What's the exchange rate?

1 bucket of cooked grains and food scraps = 1 bucket of goat manure

1 bucket of compost soil = 3 bushels of basil

1 bucket of fruit peels and compost material for chicken feed = 2 fresh laid eggs

2 hours of editing = 1 private yoga class

3 hours of babysitting = acupuncture treatment

In Bat Ayin there is a different currency. Cash-money is pretty meaningless in a town where there are 2 places that accept it…a grocery store and a used clothing shop (gammach). Objects that you never thought had value…like your food scraps or animal droppings… are worth investing in and the expression ‘day trader’ doesn’t have anything to do with markets and projections, rather it means to barter while the sun is out (which is silly because everyone is cranky in the heat of the day, you get better deals in the morning!!!)

I pick grape leaves and stuff them, I sit under fig trees and eat from them, pick apples and sauce them, dry sage and bundle them, clip mint and seep them. It’s so raw. It’s so real. It’s also so hot. Thank goodness I inadvertently conditioned myself for the extreme heat, not knowing the day would come that I’d be spending the summer in the Mediterranean dressed in full garb (knees and elbows covered). I knew there was a reason I practiced Bikram’s yoga, a style done in extreme heat, for the past three years. Everyone keeps asking me how I never break a sweat… thanks David.

More about Bat Ayin…it is a small settlement in a somewhat disputed area known by some as the West Bank and known by others as the Judean Hills. I live very close to our brothers, who remind us about it five times a day. It’s quite romantic to watch the sun set with the melodic call-to-prayer in the foreground (it’s a good thing my parents don’t know much about the geography of Israel). Biblically, this is where the tribe of Yehuda settled when the Jews finally came into the land after wandering in the desert for 40 years. I always wondered why their tribe was known as the ‘stone cutters’, now I know. Most of the stone, especially the pearly white stone used to build Jerusalem is mined here. It is also located right on the oldest most ancient trade route in the civilized world, the crossroads of the fareast, Africa, Europe and India.

The Torah learning is so unique and integrative. The gardening portion of the program just ended, although I wake up at 6:00am every morning to work in the field, the learning is now more focused on healing.

My favorite class learning about Rambam’s writing on health. Rambam (also known as Maimonides) reigned from Spain, Morocco, and Egypt in the 12^th century and is the most influential thinker of the middle ages. Besides being a Torah scholar (he was the first to write a systematic code of all Jewish law), Rambam excelled in the fields of logic, science, medicine, exegesis, and philosophy. He served as physician to the sultan of Egypt, wrote numerous books on medicine, and in his free time served as leader of Cairo’s Jewish Community. He was pretty revolutionary, at a time people were bleeding each other to get rid of headaches, Rambam takes an entirely different approach, insisting that healthcare was holistic and varies from person to person, depending on their body build, personality type, ect. His insights are brilliant, I seriously think Rambam could become the next Atkins diet.

The herbal workshop class is also nice. We go out into the garden and learn about different herbs, the medicinal properties, their sources in the jewish tradition, and how to create balms, sprays, teas, ect out of them.

Oh yes, I apologize for never getting to the promised point of the other blog post about when I am coming home. It’s a bit complicated since:

(a) I truly love Israel

(b) G-d keeps opening more and more doors for me here

(c) it’s against the Torah to leave Israel (gotta love that one) and

(d) I only bought a one-way ticket….

But do not despair quite yet, I am planning to sit at my mother’s Thanksgiving table and to cuddle my two new family members that will be making their début into the world around that time and so I will be back (bli nadir) around November in order to do these things... a see all of you of course.