We finished the bathroom project!!! Thanks for all your help!!!

Per last year's resounding success, we held another English Language Week at my school. This year, the theme was Disney. While 1-4 grades sang children's songs, 5-11 grades were assigned different disney movies, to celebrate the birth of Walt Disney on the 5th of December. As a special contest, anyone who correctly names the titles (and movies) for all of the songs in the comment section will win a special prize from me/my students!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx0xL7z446Y&feature=youtu.be

I feel like I don’t write about a lot of successes. The truth is life here can get you down. I fail much more than I succeed, and as someone raised always believing he could be the best at anything, well, its hard to feel like I can’t. There is this battle in our minds between who we are and who we desire to be, and it is a force that can be both reformative and destructive. I want to believe I can singlehandedly make the world a better place, and when I undoubtably don’t, I am deflated.

There was a lot I thought I would do upon coming here. I imagined coaching a team to the little league world series, opening a recycling factory, making the village sparkly clean. While I pushed at first, the engine eventually slows down. I don’t have the energy left I had those first few months in the village. How could I? The little (and stout and balding) engine could not.

I’ve talked here and there about feminism---about my mother, about what gender roles mean in our society. Its something I’ve wanted to convey to the girls at my school for some time now, to show them an alternative to the life they know. Go to school, get in to university, find a husband, settle down. There is a notion that if you are not married by 25, then you are doomed, forever to live alone, never to find love. An old maid at a quarter century.

It’s not that women are viewed as secondary citizens in the Ukrainian mentality. In fact, an argument could be made that there was more “feminism” in the Soviet Union than in pre-War America. Its just that in the Ukrainian village, each has their role. The man works the land, feeds the animals, and drinks the vodka. The woman milks the cow, cleans the house, and cooks the food. These are stereotypes, of course, but preconceptions grow deep in the Ukrainian soil.

There is more out there than what they know. That’s all I’ve ever really wanted to show my kids, to encourage them to imagine, to expose them to something different and new. There such a rote process to this still deeply Soviet education system that the notion of creating isn’t so emphasized.

This past summer, three of my students, all girls, attended a Peace Corps summer camp organized by the Gender and Development council, a Peace Corps Ukraine working group. The camp, which was organized by Peace Corps volunteers including two of my friends, Stephanie and Vanessa, was a week long bonanza where the girls would learn about important female issues as well as have the opportunity to meet other young female leaders from across Ukraine.

While all three of the girls are great, one of them, Olia, is a real All-Star. Olia is the niece of my director, Kolya, and my counterpart, Tamila. Barely 14 years old, she has the best English in the school. She is at the top of her class and popular to boot. She has a thirst for knowledge which I don’t often see in my students. Everything she sees, hears, feels, you can tell she is registering it all somewhere, tucking it away as if portended for later use.

While I was happy that I was able to give these three girls the experience, I of course wanted to help more of my students, as well. The Gender and Development group began offering small mini-grants to conduct gender-related projects, so Olia suggested we do a mini-camp for the girls at our school. All projects needed a counterpart---Olia, 14 years old, a girl whose mother succumbed to cancer two years ago, stepped up to the plate.

Together with Olia (as well as Yulia, another of my students who attended the camp over the summer) we organized a weekend “feminist training,” as it was entitled by my somewhat skeptical director. We invited two Peace Corps volunteers, Vanessa and Niza, to help conduct the camp, as well as Vanessa’s Ukrainian friend Sveta. Sveta is a rock star, a jack of all trades swiss army knife who works in Cherkassy, our Oblast center. She used to run a youth center there, but now simply goes from project to project, whether it is organizing a film festival about domestic violence, cleaning up the Dnieper river, or teaching girls in small villages about HIV/AIDS.

The camp took place over two days, a Friday and a Saturday. While I was incredibly nervous about attendance (it ain’t easy to get these kids, or any kids, to come to school on a weekend) the camp was heavily attended by a healthy cadre of 20 girls, ages 14-17.

The first day, Friday, was all about HIV/AIDS. Ukraine has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in Europe, and it is growing at an incredibly fast rate. While the official HIV rate stands at 1.3% of the population, only 11% of the population has ever been tested, leading to speculation that the actual rate could be higher. Sveta is a certified HIV/AIDS trainer through an organization known as PEPFAR.

PEPFAR is fascinating for a variety of reasons. First off, it is on the forefront around the globe of educating at-risk countries about HIV/AIDS knowledge and prevention. In Ukraine it has truly begun to make inroads, and Peace Corps Ukraine has two employees specifically delegated to PEPFAR programming. For me, however, the most interesting part is that PEPFAR was actually a brainchild of George W. Bush. Say what you like about him and his Presidency, he may have been the greatest ally (in terms of overall financial assistance) in the fight against HIV/AIDS that the world has ever known.

I did not participate in the Friday discussion, nor would I participate in many of the conversations that occurred over the next few days. These are serious topics--HIV/AIDS, transmission, stereotypes, prevention--and I wanted my students to feel open and unobserved. I am their teacher, but Sveta can double as their friend. The day was a huge success; using before and after questionnaires, Sveta showed me the marked strides my girls had made.

On Saturday, Sveta and Vanessa covered quite a few important topics, including Domestic Violence, Human Trafficking, and what it means to be a woman in today’s society. Meanwhile, Niza was preparing the painting of a World HIV/AIDS map. The map is color coded to convey the different HIV/AIDS rates that exist throughout the world. As you can see, Ukraine is much, much darker than the rest of Europe.

The whole time I was incredibly nervous. Would the girls enjoy themselves? Would they learn something? Would they care? I can’t even begin to explain how I felt when, at the end of the day, the girls didn’t want to leave. They truly had a great time. A handful of girls stayed two extra hours, just to make sure that the map was as beautiful as can be.

Olia was, of course, the last to leave. She cleaned the brushes, swept up the trash, put the tables and chairs back in place. This was all expected. This was Olia. But as she was leaving, she did something she had never done before. She gave me a hug.

Afterwards, she was embarrassed. I am, after all, her teacher. Yet that hug meant so much to me, because it really showed me that I had done something right. I doubt myself every day. I never know if I’m doing what I am supposed to be. Am I “developing the youth?” Am I making the village a better place? Am I a good volunteer? Olia’s hug was a wonderful affirmative, her way of conveying her appreciation and her growth.

The village may be the same, but Olia, and these 20 other girls, are already better.

Last week, the school held a contest of singing National Anthems. While I helped various classes learn the anthems of Great Britain, Papua New Guinea, and Poland, here my 9th formers praised the Red White and Blue

Ukraine can get a little cold in the winter. Bitter winds, mounds of snow. And while our school is (somewhat) heated, the only available toilets for the students lay in dreaded outdoors. While I, strong Ukrainian man that I am, can easily handle such tribulations, some of our younger students really struggle. So the idea for a project was born---rebuilding (or, building might be the better word) the schools once-planned toilets. The Soviet Union collapsed as they were building the school, and the toilets didn't quite get done.

Like our project building the garbage can, this was done through the generosity of watercharity.org, a website that funds ecological and water-related projects for Peace Corps volunteers. Please click the link below to help donate to our project. I am asking for ten dollars from all of my lovely friends and family (and distant acquaintances). Anyone interested in giving more, please check out some of the other great projects on the appropriate projects site, www.appropriateprojects.com! We plan on building not only toilets but sinks as well---we will try and keep our students more sanitary and thus healthier throughout the cold winter.

As an added bonus, students will have no excuse to go sneak a cigarette outside during class time. Two birds with one click of the mouse!

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/892

Thanks for all your help!

A big thank you to everyone who bought a music album! We ended up raising $500 to help buy music equipment for my school!!! Here is a slideshow of some pictures of my students, set to the music of "Dream," by my student Katya Verhulatsky. Happy Listening!

Please, feel free to call my mother en-masse on this day of her jubilee plus 13.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions in my village this week about the Jewish New Year. How on earth is it 5772? What does “Rash Hashina” mean? What are all those bearded Hassidim doing in Uman? Are Hassidim even Jews?

