Meditation, that's what you need

On Monday, I attended the Rosh Chodesh event at Moishe House. They're working their way through the Kabbalistic associations of the different months, which isn't very much my thing, but hey. I got to socialise a bit, and it ended with a nice singalong—including singing a niggun for צור משלו first alternately with, and then at the same time as the chorus for Kim Wilde's "You Keep Me Hanging On" and "Don't Walk In Front Of Me"^*—yay three chord melodies.

* The Jewish version, which adds to the original Camus quotation "and together we will walk in the path of Hashem".

Anyhow, I think all three Rosh Chodesh events of theirs I have been to have included at some point a ten minute guided meditation. I have gamely taken part in this and all other meditations I have come across, and I have to say not one has done a single thing for me. Possibly under the guidance of a professional that might not be the case for me; as it is, they really are a complete waste of my time.

Hebrew

Moishe House are starting their Beit Midrash on Monday, which would probably be more down my line, but unfortunately that evening's double-booked for me. I decided after turning down the chance to do ulpan at the Conservative Yeshiva that I was going to attend Hebrew lessons here in London instead.

It's a regret of mine that I didn't put more effort into learning Hebrew during my year off, and into keeping my Hebrew up afterwards. I've had for a while a vague intention of remedying that at some point; after last summer, I've decided that point should be now. I'll not find it as easy to learn as fifteen years ago, but bumping into some friends of my parents on my way to Israel, who had recently made aliyah and who told me they were finding the language very hard, has made me aware that no matter how hard I would find it now, I would find it much more difficult in another fifteen years, so the time to learn is now.

If I get myself to a certain standard, I can keep my Hebrew up even if I don't have other people to talk in Hebrew with, by reading שער למתחיל (a newspaper in simple Hebrew) and listening to Israeli radio on the Internet. I just have to get to the standard of being able to cope with those first! My biggest problem at present is that because I've not been using my Hebrew at all, I'm not thinking in Hebrew: At the end of my year off, simple words and phrases came to me straight off in Hebrew; whereas now I need to stop and translate every word, which means I'm both speaking and parsing way too slowly to be of any use for anything.

Anyhow, Finchley Progressive Synagogue are hosting an ulpan starting from the last Monday in January. (Though I'm not sure from what I've heard from other people that they might not be too elementary for me.) Their programme includes two cultural events per term; and the cultural event from last term is this Monday: a discussion of the poems of Yehuda Amichai. I'm not sure how much use this will be to those of us who haven't started the course yet, but I think I probably ought to go along and find out. It's a shame that it clashes with the Moishe House Beit Midrash, is all.