Happy Adar!! מישנכנס אדר מרבים בשמחה!

So Sunday and Monday last week was Rosh Hodesh (the first day(s) of the month of) Adar. During this month, we're supposed to be silly in anticipation of the festive holiday of Purim, which is at the beginning of next week. So Sunday and Monday kind of felt like a combination of Halloween and April fool's day, with people dressing up, singing songs, wearing funny wigs, playing pranks. On Sunday when the power unexpectedly went out in the Beit Midrash (library/study-room), the whole room spontaneously erupted into singing: "מישנכנס אדר מרבים בשמחה"--"from when Adar comes in, we increase in happiness".

Monday of last week was also Pardes's annual "Yom Iyun shel Chesed"--"Theme day of Kindness" in honor and memory of Marla Bennett and Ben Blutstein, two Pardes students who were killed in a terrorist attack at Hebrew University in July 2002. After our morning classes, all of Pardes headed out to various community service projects in and around Jerusalem.

I started in Pardes, registering my fellow students with the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Registry. Then I headed to Emek Refaim with a group of 6 or so other students with information from the Halachic Organ Donor Society (HODS) and cards for registering to be an organ donor in Israel. Unfortunately, Jews are underrepresented as organ donors because of misconceptions that organ donation is prohibited by Judaism--it's not! (If you want to know more, check out HODS.)

Soliciting on the street was, well, frustrating, but we did get some people to sign up. In the US, I think there's a strong conception of what it means to be an "organ donor". Here, however, people heard the word "לתרום," "to donate", and ignored us because they thought we wanted money. Many people were confused by what it meant to be an organ donor. One woman told us she didn't want to become a donor because her organs might be donated to Arabs, which was pretty hard to hear. I also found that several people said they didn't want to be donors because they wanted to be buried whole, including secular Israelis: "I don't care about the Halacha, its just what I believe." The idea of needing to be buried whole definitely comes from Judaism--it made me wonder whether nonJews have issues with organ donation for this reason also, or only Jews? But we did find that the younger generation of Israelis seemed to be much more aware of the importance of organ donation, and many were already donors, so that was encouraging.

Two weeks ago I shadowed an optometrist in downtown Jerusalem. He specialized in vision therapy/developmental optometry, which is something that I knew existed but didn't know a lot about. Essentially, what Dr. Lederman told me is that many kids diagnosed with reading and learning disabilities actually have problems training their eyes to work together and focus properly. As he put it, "It's like diagnosing the hard drive because the keyboard is faulty. If you use the keyboard to test the hard drive, of course the kid is going to show up as having ADHD or dislexia." One of the vision therapists working for him told me that kids come in with severe ADHD diagnoses and leave medication-free. The second reason my visit to Dr. Lederman was interesting is because the majority of his patient population is extremely ultra-Orthodox Jews; I think partly because of the heavy emphasis on reading at such an early age in very Orthodox communities, and partly because he has gained a reputation in those communities, so rabbis refer their congregants to him. I was pretty surprised when I first arrived and thought I heard one of the vision therapists counting in German--then I realized it was Yiddish. Yes, that's right, they have a Yiddish speaking therapist, because many of these 6, 8, 11-year old kids don't know any other language.

Purim is at the beginning of next week--apparently, the whole city turns into one giant party. Walled cities celebrate Purim on Sun night-Mon, while everywhere else celebrates it a day earlier (and for some reason, all of Jerusalem counts as a walled city, even though most of it is outside the walls of the Old City). So, I might go somewhere else Sat night-Sun and celebrate Purim twice! I'm still not sure of my plans, though. Costume ideas, anyone?