I try to answer each of the questions as best as I can. We began counting from the creation of the world. It means the “Head of the Year.” The Hassidim are there visiting the grave of a famous Rabbi, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, who promised good fortune to all those who visited his grave during the new year. There are many different types of Jews, including Hassidim, not to mention that there are many different types of Hassidim. Do you understand yet?

At the onset of the Jewish New Year, Jews are given ten days with which to get their affairs in order. Our tradition tells us that on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, all Jews are split into three groups: the righteous, the evil, and the in-betweens. Most of us, not surprisingly, fall into the last group. And so on Rosh Hashanah these in-betweens are written into the book of death (which is, understandably, bad) but are given ten days to rectify our mistakes. On the tenth day we celebrate Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, where first we atone for our sins against man and then we atone for our sins against God. Every year, our eternal existence hinges on a day ten window in early autumn. And people wonder about the root of Jewish anxiety.

What bad things have I done in the past year? I try to be a good person, do the right thing, follow the path of righteousness, etc. etc. But there exists this vision in my mind of the person I ought to be, and when I look in the mirror I just don’t see him. Perhaps this is a part of the struggle, what these ten days are supposed to be about: Reflecting on the difference between who we are and who we strive to become.

This Rosh Hashanah, my friend Avital and I organized a program for Peace Corps Volunteers in Dnieperpetrovsk. Following a successful Passover Seder where we had about 15 volunteers, , we wanted to do another event to try and injext some yiddishkeit intp the Peace Corps service of some of the other Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers alike.

While I’ve certainly had a taste of Jewish communities around Ukraine, most of my experiences have taken place in Kiev, the capitol. I thought that Kiev had a vibrant and growing community, looking towards the future. Then I saw Dnieperpetrovsk, and a new standard was set.

Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzky, chief Rabbi of Dnieperpetrovsk, has a presence. In a synagogue where even on high holidays it is not unusual for tieless businessman to take a quick call on their bluetooth, when he gets up to speak, everybody listens. Rabbi Kaminetzky came to Ukraine 21 years ago for a year. But before the former Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, passed away, he made Kaminetzky promise he would never leave. The Rabbi has truly built a community, where Jews from all walks of life feel comfortable walking into the synagogue. He has gone from a group of disorganized wandering Jews in post USSR Ukraine to the opening, in February, of the Menorah Center, a Jewish community center that will scrape the Ukrainian skies. He is both knowledgeable and inclusive, a traditional Jew with an open door.

He was a welcome change to some of the other Jews I have encountered so far in Ukraine, especially more recently. One Hassidic woman, over a meal, accused me of not understanding Judaism. “How can you not help your own people?” she demanded to know. How could I have such care for these gentiles and chuck the Jewish people to the wind (her words, not mine).

Rabbi Kaminetzky was the opposite of that. In fact, he seems to be one of Peace Corps’ biggest cheerleaders in Ukraine. He regular welcomes my friend Avital, another Peace Corps volunteer, to his home and to his table, and extends open arms to Peace Corps compatriots passing through, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. He has great respect and admiration for all souls, and the feelings are almost certainly reciprocated.

Rabbo Kaminetzky could not have been more helpful in preparing for our event. He gave us a room to use in the synagogue complex, and had a huge traditional festival meal prepared. He also spoke to the volunteers for about ten minutes at the beginning of the program, thanking them for their service, and welcoming them to his community.

Avital and I then split all of the particpants (which numbered about 40, 30 of them peace Volunteers, 15 of them Jewish) into groups of 2 or 3. In Judaism, one is supposed to study with a Hevruta, a word without a true direct translation into English. Perhaps the best explanation is the translation of an old verse explaining the ideal study partner: Make for yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend. Learn from them, learn about them, learn about yourself.

Avital and I directed each of the Hevrutas to ask each other a series of questions that Jews regularly ask themselves during these ten days. What bad things have I done in the past year? What can I do better? Who was I? Who am I? Who may I become?

Avital and I were each others Hevruta, and we dove deeply into these questions. I am constantly disappointed in my work here. I suppose it is the lasting remnants of my undying idealism, this belief that not only I CAN change the world, but that I MUST change the world. And yet every time I seem to fall short of my goal.

What have I done wrong in the past year? Many things, but none more so than being entirely discontented with the work I have done. Who may I become? Someone who continues to try their best to make the world better, for sure, but someone who will also be happy regardless of the outcome. Why am I not the man I see in the mirror? Perhaps it is because of the expectation of the man I expect to find.

I had the change in Dniperpetrovsk to spend some time with Yossi Glick, who runs the Jewish girls orphanage there. Yossi is, in my mind, what Jewish tradition might refer to as an Ish Tzaddik, a truly righteous man. He devotes his life to a small group of 15 girls with no family to turn to, teaches them, cares for them, loves them. He has seven children of his own whom he showers with affection. And to top it all of, twice a week he rides around in a small van through the poorest and most decrepit areas of Dniperpetrovsk. With a local social worker in tow, they build relationships with the city’s runaways, youth who gather in small groups to find warmth under a local highway or inside an abandoned factory. They talk to these children, ask if they can pass messages to their families, try to bring them back to a real life. Yossi admits that their success rate is low. But as the Talmud teaches us, he who saves one life saves the entire world.

Yossi will never be on any list anywhere of the most influential people in the world. He will not cure cancer, he will not solve world hunger, he will not win a Nobel Prize of Peace. But Yossi is trying to do his part, and he is happy, regardless of the outcome.

And so, a new years resolution: From now on, I will look in the mirror and see the man I am. For now, this will have to suffice.

I will have a longer post next week, but I just wanted to take this opportunity to ask for forgiveness from anyone whom i have wrong in the past year. I will truly try and do better next year, try to be more considerate of those around me (and not so around me but still close to my heart). May the coming year bring us all empathy and understanding, love and trust. Gmar Chatimah Tovah may you all be sealed in the book of life for a long life and an everlasting one.

Hello, fair listeners!

I am excited to present to you the first every music album from the Boyarka School Players, entitled, "Everything, little by little." Composed exclusively by students, we have managed to put together quite the amateur production. Its a wild mix of songs the students wrote themselves, english songs they learned, and Ukrainian songs they already knew. Theres also a little Alphabet variation I concocted, because the guitar chords for the traditional alphabet song were too difficult.

The best song on the album, by far, is "Dream" or in the Ukrainian, "Mriya." It is by one of my favorite students, Katya Verhulatski. My internet is too slow to post the song, but I hope to do that later. For now, enjoy her lyrics---she is a true poet!

Anyone interested in buying an album, please contact my mother at annhappelbaum@gmail.com. She has copies in America for $10 if you pick it up from her in person, $12 if postage is included. All money raised will be used to buy musical equipment for my school. As a disclaimer, this is a direct fundraiser for my school, not a Peace Corps fundraising device, and all the money will be specifically used for the purposes of buying equipment for the school.

Enjoy listening!

Dream, by Katya Verhulatski

What does a dream mean to you?

Is it the hope of your life?

Is it the wind of your thoughts?

Let your dreams fly up into the sky,

If you look around, everything is so truly beautiful.

Let your soul sing, sing,

And do not forget your dream.

I have a dream, but it is protected

From all that could harm it

So that you and I can be happy.

Let your dreams fly up into the sky

If you look around, everything is so truly beautiful

Let your soul to sing, to sing

And do not forget your dream

And allow your soul to sing, to sing

And do not forget your dream

How far can cultural understanding really go? I know I’ve covered this topic before, but it reemerged on my consciousness this past week as we solemnly remembered the ten years that have passed since that Tuesday in September.

Memory often fascinates me, especially my own. I can remember obscure facts from my sixth grade Social Studies textbooks (the rise and rule of Justinian comes to mind) but I struggle to remember what I did last weekend. Things I read tend to stick with me; things I do tend to fall by the wayside. A friend of mine once remarked to me that she felt I paid more attention to books than to life. She might have a point.

But I will always remember the 11th of September, or at least I will always remember my Hebrew teacher Shoshana Cohen coming to me after Second period and telling me that the Twin towers had fallen down. It would weeks, months, years before I would even begin to wrap my head around those statements. I remember driving through Montclair and seeing the black smoke enveloping New York city. I remember walking into Jeff’s house, more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. I remember the days afterwards, the planes flying overhead and the silent wondering, “could we be next?” I remember the fear that permeated us all, and the terror upon which we declared War.

