Vacation days, mitzvah clean up, final meetings

The end of the summer trip is near; 4 days about of 4 weeks remaining. Thursday evening, after Tisha B'Av, I went with Yossi and Dina to a "folk club" at Kibbutz Tzora. I'm not going to name names - apparently this used to be a monthly event, but has become less frequent. The performers seem to be aging anglos (I don't think anyone under 50 performed) whose best years of singing have passed; it was being held in honor of someone's birthday, which was nice, and there were about 100 people there. There is an excellent winery about 100 meters away, but they served "other wine" that was also disappointing. No one's set was longer than 3 songs and it wasn't "unpleasant", just not particularly professional (not sure what I was expecting).

Friday I got caught up on some writing for work and High Holidays (if it's the second week of Av, the first of Tishrei is only 6 or so weeks away!) in the early hours. Then Yossi and Dina hosted a wine tasting for the Ben Shoshan winery in the Negev. Yuval served 4 excellent wines, a merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon from a northern vineyard (K'far Shamai) a delicious Shiraz and a Cabernet from the vineyard at Avdat. Yuval was ably assisted by his son, Gefen (which means grape vine), aged 11, and we had a very pleasant day - somewhere between 25-30 came, and we met some very nice people.

We corroborated on making a beef stew for shabbat dinner, and Yossi and I went to shul. One of the unique things about Har Adar is that despite a diverse population, they've decided not to divide the community and they have only one synagogue. For Friday night services, they alternate weeks between the tunes of the "aidot hamizrach" (Jews from predominantly Arab countries) and Ashkenazi liturgy. We hit on an eastern evening - different for me yet pleasant.

Saturday was spent sleeping, reading, noshing and schmoozing. Saturday night we went to Jerusalem, I met my friend and mitzvah messenger from Rockville, Peggy Pearlstein, who brought some needed reinforcements from home, and then Yossi, Dina and I went to Cup O' Joe for a light snack and coffee.

Sunday was a day to finish up a bit of business with the final tzedakah allocations of the season, quite a bit going to provide school supplies to help kids start the school year (we split funds between the Rabbanit Kapach, Harel Moyal and Moshe Kott at Lev Ramot). We also helped to reimburse Click for some of the art supplies the USYers used last week with money we raised from the USYers. All told, with funds brought from the US and raised here, we've distributed just over $15,000 this summer, nearly double what we did last summer. I then had some errands - going to the Museum to buy the tickets for Wednesday's wine festival, getting some last shopping done for friends at Machane Yehuda (the shopping list is too bizarre for print but involved housewares, spices, sweets among other things) and gratefully, getting my shirts which I dropped off about 2 weeks ago at the cleaners, they ended up giving them to another customer at some point, who just returned them today. I treated myself to a celebratory lunch at Marvad HaKsamim. I may try to hit a winery here in J-lem later, in Katamon.

Danny is off being interviewed for TV; he could end up on the news today or tomorrow regarding the Tzedakah conference beginning tomorrow (I'm speaking in the afternoon). Tomorrow I am also invited (by the folks at Partnership 2000) for my first ever meeting at the Jewish Agency on the issue of projects for the ethiopian community in Beit Shemesh. Not sure what I'll contribute to the exchange, but I'm curious and really don't know what to expect. I'll probably squeeze in another post or two before the week ends abruptly Thursday morning at 6 am.