Me and my roommates Aviva and Jon at our HUC big Thanksgiving Dinner

We've hit the 5-month mark!  It's so hard to believe that I've been living here for 5 months already!  Time seems to move more quickly here... 

Just this past Wednesday, our cantorial class held a master class with Cantor Benjamin Maissner.  He is a prominent Cantor in both the Reform and Conservative movements, and he is also a teacher.  He gave us a lecture on his uncle, Cantor Israel Alter.  Cantor Alter composed many Jewish pieces in a very traditional, Jewish, eastern European way.  A few of us each prepared an Alter piece to sing for Cantor Maissner.  He then helped each of us through specific parts of the piece, giving us suggestions on interpretation and vocal styles.  I sang "Atah Chonantanu."  I found it to be an incredibly difficult but beautiful piece.  The other cantorial students were great!  We have an 11th cantorial student who is not part of our class, but attends many of our classes.  He (yes, I said "he") is from the Abraham Geiger College in Germany and is in his 4th and final year of cantorial studies.  It's really nice to hear such a great tenor voice!  The class was very exciting, and I think we all got a lot out of it.

Now that we're in the last month of this semester, all of those final papers and tests are beginning to hang over my head.  We have finals during the week of January 5th.  There is a lot of work to be done!  Next Shabbat, I'll be chanting Haftarah.  The Shabbat after that, I'll be co-leading the music in services with another cantorial student.  And I believe it's the following Monday that I'll be chanting a short Torah portion.  

There's so much to do and surprisingly little time left in the semester!  I'm really looking forward to the Temple Emanuel trip here to visit!  I'm also looking forward to coming home in January for a few days!  It will be a needed break!  Talk to you soon!

Amanda

November Update

Hello again, everyone!  I hope you're all doing well!  I'm doing very well, keeping extremely busy, and learning a lot!  

High Holy Day services were interesting.  They were different from the services at home because here, they read no English in the prayerbook.  Cantor Shleifer did just about all of each service except for the sermons and the parts that the cantorial students sang.  He is an amazing cantor!  When he wasn't singing with the piano, to get his pitch, he used a tuning fork, which he kept in his front shirt pocket underneath his white robe.  He also wrote many many pieces that we cantorial students sang.  I sang his B'Rosh HaShanah.  He's proving himself to be quite the cantorial genius!  I use cantorial and not musical, not that he isn't a musical genius either, but because he is able to so easily fuse the Judaism and music together in his services, his compositions, and in his classes.  Unfortunately, as I may have already told you, he is retiring this year.  His retirement ceremony, at which the cantorial students will be singing, is November 11th.  It is sad, but I am so happy that I am able to study under him this year.  

Classes are moving right along!  Yesterday morning, I had a test on singing the nusach (traditional way of chanting) for the beginning of a weekday morning service.  We had to chant it, not from our books with the musical notations, but out of an orthodox prayerbook, called "Rinat Yisrael."  We chanted everything the Cantor is supposed to chant before the Bar'chu, which is apparently a lot!  I'm glad they're having us learn the traditional chanting of the service.  We're also studying trope (Torah, Haftarah, etc.), and currently we're working on the portion where the Ten Commandments are read.  I think we'll probably move on to Haftarah trope next week.  

Our class just took a trip to Masada earlier this week.  It's too bad I forgot my camera!  This trip was for my Second Temple History class.  It's great to see places like Masada with real historians/archaeologists as your guides!  I'm also learning a lot about current Israeli culture and its recent history in our Israel Seminar class, which is a full day class on Wednesdays.  We've talked about things like the 6-Day War, the different waves of immigration, the establishment of a state, and many other things.  We've also watched movies and traveled around Israel.  In a couple of weeks, we'll go to Haifa and Tz'fat for the day.  

And... there's always Hebrew class!  I have 1 class each week dedicated to Biblical Hebrew and 5 classes each week dedicated to modern, conversational Hebrew.  It's a lot, but well worth it!  I can actually speak a little bit of it!  My teacher is great!  She's an Israeli woman who seems to wear the exact same dress every day, but she's very good at what she does!