How does one properly convey a memory? Next month, I am beginning a series of lessons in Lysyanka, the nearest town of 10,000 people which before the war was almost 30% Jewish. I will be teaching about tolerance, stereotypes, and Jewish history and traditions. Together with the students, we will conduct a research project about the Jews of our region, and we will hopefully build a museum of Jewish history and tolerance on the grounds of the former Jewish cemetery.

The topic of our first lesson will be, “What is History?” I’m going to attempt to convey that no history, no story, can be completely objective. The author or the teller’s voice and opinion always seems to seep through. In Ukrainian, the word for examination, ohlyad, is very close to the word pohlyad, or viewpoint. Does the lone p explain enough of the difference?

Most of my students know nothing of 9/11. People my age tend to be inundated by many of the 9/11 conspiracy theories, theories that have such a casual relationship with the truth that it in many ways saddens and offends me. Even the people in my village who know of the day---how can I explain to them what it meant? What it means? What it will mean tomorrow?

On Friday, I asked my Director if I could take a few moments to speak to the students the following Monday. He agreed.

On Saturday, the Sabbath, I read a book, Holocaust by Bullets, written by Patrick DuBois. It is the story of how DuBois, a French priest, traversed the Ukrainian countryside in search of Jewish mass graves, interviewing aging witnesses, recording unwritten history. The book is depressing in and of itself, but living in a village much like the ones he describes, it was especially difficult. The worst part of the book, the hardest chapter to read, are the ones where it describes the pits that were dug, the bodies thrown in, and the reports of what it looked like afterwards: For three days, the earth moved. Jews were shot and buried alive. For three days, the earth moved.

On Sunday, I thought about the ten years, and the seventy years since the mass killings, and the almost 80 years since the great Ukrainian famine. I thought about the pain of memories we have and the pain of memories we hear from others. I thought about life, and about death, and about God.

On Monday, I came into school. After second period, I called an assembly. And as the students were standing there, I told them about that Tuesday in September, and about the towers, and about the terrorists, and about the nearly 3,000 people who died. I asked them to remember that these people were killed in the name of hate. I shared with them my believe that weapons of hate can only be defeated with weapons of love. I told them the only thing we cannot tolerate is intolerance. I gave them a piece of my memory, in all its subjective glory.

And then I asked them for a moment of silence for the lives lost. In silence we stood.

On Friday, there was another in a long line of Ukrainian holidays, the day of flowers. Children picked flowers from their gardens and brought them to school. Tables were laid out with reefs abd bouqets galore. Olha Alexandrivna, the Ukrainian language teacher, asked me to clarify the date of the tragedy of which I spoke. A few minutes later, she showed me a reef of flowers her children had made. Pamyatayemo bci scho pomerli na 11oho veresen, 2001. We remember all those who died on the 11th of September, 2001.

They may not understand what 9/11 means to me, or how much it troubles me to know that for three days, the earth moved. But it seems that I can convey to them the importance of it all, at least to me. Getting them to care, having them remember my subjective memories, might be victory enough.

I'm hoping to have a more traditional "introspective-Jeremy" post tomorrow, but in the meantime, here are two poems written by some of my best students. Olia wants to be a flight attendant (she wants to see the world!) and Yulia wants to be a Doctor. Please be generous with the rhymes while reading.

One short and beautiful day

I met a flower in my way

She lives in a garden near home

And is happy when I come.

She told me all about flowers

About hot and funny summers.

One time, since you've heard what I say,

When you will be coming this way

You'll find this flower in a garden

Olia Pretula

9th form

A Rose is a nice flower

It has a very big power

Its Power is matchless

It is nice like her dress

A dress with Roses

Is the garden of clothes

Yulia Cherevko

9th form

Ann Appelbaum, and her husband Rabbi Borovitz, are two of the best troopers I have ever met in my life, not to mention a fairly decent set of parents.

My parents recently completed an 11 day sojourn in Ukraine, a trip that has been in the planning since I got my official letter of invitation to join the Peace Corps some 20 odd months ago. Obviously, I had some trepidations about the parental visit. I am used to a certain lifestyle in Ukraine, one that involves overnight train rides and youth hostels and outdoor toilets. My parents are accustomed to a slightly different lifestyle of their own, one that consists of airplanes and fancy hotels and toilets with automatic flushers so as not to unnecessarily spread germs.

Compromise is a part of life, however. So I gave my parents nice hotels in exchange for a pair of overnight train rides, and I secured an assurance from my neighbors that my parents could dabble in their toilet.

From the time I met up with my parents in Lviv, the trip was nearly flawless. From the Ukraine’s west to Odessa in the south back up north to Kiev with a quick jump to my village in the middle, I couldn’t have planned a more fluid or enjoyable excursion.

My parents really met me halfway. Upon reading that in an infusion of Jewification I have begun donning my tefillin and praying every day, my father brought his set with him, as well. While my father is a very religious man, Tefillin is not necessarily his path towards connecting with God. But he knew it was a part of my path, and so he donned the Tefillin in order to better connect with me.

On the first full day of our trip, we took a day long trip to Rohatyn, a small town (or large village, depending on your perspective) from whence my father’s grandfather, David Nagelberg, once came. Rohatyn also happens to be the Peace Corps site of my good friend Abe, the daydreaming philosopher king of PC-Ukraine. While visiting the site of the old Jewish cemetery, under which ground my ancestors once laid (and perhaps remnants of which still remain) my father and I donned our Tefillin and we began to pray. And as the words left our mouth and enriched the soil beneath, as we recited the EL Maleh Rachamim, the Jewish prayer for the dead, I felt something wonderful. Not so much because I was connecting with God or my deceased ancestors, but because I was connecting with my father.

Probably the most hilarious part of the trip occurred on the train ride from Odessa to Kiev. I had ordered a four bed train car for my parents and I, along with my comrade Kevin who tailed us on our visit. As many of you may or may not be aware, my father suffers from sleep apnea, which causes him to snore excessively. After years of my mother suffering from massive exhaustion, my father eventually purchased a machine to help him breathe while he sleeps. It cuts down on noise, and the whole lot is better off.

Except the machine requires an electrical outlet, and those aren’t always so easy to come by on a Ukrainian train. The good news: our train compartment had an outlet. The bad news: it was near one of the top bunks of our train car. The top bunks of a Ukrainian train are not the most accessible place in the world. But through a combination of the massive might of Kevin and myself, we were able to lift my father into the bed. Of course, our efforts were in vain, because two hours into the train ride the electricity on the train shut down and the snoring most certainly did commence.

The two days we spent in my village were an experience, to say the least. Lots of the locals were very excited to meet my parents, and wanted to tell them some small anecdote about my time in my village. It was hard for many of them to understand, however, that my parents didn’t understand what they were saying. Probably my favorite of these interactions was when one of my neighbors looked at me and said “how is it that your parents have such a smart son and yet they aren’t smart enough to learn ukrainian?” I didn’t think it was necessary to add that, you know, we speak a different language in America. Then there was my other neighbor, who had knocked back a few or four, and was so excited to see my parents that he kissed my mother. I can only imagine how much she enjoyed it.

My mother, however, was the true champion of the trip. For all the family chatter about my outdoor toilet, my mother did not hesitate to give the ol’ fortress of solitude a whirl. Sure, she used my neighbor’s bathroom a few times. But her perseverance was remarkable, her lack of complaining heartwarming.

There is a Ukrainian word, Batkivshina, fatherland. On the one hand, it happens to be the name of the political party of Yulia Tymoshenko, the embattled and imprisoned former Prime Minister of Ukraine. But it also expresses a specific emotion, a certain yearning, a connection to our ancestors and our past and our families.

I hadn’t seen my parents in some time. And our roles were most certainly reversed. I was the parent, the one communicating with the world at large, the one leading the way, the one with an idea of how the world worked. But the most amazing part of our trip was how nothing had really changed at all.

David ben Gurion one said that we can change anything in this world. We can change our name, we can change our country, we can change our religion. But we can never change who our parents are. I couldn’t be happier I’ll never have to change mine.

