Eating Sabra fruit, writing to you

Well I am sitting at the computer, enjoying a sabra fruit that we got at the shuk today and writing to you. If you are having half as much fun as I am, you are lucky indeed.
Lots of grammar in Ulpan today. I find it to be quite intense and demanding of a lot of concentration. Michal, our teacher has great patience. We start each session with conversation. She asks us what we have been doing. Her love for Israel and pride shows in her descriptions. She is a true scholar of the language and is conversant with grammatical terms for both English and Hebrew. I only wish I could spend months with her instead of only a few weeks.
In the afternoon, we learned a midrash that explained what Cain and Abel were really fighting about. Just like today, people fight about property, power, and women. The midrash first says that they divided up everything in the world. One got all the land and the other got all the things. The one that got all the things demanded from the other that he give him his clothing. The one that got the land told the other to fly up off his property. In the fight over power, they divided up all the land between them. They then fought over which one should own the land that the Temple would be built on. This would mean that he would be able to make all the decisions about religion and thus have all the power. In the third midrash, they argued about who would posess the first Eve. We learned that Adam's Eve was actually the second one that God made. This is taken from the language that describes how Eve was created. That midrash said that when God made the first Eve, Adam watched and was "grossed out" by what he saw. God then put Adam to sleep and made him another one. Anyhow, the first one was on the sidelines and Cain and Abel argued over which one would get her.
While I was at school, Roz toured around the Davidson Center. This is an archeological park aroung the southern part of the western wall and the southern wall itself. You will recall that the southern part of the Western wall is also known as the Masorti Wall and is the place where egalitarian services may be safely held.

Here is a picture of Roz on the old city wall leading up to the southern wall of the Temple mount:

There has been considerable excavation done in this area. A number of beautiful and fascinating objects have been found. Of particular interest is this picture of a mikvah.

In this picture the staircase leading down into the mikvah can be seen. On the left there is another set of stairs used to leave the mikva after purification.

Roz's sister and brother-in-law, Sandra and Moshe, arrived here today. They had just visited the Ukraine where they were able to locate the grave of Moshe's grandfather.

In the evening we waked to Ben Yehuda for supper.

There was something I forgot to write about that I saw for the first time on Friday. You may recall that we went to a Yerushalmi synagogue in Ramot for Friday night services. What I did not mention was that as we left the sanctuary one of the men was standing in the lobby with a potted fragrent plant. The men all went up to the plant and breathed in the aroma. It was a pungent lemon-like bouquet unlike anything I had ever smelled. Sylvie told me it was called "lou-ee-za." Some of the men also said the "borey miney besamim" that is said at havdallah. I will long remember the joy in the room and the broad smiles this sensual exercise produced.