Also, I have a great vocal coach!  Her name is Judy Axelrod.  I feel I'm learning a lot from her, and will have a much greater handle on good vocal technique by the end of this school year.  

The weather has finally started to change here and it's getting a little cooler, right around 70 degrees during the day, and in the 50's at night.

My friends here are wonderful!  It's really a neat thing to have close friends who are peers that share so many of the same interests as I do.  As much as I miss you all and as much as I miss being home, it is truly a blessing to be here!

Amanda

Shanah Tovah Um'tukah!!!

Wishing everyone a good, sweet new year!

Hello all!  So, real classes have finally begun!  The school week here goes from Sunday until Thursday, and our weekend is Friday and Saturday.  I’m taking some really interesting classes!  I have one class of Biblical Hebrew and about 5 classes of Modern Hebrew per week.  I also have a history class and a T’filah/liturgy class.  My cantorial courses include History of Jewish music, Cantillation of the Bible, Sight-Singing/Music Theory, Israeli Folk and Popular Music, and a Cantorial Workshop.  Although he is not the head of the Cantorial program this year, Eliyahu Schleifer, a highly renowned cantor, is one of our professors.

 

The first week of classes is over and we already have lots of work to do!  I have solos to prepare for High Holy Days and a cold that’s preventing me from practicing!  Nonetheless, I’m very excited that things here are moving along.  I still have to keep convincing myself that I’m living in Israel and in Cantorial School at HUC!

 

Also, during our break between summer ulpan and classes, I went with a group of students on a vacation to Greece.  We had a lot of fun visiting an Acropolis and playing on the beach.  Here are some pictures:

I've finally moved into my new apartment!!!  I hope to post pictures soon!  It's beautiful and so much nicer than most of the other apartments that I've seen here.  AND... we have air conditioning!  My roommates and I are doing quite well here.  It's actually kind of strange that I feel like I've been here for much longer than a month!  I guess having an everyday routine helps...

So, I thought I should give you all a little idea of what I do here in Jerusalem every day.  Right now, I'm about half-way through my summer ulpan (intensive Hebrew language study).  Sunday through Wednesday, we study Hebrew from 8:30 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.  On Monday afternoons, the High Holy Day choir practices, and on Tuesday afternoons, the cantorial students have ear training and music theory classes.  Wednesday evenings, the whole class meets for a Biblical history lecture.  Then, on Thursdays, we go on a "tiyul," a trip, through various areas in and around Jerusalem as part of the Biblical history class.  We have Fridays and Saturdays off and we are usually free to attend services either at HUC or at any other synagogue in the area.

Just this past Friday night, I went with a small group of HUC students to a growing Reform Jewish community in a suburb just outside of Tel Aviv called Ramat HaSharon.  We attended services and then split into groups for home hospitality.  Along with two Rabbinical students, I had dinner with a very nice family.  The parents had lived in Boston for some time and spoke very good English.  The youngest girl (who was 5 yrs old) was upset that she couldn't speak English!  They were so nice and interesting!  

I miss you all!  And I'm especially sad that I missed Kayitz this summer.  I heard a little bit about it from some of my Junior Youth groupers who email me!  I love hearing from all of you, so please, please, please feel free to comment or email me anytime!!!  amandalwinter@yahoo.com

I'm ok!!!

Hello all,

I'm sure you've heard about the copy-cat terrorist attack/attempt today in Jerusalem.  I'm fine and all others from my program are ok.  It was someone trying to recreate the bulldozer incident that happened just a few weeks ago.  From what I heard, the only person killed was the crazy one driving the bulldozer.  It is scary though, to think that the intersection this happened on is one that is not only close to campus, but I walk right through it every day, usually twice a day.  They've been doing construction on that road and tearing up the sidewalk for the past couple of weeks.  

So, I am fine and I have a very close group of friends in the HUC community who are all very supportive of each other.  I hope you are all doing well!!!  

L'Shalom,

Amanda 

HUC friends!

Aviva and Jon:  my fabulous roommates!

Jerusalem:  part of the Old City, behind my school!

Chen and Avi Greenberg's daughter's wedding reception in Haifa

Me and Daniel Crane at the wedding!