Hi all,

Here is a hastily put together video to get my friend Josh to stop pestering me for more video. As you can see, I am daily tempted by the awe-inspiring beauty of the women of this country.

A post should follow later in the week about my parents visit...

Its probably safe to say that Ben is my oldest friend. I’ve known him as long as I’ve been able to hold down memories, and there are photographs to prove we were bonding long before then. In the 24 or so years of our relationship, we’ve managed to have together a plethora of near-death experiences. We got mugged in New York city, almost drowned in a lake, and crashed a car.

I met Jeff in Kindergarten. My first strong memory of Jeff is pretty well documented. We were having some sort of ceremony at school, and Jeff’s mother Debbie approached me. Jeff was apparently bawling, because the Gods for some reason had placed him to sit in between two girls. So I graciously sat next to him, to save him from this daunting wave of x chromosomes.

I must have met Eric sometime around Kindergarten also, although we met through the local synagogue, not through school. Our parents used to drag us both to synagogue on saturday mornings (my father was the rabbi, so it was likely an occupational hazard) and Eric and I would spend our time pretending we could pick the locks of various doors using only the bobby pins meant to fasten our yarmulkes to our heads. We never succeeded.

It wasn’t until high school that the four of us began hanging out regularly, and perhaps it was some time later when we really began to gel as a group. But they are my oldest friends, and know me better than anybody. As soon as I knew I’d be spending 2 plus years in Ukraine, I immediately began my fineigling to convince them a trip was necessary. On July 1, 2011, they arrived.

My time here has both gone incredibly slowly and at the speed of light. When I think of the pace of some of the days, they creep by at a snail’s pace. But the memories of my last moments are vividly clear, that hanging over a cliff feeling, not knowing the depth of the fall.

How have I changed? I’ve always believed its impossible to tell how a certain situation or event has changed you until its completion. The person I am becoming will only be clear once I have returned to life in the States. But for the amazing ten days I spent with my friends, I was afforded a lens of sorts with which to view my “new” self.

All in all, I had a great week with the boys. We spent some time in Kiev, celebrated the 4th of July with other Peace Corps volunteers, and hung out in the village. But as much fun as I had, and as happy as I was to be with them, I was surprised at how hard it was for me to adjust to them being around.

I remember there once being a culture shock for me in Ukraine, but that moment has long passed. So for me, when an outlet doesn’t work or I end up not sleeping and eating bread and cheese for three days, I just chock it up to a part of the experience. And as a part of my desire to be a Sprazhni Ukrayinski Muzhik, a real Ukrainian man, I try not to let anything bother me, to roll with the punches. This is probably one of the best changes that has occurred to me so far, my ability to accept things more for how they are. Sometimes I forget how different that is than the person I used to be.

Jeff had some sort of allergy to my house. And for some reason, I had trouble being sensitive to this issue. Ben hurt his toe, and was reluctant to accept the advice of local doctors. I was unable to realize that if I was in a foreign country and didn’t speak the language, I’d be skeptical of some topless dude who took a break from working on his farm to peak at my foot. Eric wanted to stay in a nicer Hotel in Kiev. For me, any place with running water is such a huge step up, I fail to realize that different people have different standards. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy getting to know the people here, investing myself in their successes and failures, trying to understand where they are coming from, who they are, what they want. Somewhere along the way, did I forget how to empathize with those who are closest to me?

I’m more Jewish than I used to be. This may be hard for some people to understand, and its definitely hard to describe. But there have been two main changes in my Jewish observance that are somewhat significant. The first is that I pray and wear Tefillin (or Jewish phylacteries every single day. While my friends were certainly shocked by this development, they were supportive to varying degrees. The second, and more problematic one, is that I am now shomer shabbat, or at least in the process. This means that on Friday nights and Saturdays, on the Jewish Sabbath, I do not use electricity, I do not travel in cars, and I attempt to take a meaningful break from the rest of my week. While this was problematic during my friend’s time here, they were incredibly respectful and caring to my new desires. I know it wasn’t necessarily easy for them, and they certainly don’t agree with my choices. But they are my best friends, and so they accept me and love me for who I am.

The boys happened to be in the village during the holiday of Ivana Kupala, which is a mixture of an old Pagan holiday mixed with the Christian worship of the apostle John. Basically, it involves people dressing up in traditional Ukrainian clothes, putting on various skits and contests, and jumping over a fire. While at the celebration, Natasha, who was the woman running the event and is also the head of the local house of culture (not to mention the mother of one of my students), called me up to participate in an event. The village’s response was uproarious; pretty much any time I do something that is considered very “Ukrainian,” the village thinks its absolutely hilarious. I also was wearing my traditional Ukrainian shirt, which likely increased the hilarity. After I participated in the contest, Natasha insisted my friends participate as well. And thus Jeff was forced to pull toothpicks out of an apple with his teeth and Ben braided a random girl’s hair. Probably the funniest moment of the whole trip was Ben looking at me, a girls locks in his hand, and asking me, “What do I do? Make a challah?” And make a challah he did.

It was nice to expose them to this aspect of traditional Ukrainian culture, to show them the country that has become my new home. And they lived in my house and helped me do laundry and peeled potatoes and went to the well and worked in the fields. It was definitely really hard for them at certain points, hard in ways that used to be impossible for me but have since become a part of my daily routine (pooping is definitely high on that list.) But to their credit, they really did try very hard to enjoy themselves. Because they are my best friends, and they love me, and thats what best friends do.

On our last night in my village, we cooked a big dinner. Two of my Peace Corps friends, Avital and Paula, were there as well. As part of a long, extended toast, my friends went through the various stages of my life. First there was fat Jeremy, who was loud and annoying and a show off. Then there was Frat-tastic Jeremy, who was a super “bro.” And now, to misquote Jeff, there is “preachy” Jeremy. I thought the word sounded harsh, as well, but, Jeff swears, he meant it as a compliment.

Preachy? Perhaps thats not a bad way to describe it. I’ve been described to a whole different way of life here, and I love it. Its as if through the land and the people and my tefillin I’ve discovered some sort of individual truth I’d like to share with the world. And I have trouble describing it and I don’t know what it means because I’m still in the thick of it and what I really need is to be on the outside looking in. But Jeff and Eric and Ben, they can still see me, they still understand and will always understand who I am and what I’m about, even when I can’t see myself. Because they are and always will be my best friends, and thats just one of the things best friends are able to do.

I just got back from an amazing trip in Russia. Moscow is a phenomenal international city, and St. Petersburg is stunningly beautiful. I was also fortunate enough to be there during white nights, when, due to the summer months, the sun sets at 1130 and there is light until 2-3 am. Two small thoughts about my trip:

1) I visited Lenin's grave. He has been preserved through some sort of embalming process, and is on display in the creepiest room I have ever seen in my life. You stand on line for an hour, then you are ushered into this small, dark room where only his tiny, shriveled body is lit up. It was the first time in my life I truly realized how much Communism was a religion as well as a political and social ideology.

2) Be careful booking hostels via hostel world. Below is the review I posted for my hostel Crazy Duck, in St. petersburg. As a note, 3 am is not late in St. petes----

My friends and I rented a private four person room here. One night we got back at around 3 am when we ran into some guys from New Zealand. My friend Tom went back out with them, as he knew of some cool clubs. At about 8 am, I hear the door open. The next thing I know, some dude is PEEING ON TOM's BED. I smack him across the face, and, thinking it is Tom, scream "TOM. NO. BATHROOM." As he drunkenly stumbles out of the room, when my friend Kevin says "dude, that wasn't Tom." Tom soon returns and we scream "DONT GET IN YOUR BED!!!!!" When we went downstairs to tell reception about our new air freshener, they were a little accusative. Why didn't you lock your door? Well, we didn't think someone would confuse it for the toilet! Best Hostel Ever!

