When Things Aren't How They Should Be

I'm not so familiar with the whole "global warming" thing. I vaguely remember utterances of El Nino back in the day. I'm sure An Inconvenient Truth was a great movie (well, not "sure", per se, but you know), and I'm sure Al Gore is a whiz of nature. All I know is that once upon a time there was real snow, and now there isn't. Which is a good thing, I guess, since my only pair of non-suede boots cracked completely and now I have nothing to wear in the rain, let alone the snow, not to mention the fact that in New York City, snow is never anything that great (I think we had more days off in Ramaz for Hurricane Floyd than we did for snow) but it's the principle of the thing. I want to know that when I go home to New Rochelle, I'm going to see beautiful snow blankets covering every lawn on Rose Hill Avenue. Only I'm not.

The funny thing is that when I think of snow, what really comes to mind is the snowstorm my year in Israel, and how Barrie, Liz, Jess, Melissa, and I got snowed into Barrie's lovely Rehavia apartment; how Israel shut down because it's ill-equipped to handle a mere two inches of snow, and how the memory of snow where it shouldn't be is the strongest one of all.

It was pretty damn fun, to be fair, so I guess it's not strange to remember it - snowball fights on the roof of the Brov, then huddling in Melissa's room (and calling Mike, though I'm not sure why), then getting bagels the next day before finally getting to the apartment and making dinner. Israel was fun, I know, but somehow, when I look back on it, I'm never sure how I should feel, because more than anything else, I have a strong feeling that our year in Israel wasn't what it should be, and for those of us who didn't do it over, it's a bad feeling to be stuck with.

When I think about Brovenders (Midreshet Lindenbaum, sorry), I try to figure out how bad I'm supposed to feel. I'm not particularly rebellious by nature - growing up in my house, it wasn't necessary. Nothing to rebel against = no rebellion. I drank occasionally, never smoked, never did drugs, certainly didn't have sex, and although I drink a little more these days (though not much, and of course, it is legal now), they're all still true. But then, I didn't feel like I was rebelling in Brovenders either; that wasn't the point. I didn't go to bars because it was forbidden. I went to bars because they were seldom frequented by the anorexic girls who heavily populated the Brov and every other seminary. I went to bars because when I finally settled into a group of friends, I was so happy to go anywhere with these girls who weren't constantly analyzing their food intake/exercise patterns that I probably would've tiptoed to Gaza if that was the plan for the night. Oh, also, I went to bars because it was fun. Let that be said too.

And I did feel bad, when I showed up to shiur the next morning thinking about the night before. Not so bad, and not really about what I did, but just the fact that it felt like a lie that my teachers would never have guessed where I was the night before. I think I sound more scandalous when I describe my year in Israel than any other time in my life, and the funny thing about it was that I was of legal drinking age, I can count the number of times I broke dress code on one hand (I didn't even bring pants to Israel - we're talking short-sleeved violations), and I still learned a ton. Ah, seminary guilt. It's a special thing.

Of course, now I'm dying to go back to Israel, and I would theoretically love to visit Brovenders, if I thought anyone would know who I was, and maybe there would even be snow.