My 'Vacation', Greenville SC
Overall I must say it was a very inspiring time -and I'm not just referring to the scenery. I was totally blown away time and again.In case you didn't believe that Chabad is everywhere, you should look up the Jewish population of the South Carolina Upstate. It's probably one of the smallest Jewish communities around. Yet here's this dude, a Shliach in the middle of nowhere, Middle of Nowhere, Middle of Nowhere!! Yet the people he has there are so solid i've never seen anything like it!
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we had small but impressive turnouts. (compared to last year when he couldn't get a minyan for Yom Kippur(!)
Nobody and I mean NOBODY read Hebrew! -besides for the Israelis that came YK- so getting the eilom involved was no easy task to say the least. But in the end they did get into it and that was major. Poeple came over to me and said it was the most meaningful High Holiday they ever had! Even the ISRAELIS SAID THAT! and that's with the davening being done half in English!!! -thats a whole separate story though.
One of the best compliments I think a Shliach could ever get was when one guy told him "It was the first time I never looked at my watch the entire Rosh Hashanah!" I mean talk about a one- liner to promote a meaningful davening! I can't think of anything better!
So Yeah it was a great great experience. During the days intermediateing, (love making up words at this time of night...) I kept myself busy discovering the beautiful state of the state of SC (omg I just cracked myself up) and the art of baby sitting!! (I also discovered that babysitting a new-born baby goes well with the schedule of sleep deprived insomnians (-another word) like myself!! maybe I'll go into the business one day) I also discovered that I have a love for baking and decided that I would bake honey cakes and use them to bribe the Jews of Greenville to come to shule for Yom Kippur. I also discovered that I had a knack for baking... well at least some of the time... the first batch came out pretty perfect (if that makes any sense) none withstanding my forgetting to triple the amount of margarine when tripling the recipe. Actually my Mom would be very proud of that!
Well I don't know if the first one was just rookie's luck or whatever it's called (I think poker people have some kinda name for that) but to make a long story short the second batch kinda exploded in the oven. I'm still not sure if I put in too much baking powder or baking soda (what in the world is the difference between them anyway??) but thank G-d in heaven (and earth) the Shlucha -head shlucha of the upstate may I add(?)- was not too particular about me trashing her oven! Oh, she was also pretty cool about me cracking her blender........ now that I think about it she was pretty cool about everything.... but let's not get carried away here. The whole thing was kinda upsetting though (not to mention funny) because I had kinda told some people that I would be bringing them lekach and I didn't have enough time to give it another try.
The cards I made for the lekach came out pretty classy though.
posted by Baruch @ 12:43 AM
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