Step 1: Go to college. Lose yourself. Become convinced you need to do something outlandish in order to get rid of your upper white middle class Jewish guilt. Go out with friends one night senior year and announce you are joining the Peace Corps. Start the application later that week just to prove wrong the doubts milling in your head. Wait one year. Receive your invitation to go to Ukraine.Sep 2: Arrive in Ukraine. Experience culture shock, followed by immense guilt that you chickened out and didn’t go to Africa and get attacked by mosquitoes every night. Express your desire to the Peace Corps personnel to go to the smallest, most remote place they can find. Step 3: Begin life in your small Ukrainian village. Realize you have no idea what you are doing. Wake up at 6 with the roosters. Go to the well for water. Head over to school during the summer holiday lull and realize you have nothing to do. Play with small children, because they find you of interest. Teach how to throw a baseball. Build a seat for your toilet. Memorize a poem or two by Taras Shevchenko, the Ukrainian National Poet. Step 4: Take baby steps. Give English lessons. Have absolutely no idea what you are doing. Learn rules of English Grammar. Refuse to accept monetary payment, taking potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, and various basked goods in their stead. Teach Vannya the guitar. Clean up the trash that litters the side of the road, first alone, then with previously stated small children in tow. Step 5: Help with the fall harvest. Dig, Collect, Sort. Potatoes, Beets, Hay. Chop Wood. Learn how to seal tomatoes for the winter. Run the soil through your toes. Cut grass using a scythe. Try to gain a sense of what your urbanized ancestors lost some years ago. Take a bucket bath. Step 6: Invent a project idea out of thin air. Write a grant. Buy some wood. Learn to hammer, nail, measure, cut, sand, paint. Build some trash cans. Tell your English students that in exchange for lessons, they have to help collect the trash. Try to create something sustainable. Fail, try, try again. Step 7: Notice the cold is beginning to set in. Seal up broken windows. Become sad when days end at 3 or 4 o’clock. Continue giving English lessons until 8 in the evening, for lack of a better idea of what to do with your time. Question your purpose. Have Vannya come ask if he can begin giving guitar lessons to others. Teach some English songs for a big concert. Go Sledding. Go Ice Fishing. Watch your clothes freeze on the line. Have the days begin to get longer. Regain momentum. Start anew. Step 8: Hear an idea for a new business, to sell produce over the internet to people in Kiev. Decide its time to become a music producer, and start recording an album, the children as the stars. Be approached about an ecological project. Write a grant. Begin to earn trust of people who never trust, speak a language beyond verbs and nouns and conjugations. Push ideas to completion, even when they tell you they cant, even when you tell you you cant. Step 9: Ask your neighbor for a plot of land. Have neighborhood kids, the ones who clean up trash and learn english and rock out on the guitar, help you dig holes and plant seeds and water tomatoes. Learn how to hoe, the difference between a weed and a cucumber. Identify Potatoes, Beets, Watermelon, Onion, Garlic, Peas, Peppers, and everything in between. Wake up extra early every day, just to see the progress your plants are making. Pray for Rain, but not too much. Step 10: Wake up with the sunrise and go to the well. Feed the dog. Cook some Borscht. Teach English. Record Vannya’s new song. Write a business plan and translate it into Ukrainian. Build a Bench. Learn something. Head for your garden, your land. Hoe some weeds. Feel the sun on your chest and the earth under your feet. Stand and admire. Realize you have returned to something, the joy in planting a tiny seed in the ground and watching it grow to something huge and wonderful and hopefully delicious. Be proud. Forget about Africa, and about guilt, and about the myriad of your villages problem. Work the land, work on yourself. Learn Something. Step 11: Repeat, if necessary. I guess that’s why Peace Corps is two years.

School’s out for summer.

Its hard to believe I’ve been here a year already. While the days have occasionally gone by in an arcanely slow motion, the year has positively flown. It’s difficult to fathom that I am half way through my service, and I am forced to wonder: what, if anything, have I really done?

One of my favorite parts about Ukraine is its reverence for tradition. At every Ukrainian School, on the first of September, a ceremony known as first bell is held. The new first graders are marched in on the hands of the new 11th graders (Ukrainian schools have no 12th grade of high school), ushering in the year to come. Today we experienced the last bell, with the eleventh graders completing their final day in the institution that they have been attending for the majority of their lives.

Probably the most jarring aspect of the first and last bell ceremonies is the outfits that the girls are required to wear. They are a uniform somewhere between a catholic school girl and a french maid. From 1st grade to seventeen year-olds, all the girls are clad in too-short skirts and white ribbons in their hair.

But, the truth is, after a year at school, I’m not shocked by much of anything any more, let alone the dress. Somewhere around the 4th grade, all girls decide, with the aid of their mothers, that it is their job to wear to school as scandalous clothing as possible. Of course this is not a rule across the board, but the vast majority of middle school girls and above wear skirts that I will one day refuse to let my daughter wear outside of the house. As long as the appropriate regions are at least mostly covered, any outfit seems to be kosher.

After the last bell, the teachers all got together in the lunch room for a meal, which is code for getting absolutely wasted. The school’s director, the town mayor, and the local doctor were all there. When I refused to take shots of vodka with them at 11 in the morning, all three questioned my manhood. When I told them I had work later, they laughed at me. Cancel your english lessons. Forget about your work. Its time to drink!!!

Vassil Ivanovich, the school’s physics teacher, and I were the only ones not to really partake in the revelry. We had a grant application to fill out, and then I had english lessons to give, and really, all in all, there was work to be done.

As long as I have already lived here, there are still cultural elements I find it hard to grasp. If a teacher in my school growing up had ever been caught drinking while supposedly “on the job,” they would have been immediately fired. Here, it is those who don’t drink who are excluded from the group. But, again, the shock is gone. I knew there would be drinking at school today. And so I made sure to have pre-scheduled work on the horizon, because I just dont feel like drinking at 11 am.

The worst part is, I had really hoped that more of the teachers would be excited about some of our projects. One project idea is to create a web site, to sell our farm produce over the internet to consumers in Kiev. Another involves the creation of an ecological classroom, where out students would learn about the functions of different plants and their possible healing effects. And yet a third is our ongoing trek to create a music album.

While the teachers are often “supportive” of my project ideas, only a small handful (Vassil Ivanovich, his wife Olha the Ukrainian teacher, my school’s Director Mikolya Petrovich, his wife Tamila who is my Peace Corps Counterpart) continuously put in any real effort to help. Even if they really see the benefits of a project, they are reluctant to do much more than the bare minimum.

And thats why too many of my projects fail, too many of my dreams just fail to get off the ground. Because as confident as I can sometimes seem, I just can’t do it alone.

Don’t take this the entry the wrong way. I have no regrets. And I am happy. I just wish I could do more, I wish I could transform this place into something wonderful. Do I put smiles on the faces of children? Yes. Do I teach English? Yes. Will some of my students be better off for having known me? Probably. But the village is still the village, and will still be the village in five years time. I wanted to be, in the words of our President, the change that I believe in. I haven’t come close.

My biggest shock since coming to Ukraine? The mountain which I must conquer in order to tinker with even the most minute of problems. School is out, one year has passed, and I am much the wiser. But is anything different?

Maybe I am reaching to high. Or maybe I am not trying hard enough. Or maybe as time goes on, things will improve, they will get easier. Momentum will begin to flow and suddenly we’ll be on the path to a new promise. I hope this happens. But I don’t know.

At the least, however, I can surely say I am happy. Life is good, although stress is abound. I am busy, busy trying, busy failing. The sun is shining, the grass is green, and there is work to be done. What else does one truly need?

I’m long overdue on blog entries----I’ve got lots to say about my post-Soviet Passovers and the Peace Corps freedom seder, and I’ve had some really extraordinary experiences cultivating the small plot of land my neighbors have given me to plant. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention something about Bubbe, who died early Tuesday morning.

Bubbe, Yiddish for grandmother, closely tied linguistically to the Ukranian Babusia, was not my relative. Frankly, I don’t know how to describe my relationship with her, if the sum of our interactions even constituted a loose definition of that term. Bubbe was my friend Jeff’s grandmother, and she was tough as nails.

I don’t know how old Bubbe was, or where she was born. I’ve got bits and pieces of her biography scattered throughout various stories I’ve heard over the years. Her legal name was Tilly Gittelman, but even though she was not my grandmother, I always called her bubbe.

