizing driblets of poetry on fjord and fjell and stjern and sol, so my mind traces out its patterns whenever I doze off? Kansje jeg skål ikke forlate.
 |
| What do you mean, David's the new king? |
 |
| Killing Agag, king of Amalek. Dramatically. |
 |
| Batsheva requesting that her son Solomon be king. Look at him hold that baby. |
 |
| Bergen at night |
Walking home this afternoon, the fjord sparkling beside me and the snowy peaks of Bergen shifting shape as I passed them, I had the eerie thought that perhaps this entire year is simply a dream. That as I near spring, it will thaw, melt, dissolve into a dew, and wash away across the Atlantic. When I get home, I will tell people I’ve lived in Norway for a year, and that will mean precisely nothing to them. Or else a weird mash-up of skiing, Ibsen and knitted sweaters, that in fact merely danced around the periphery of my reality here without being the substance. How can I catch this in my hands and take it, palms cupped, back home to show everyone, without it running out between my fingers? How can I save it for myself? Wind strands of Norway into Grieg’s “Morning Song,” and tuck snippets into the souvenir troll I’m bringing back to sit on my desk as a paperweight, and forever change my midwestern “yeah” to a Scandinavian “ja”? Will that save Norway for me? Or memorizing driblets of poetry on fjord and fjell and stjern and sol, so my mind traces out its patterns whenever I doze off? Kansje jeg skål ikke forlate. 
No comments:
Post a Comment