Over the past few weeks, I’ve returned to my classes and picked up with my gym schedule. I’ve been reading loads of books (including some of the classics: The Grapes of Wrath and A Little Princess and The Secret Garden to name a few). We had the JDC mission come through, and Sarah and I successfully entertained the 5-14 year olds after they performed Israeli and Bollywood dances for the 10 mission members.
Kids dancing for the mission
We printed out a picture of an outline of a tree and taught the kids how to make a collage of things relating to trees, using magazines, newspapers, crayons, and their imaginations. The activity went over well, and after the last children had been collected, the mission headed down to the Taj President hotel in Cuffe Parade. Along with several dozen of the youth, the mission, my bosses, Sarah, and I enjoyed a deluxe buffet dinner and some time to speak with one another. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Jane Weitzman (of the Stuart Weitzman shoe line), who is also on the board of the Jewish Book Council, and we spent over an hour discussing Jewish literature. It doesn’t get much better than that!
A week later, we had another important community event: a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Evelyn Peters Jewish Community Center, where I work. For this event, we had a traditional malida ceremony at the JCC. About 100 members of the community attended – mostly the over-30 crowd, though some youth were in attendance. We incorporated into this ceremony a brief program on Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish new year for trees, because the holiday took place the day after the malida. Sarah and I performed a skit for the community that went something like this:
Bombay Dreams 