Jeff lived about five minutes away growing up, and we spent a lot of time together. Sometimes too much time together. We rode our bikes around town, we played basketball in the park, we meandered around the local mall for hours. And every time, there was bubbe, warning us to take a helmet, or a cell phone, or a full body styrofoam suit incase we fell.

Bubbe never went to a doctor. Not in years, at least. But she must have been pushing ninety when she died, proving most anti-aging techniques tenuous at best. Bubbe simply had this unbelievable will to live, a refusal to get sick, a refusal to die. For a woman who couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds, she had a mental strength that I’ve rarely seen.

Everyone will likely always remember where they were on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was in Jeff’s living room, scared shitless, waiting, because Debbie, Jeff’s mom, Bubbe’s daughter, hadn’t yet returned home from her office on the 64th Floor. She never did.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully verbalize what happened in those few months. But I do know that somewhere, somehow, Bubbe, and her husband Ralph (or in the Yiddish Zayde) decided they were going to stay alive to help raise all the kids. Jeff was 14, and he had siblings as young as 9.

Here we are, almost ten years later, and they did it. They woke up early every morning and firmly planted themselves within the confines of Jeff’s house at 19 Clarkson Court, making lunches, running errands, dropping off at after school programs. They gave up everything, and they got even more in return.

At the time, they were occasional complaints. Her chicken often needed salt, and the nagging could be a bit much. But I can guarantee that ten, twenty, fifty years from now, Jeff and his siblings will remember they had a Bubbe who loved them, and who showed it, in her own tough, stubborn way.

Sometimes I am walking around in my village, and I see a woman with a hunched over back and little hair and bad eyes. And they are lugging a bucket of water or a pile of hay or occasionally a live chicken. I always offer to help (well, sometimes not with the chickens) and they almost always refuse. They’ve been doing this for some time now, they tell me, and they can take it a little bit farther. This is the picture of the Ukrainian Babusia, never quitting, strong of spirit, an unspoken power. They go to the well every day because that is was Babusias do.

Bubbe raised children for 60 odd years, first her own, and then her children’s children. She cooked and cleaned and nagged and helped and taught and warned and loved. And when people told her to stop she kept going, because that was just what Bubbe’s do.

I’m long overdue on blog entries----I’ve got lots to say about my post-Soviet Passovers and the Peace Corps freedom seder, and I’ve had some really extraordinary experiences cultivating the small plot of land my neighbors have given me to plant. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention something about Bubbe, who died early Tuesday morning.

Bubbe, Yiddish for grandmother, closely tied linguistically to the Ukranian Babusia, was not my relative. Frankly, I don’t know how to describe my relationship with her, if the sum of our interactions even constituted a loose definition of that term. Bubbe was my friend Jeff’s grandmother, and she was tough as nails.

I don’t know how old Bubbe was, or where she was born. I’ve got bits and pieces of her biography scattered throughout various stories I’ve heard over the years. Her legal name was Tilly Gittelman, but even though she was not my grandmother, I always called her bubbe.

Jeff lived about five minutes away growing up, and we spent a lot of time together. Sometimes too much time together. We rode our bikes around town, we played basketball in the park, we meandered around the local mall for hours. And every time, there was bubbe, warning us to take a helmet, or a cell phone, or a full body styrofoam suit incase we fell.

Bubbe never went to a doctor. Not in years, at least. But she must have been pushing ninety when she died, proving most anti-aging techniques tenuous at best. Bubbe simply had this unbelievable will to live, a refusal to get sick, a refusal to die. For a woman who couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds, she had a mental strength that I’ve rarely seen.

Everyone will likely always remember where they were on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was in Jeff’s living room, scared shitless, waiting, because Debbie, Jeff’s mom, Bubbe’s daughter, hadn’t yet returned home from her office on the 64th Floor. She never did.

I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully verbalize what happened in those few months. But I do know that somewhere, somehow, Bubbe, and her husband Ralph (or in the Yiddish Zayde) decided they were going to stay alive to help raise all the kids. Jeff was 14, and he had siblings as young as 9.

Here we are, almost ten years later, and they did it. They woke up early every morning and firmly planted themselves within the confines of Jeff’s house at 19 Clarkson Court, making lunches, running errands, dropping off at after school programs. They gave up everything, and they got even more in return.

At the time, they were occasional complaints. Her chicken often needed salt, and the nagging could be a bit much. But I can guarantee that ten, twenty, fifty years from now, Jeff and his siblings will remember they had a Bubbe who loved them, and who showed it, in her own tough, stubborn way.

Sometimes I am walking around in my village, and I see a woman with a hunched over back and little hair and bad eyes. And they are lugging a bucket of water or a pile of hay or occasionally a live chicken. I always offer to help (well, sometimes not with the chickens) and they almost always refuse. They’ve been doing this for some time now, they tell me, and they can take it a little bit farther. This is the picture of the Ukrainian Babusia, never quitting, strong of spirit, an unspoken power. They go to the well every day because that is was Babusias do.

Bubbe raised children for 60 odd years, first her own, and then her children’s children. She cooked and cleaned and nagged and helped and taught and warned and loved. And when people told her to stop she kept going, because that was just what Bubbe’s do.

This is in response to a prompt for a Peace Corps Ukraine Essay contest, "What does Peace Corps Service mean to me?" Here is my half-witted response:

Somedays I wake up in the middle of the night, and I’ve finally got it. That one magic idea that will transform my small village, the magic pill that, if I just get them to swallow it, will cure all of our problems. I am too excited to reenter my sleeping state.

And other days I hear my alarm beep and fail to move. Its cold and dark outside of the covers. My self-described brilliant idea has been shrugged off once again, a pill not just to hard to swallow but one that they won’t even send to trial. Outside my covers await another day of little progress.

But most days I wake up even before my 6am alarm, because the roosters next door are crowing and then the dogs start barking and then the tractors start moving. The sounds of a country morning is an obstacle that I have yet to overcome. I sometimes find myself yearning for that urban clatter of my beloved New York, taxis raging and pedestrians bustling and the subway rattling beneath many stories that aren’t my own.

Every day I wake up, though, every day I head to school and I teach some English and show a few students a new chord on the guitar. And I’ll be in the middle of a breakthrough, explaining the difference between “the” and “an/a” to a twelve year old, when my director will barge in to my office, telling me to take a break so we can sip on some chai.

As we sit there drinking our very Ukrainian tea, I tell him of my new plan, to build a recycling factory or sell our produce over the internet or run a feminism camp or produce our own music album or start a school newspaper. He always supports me, but I’ve begun to think he finds my idealism, this American “can-do” attitude, a bit amusing.

And I’ll stop in one of the two local stores on my way home, and the local prodavetz will ask me about my day. I always produce a huge smile and force out a “fantastichno,” and she’ll laugh heartily in return.

The walk back home is long, only one long street crowded with the same faces. There is Slavik, 13 years old, whose parents don’t much care for his whereabouts, and he, in turn, doesn’t care much either. There is Nazar, just barely four, who always seems to find himself eating something he picked off the ground, which have ranged from a piece of an old tire to a small pick axe. No one is around to tell him how hard it all is to digest.

I walk farther to find Sergei, a 22 year old who lost his two front teeth in a battle with the street, collapsing after a day-long drinking session. He has no job, save the bottle. Just past him is Baba Natasha, lamenting the village’s downfall. I go a little farther to see Sashko, in the eleventh grade, smoking his 5th cigarette of the day.

And just when the road seems endless, I come to Yanna, beautiful, precocious, seven year old Yanna. She’s just beginning to string letters together into words. “Dog,” she says, as a local canine attacks my leg. “Snow,” she said in the winter, “Sun” now that it has begun to get warm. “How are you,” I ask her, “I am good, thank you” is her reply. “Koly mi yidem do New Yorka,” she asks, when are we going to New York. “Zavtra,” I tell her, tomorrow, always tomorrow, always the day after.

Tomorrow will surely arrive, and I’ll wake up in the very same country in the very same village in the very same bed with the very same thoughts and ideas I had the day before. Hopes of miracles begin to vanish, dreams of grandeur dissipate with the morning fog. Slavik will still kick the stones and Sergei will fail to kick the bottle, and my director will still smile at my newly concocted plan.

