Discovering Deutschland

The Purim party season came and went so quickly! But not without being a super eventful week! The celebrations started off a few days before Purim with a hamentashen cooking workshop in Tanya's cozy kitchen in Duisburg. A diverse group of Russians, Ukrainians, Germans and even another American across three generations came together to do some good old-fashioned Jewish baking. The veteran bakers  (including my boss Tanya)  taught the rest of us their hamentashen recipes, which of course they did by feel instead of by cookbook. We made Russian hamentashen and German hamentashen side-by-side (the Russian ones are on the left). It turns out that in the Former Soviet Union hamentashen is made with yeast. For anyone with experience making these cookies in the US this is quite a change to have them rise in the oven like bread! After a rowdy stopover to make graggers, or noise makers, in the Jewish kindergarden I returned to Berlin to test out my new hamantashen making skills...

Somehow it's been six months since I left the US and came to Germany. It seems pretty impossible that this time last year I was still in Berkeley wondering what life after graduation would bring and now it's already three months into 2014! Last week marked the official halfway point with the JSC Mid-Year Seminar in Israel. First, being back in Israel after two years was quite a trip. In 2012 I spent spring semester studying abroad in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University. I loved being in the international school and meeting the most wonderful people from so many corners of the world. It was an adventure shopping in the Shuk (the market), figuring out Israeli busses and exploring the country. Returning to Israel this time though was an entirely different experience. It was strange being a tourist in a place I used to be so acquainted with. Also I kept finding myself thinking that Israel and Jerusalem was the most familiar place I would return to in the course of m...