So we all wake up just the same, except maybe, just maybe, Yanna wakes up a bit different. Another word learned, another letter’s sound mastered. And in 20 thousand tomorrows, maybe she will come to New York, and she’ll point to the dogs and the snow and the sun, and she’ll grab my hand and look in my eyes and say, in perfect english, “we are good, Jeremy. Thank you.”

I first met Stephanie in that mecca of American Jewish geography that is the string of American-targeted bars lining downtown Jerusalem. I was sitting with a beer, talking with my sister, Abby, and my friend and fellow PCV, Stephanie Somerman. I noticed at an outdoor table not far away a girl whom I recognized from college, Laura. After a couple of awkward “hey, we weren’t really friends in college but we ran in the same crowds and now we’re in the middle of Jerusalem so maybe we should say something” glances, I walked over to say hi.

It turns out Laura was working for the American Joint Distribution Committee as a Jewish Service Corps Volunteer. The JDC is an organization that supports Jewish communities around the globe, not to mention other worldwide humanitarian efforts. Laura was serving her one year term in Jerusalem, but other volunteers were serving around the world. Including, as it turned out, in Kiev, Ukraine. For sure I’ll put you in touch with them, she said.

Five minutes later, she reappeared, Kiev-based volunteer in tow. Stephanie, meet Jeremy. Jeremy, meet Stephanie.

I was ecstatic. I had also been drinking (it was my vacation!) She told me that she lived in Kiev with her husband, Arieh. She also told me that she had running hot water and that she had yet to poop in a hole. We are living in two different countries, I thought.

I told her I would be in Kiev in about a week, that I landed late on a Thursday night. She insisted I spent the Shabbos, the Jewish Sabbath, with her and Arieh. I gave her my phone number in Ukraine. Lo and behold, she called.

Coming back from Israel was a tough moment for me. As I was sitting on the tarmac, I couldn’t help but think to myself: Damn. Its not that I don’t enjoy my time in Ukraine. Its that in Israel I was one among many. In Ukraine, I am one and one alone.

Its hard to explain the chemistry the three of us had when we sat down in a room together that first time. I think, perhaps, it was a reminder of how much we really missed our homes. Because for the first time in a long time we were around people who were alot like us, someone who was normal and cool and english-speaking but also able to make a reference to a deceased famous Rabbi that the others present found hilarious.

I returned to their place a few weeks later, this time with my friend Avital. I’ve known Avital probably 15 years, but we didn’t have our first conversation (that I remember) until perhaps 7 or 8 months ago. She sent me a facebook message, telling me she had just gotten accepted to the Peace Corps and was headed to Ukraine. I told her that it was the best decision she would ever make. You’d have to call her to check the veracity of the statement.

Avital and I were both a little Jew-starved. Avital lives in a big city with a huge Jewish community, but it just wasn’t the same as back home. I live in a small village, and I am Jewless.

Friday night, we headed to the house of Raphael and Devorah Rutman, a British-American-Chabad couple who live in Kiev. Their apartment is absolutely stunning; I felt as if I had momentarily left Ukraine and stepped into Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The spread was possibly more stunning. The next five hours I was imbued with course after course, stuffed to my hearts content. The Rutman’s and their guests were a bit intrigued by me, by my story. Not a lot of nice Jewish Rabbis sons from New Jersey have ended up in small Ukrainian villages, I suppose. So we talked about toilets and we talked about Torah and we talked about what it means to be a Jew. And as I was talking, I felt at home.

The next day, as the Sabbath was reaching its close, Avital, Stephanie, Arieh and I were just sitting around their kitchen table, relaxing, waiting, talking. We could have been anywhere in the world. We were in Ukraine, of course. But we could have been anywhere.

Stephanie is 22, and Arieh is 24. I haven’t spent time around a lot of married couples my age. Thats probably because most of my friends aren’t married. But if their marriage is any indication of what its like to be young and wed, then just tell me where to sign on. They are so in love, that sometimes the unintentional mushiness has to be broken with an awkward joke. There are moments when they remind me of my parents---her criticism, his ignorance---that are exactly the sort of moments you wish you could freeze frame, to remember why you fell in love in the first place.

Avital and I returned soon afterwards. As I was packing my bag the night before, Stephanie sent me a very important text message: “BRING LAUNDRY.” By this point, we had almost developed a routine. I would arrive at their place and set aside my dirty clothes, which Stephanie and Arieh would at some point lovingly launder. I would then step into the shower and remove the mildew that had been growing for the past few weeks. They didn’t make me feel like I was intruding. They didn’t make me feel like I didn’t belong. Quite the opposite, in fact. Make yourself at home, Mi Casa Es Su Casa, Moya Xata Tboya Xata. Habayit Sheli zeh habayit shelcha.

Avital and I had returned for the Jewish holiday of Purim. The Rutmans’ were having their annual party, which takes place at the Kiev Hyatt, George Dubbya’s hotel of choice. The four of us dressed up as dominos, where all black with white circles denoting our respective numbers. It really wasn’t that funny. But we thought it was hilarious.

Theres a problem, though. Because now I’ve developed this crutch to my Peace Corps experience, this small little enclave that although obviously not quite the same feel disturbingly close to the home I always knew. Arieh and Stephanie simply understand me, they understand where I come from. And, after a visit to my village where they used the outhouse and milked a cow, they understand a bit of what I’m going through. Yet every time I go to their place, I’m already planning the next time I can come back. Its bad, in some ways. I really want to devote as much of myself to my site as I possibly can. But sometimes, my head isn’t wholly there.

This past weekend, my cousin, Sam Tallman, came to visit for a weekend as a respite from his current journey in Prague studying abroad. I was going to get a hostel, but Stephanie and Arieh were aghast. No hostel. No way. Your staying with us.

Sam and I had the best time. We went to Babi Yar, the site of the mass execution of Kiev’s Jews, and we went to the World War II museum, which was an architectural site to see. We went to the Pecherska Lavra, where monks lay entombed underground, and we went to Independence Square, where Ukrainians stood draped in Orange just a few short years ago. We also had a Friday night dinner at Arieh and Stephanie’s, and stopped by the Rutmans’ for dessert on Saturday. In true style, Raphael Rutman asked Sam what he was doing for the Jewish students in Prague. After an interesting back and forth, Sam ended up bringing back a huge box of Shmura (hand made) Matzah to celebrate the Passover feast.

I came back to my site on Sunday, and I got straight to work. I’ve got about five projects in the works right now. I also have to move, because my landlord is coming back. Time to breathe is scarce. But I’ve been strangely productive this week, imbued with this injection of energy that I can’t exactly describe. I know where it came from.

Because I know I’ll return for the Passover feast and I’ll yet again feel that energy and vibe and homeliness. I’ll take a shower and do my laundry and eat some Matzah and talk about famous dead Rabbis. And then I’ll come back to the village and repeat the whole cycle again. When all the village offers is more work on the horizon, when the breadth of my task seems to daunting, its nice to have a bit of an escape, a dose of home. And I just want to thank Stephanie and Arieh for allowing me to be a part of theirs.

Jewish tradition mandates that when a man and a woman marry, they must sign a contract, known as a Ketubah, dictating the terms, both financial and otherwise, of their marriage. One of the older still-practiced Jewish traditions, archaeological digs have discovered such contracts dating back nearly three thousand years. And so it was with grandparents and their parents before them. So when my father and mother decided to tie the knot, it was, of course, a logical part of the process.

But my mother had some issues. A graduate of Barnard College in 1970, she was the first Barnard woman on the Columbia Alumni Relations board. She was a true 70s feminist, interning for Bella Abzug during college, breaking her own glass ceilings, cementing her place as a woman in a largely male professional world. The traditional Ketubah often contained passages about a woman’s duty to serve her husband. Such talk didn’t fly with Ann Appelbaum (who has kept her name to this day). So she broke out her legal mind and talked to some Rabbis and wrote her own contract, dictating the terms of a marriage where they would serve and love each other, as equals.

Growing up, I was partially sheltered to the struggles of women in the world, largely due to the fact that I grew up with a mother who knew no fear. She claimed women could do it all, and to me, it seemed she did. She was a successful university lawyer, served on the Board of Trustees of my various schools, and managed to cook dinner most nights. It wasn’t until later in life that I realized what she probably gave up, the baseball games she wish she could have attended, the career advancement that probably passed her by. She made her choice, sure, but it was still a choice, and choices have their consequences, good or bad.

In Ukraine, women do not seem to envision these choices. When dealing with some of my more precocious and ambitious female students, I try to regale them with anecdotes about my mother. How she is a lawyer, how she didn’t marry until after 30, how she kept her name and how she is respected for her intellect. And my students listen, and they register their shock, but I have some trouble getting the message through that they, too have choices. That they don’t have to be married by 25 and they don’t have to be subservient to a man. I usually find myself a persuasive man. But its hard to convince someone of something that, for you, is such a self-evident truth.

Am I a feminist? Its a question I’ve asked myself a lot in recent years, especially since college. Because I believe in equality and pay equity and I recognize serious gender issues in the workplace. I am distraught by cases of sexual abuse and I am concerned that much of the advances my mother fought for have stagnated. And yet, whenever in college I found myself in discussions with self-described feminists, I often found myself at ideological odds. We just always seemed to place the emphasis on different issues. And so when I’d argue with these strong willed women, they’d simply tell me I didn’t understand. I could never understand. I am a man, and I will never know what it is like to walk a day in a woman’s shoes

I think about this alot here. I want to teach these girls to stand up for themselves, to have options, to be individuals. So I tell them not to get married too young and I tell them to dream big, but it seems sort of silly, like I am giving pigeonholed advice for a pandemic problem. I simply find myself unable to teach them how to be a feminist. And perhaps, its because I’m not.

I’ve always believed complete empathy is impossible. I’ll never be able to fully comprehend the plight of African Americans or Hispanics or Native Americans. And no one can ever explain what the Holocaust means to me. And I can believe in equality and I can preach about women’s issues, but I am not a woman, and I will sort of always feel like an outsider looking in.

There is this movement that began 160 odd years ago in Seneca Falls, or perhaps, one could argue, long before that. As much as I try to be a part of it, I just struggle to feel like a feminist. And maybe its a linguistic issue and maybe its a movement issue and most likely its largely a personal issue. But I sometimes think that I’m probably not the only guy like me, someone who is told I’ll never understand, rather than have his concerns entered into the equation.

Women’s day is fast approaching in Ukraine, and I have been thinking for some time how I could do my part, how I could try and instill a bit of the gender ideology I have always held into these girls who have grown up a world apart.

I want to teach these girls what being a modern woman means. And I read the steps men can take to promote women’s issues, and some of them resonated, but as much as I tell these boys to respect women, its not the half the lesson that is taught by a women who demands respect. Thats the feminism I learned, and no one seems to be able to tell me how to teach it.

So for women’s day this year, I am going to be baking cookies. My mom’s recipe. And I’m going to hand out the cookies around the school and regale the females around me with stories of my mother and Seneca Falls and Bella Abzug. And I’ll also be sure to tell them how much I enjoy baking these cookies, and how my sister, who probably orders take out multiple times every week, has a monthly salary that makes mine seem like it has the decimal point in the wrong place. I’ll tell them I come from a place where our choices, not our genders, define our roles. And I’ll tell them they can do anything, if they just believe.

I doubt that I’ll drastically alter the landscape, but Rome was not built in a day. One university degree earned, one marriage contract rewritten, one cookie at a time, one more step in a positive direction. I may not be a feminist in the traditional sense of the word. But I’m going to do the best I can, and hopefully that’s something.

(Author's note: This article was originally written before March 8, womens day. The day was a success, and no one died from the cookies, although I did singe my eyebrows. This article may also appear in some form in the GADFLY, Peace Corps Ukraine's Gender and Development Newsletter.)

my wonderful guitar students have made a video on how to play the guitar. check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ-i14qn3gI

In Ukrainian society, everyone has their day. The Soviet Union, as a part of their efforts to instill a collectivist mentality, mandated a holiday for all possible non-ethnic subgroups. There is a Victory Day, which seems appropriate enough, and an Army day, and a Women’s day, and two Men’s days, nothing all too out of the ordinary. But there is also a Teachers’ day, and a Volunteers day, and a Dentists’ day, and a Tourism day, and so on, and so on, and so on.

And just as every profession has its day, in a Ukranian School, everyone has their week. There is a math week and a physics week, a technology week and a Ukranian language week. I’ve been wanting to contribute for some time, so I thought to myself, why not have an English language week, as well?

While I first kicked the idea around with my fellow teachers last November, it was only at the beginning of February that I was informed that we would be having an English language week. And that it would start in just over two weeks. Nothing like have to get things moving on the fly.

Most of these weeks tend to be much of the same: a few contests, maybe a crossword puzzle, and a heavily scripted skit where a few students will memorize their lines and the rest will awkwardly read off of sheets of paper. I wanted to try something new---thats why I’m here, isn’t it? But new is always a struggle here, in a village where traditions are older than anyone can remember.

On Monday, I came into school a bit early, and wrote out on 8 1/2 by 11 pieces of paper simple English words with their Ukrainian translation. Dog. Sobaka. Cat. Kit. Door. Dveri. School. Shkola. 50 pages in tow, I headed to the first grade classroom. Placing the piles of paper in front of them, I asked them to draw the words in front of them. By the end of the day the halls were lined with illustrated vocabulary.

Additionally, I announced that for the entirety of the week, five items in the two village stores would be English-only. Pechivo would be cookies and tsukerki candy, buluchkas would be rolls and shokolad would be chocolate, students from ages 6-16 forced to say an english word, albeit a sugary one.

On Tuesday, we held an event we entitled “global tourist.” We assigned each grade from 8th to 11th an english speaking country. They had to research the country, make a presentation, and then ask the other grades questions about their presentation. It was, I feel safe to say, a resounding failure. Few students really learned any facts, most read awkwardly off of sheets of paper.

On Wednesday our week was interrupted by a Ukrainian holiday, roughly translated as “Defense of the Homeland Day,” although it is really some variation on a celebration of men. Women are supposed to buy men gifts and celebrate their contribution to Ukrainian society. The female teachers at our school decided to end school 40 minutes early and cooked a huge feast. The food was good, but they tried to mix it with a bit too much vodka for my taste. When I told them I could not drink, that I had lessons after school, they told me to cancel the lessons.

Thursday was the big day for the week. For the two weeks of preparation, Vitalina and I had been teaching every grade, 1st-11th, an English song. The songs varied from “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” for the first graders to “Yankee Doodle” for Sixth grade to a hodge-podge of music by The Beatles for 8th-11th. Two of my guitar students in the tenth form even learned how to play Let it be on the guitar. It all culminated in a huge school-wide concert, whose result was the polar opposite of the country reports. Most of the grades learned their songs quite well, the little kids were adorable, and smiles were visible all around. It felt pretty good.

It had been a tough few weeks for me at site, a lot of work to be done and seemingly little time to do it. Our business plan is in full throw and our school newspaper is a bit stagnant. Peace Corps always emphasizes that we need to create something sustainable. And while a new business and a newspaper and garbage cans might have some more permanent elements, knowing how to sing Yellow Submarine likely does not.

I think one of the lessons I’ve started to learn is that not everything I do has to be life altering, as hard as it can sometimes be to place my still vibrant youthful idealism on the back burner. A couple of village youth learning the words to The Beatles and the Alphabet Song and Jingle Bells won’t change the world. But the teachers have a day and the men have a day and the women have a day and the army has a day and tourism has a day. For me, that Thursday was a really great day, and that feels important, too.

Hey all,

I don't have a lot of time, but i wanted to give a quick update on my life. The wind blew the antenna for my internet off the roof, and the roof is covered in ice, so we'll have to wait for winter to end before i get a connection again.

As for me, life is good but hectic. I am currently writing a business plan, planning an english language week at school which consists of a school wide concert of english songs (guitar parts included), working on a school newspaper and preparing ecological grants for the spring. In addition I have my regular tutoring sessions and guitar lessons, as well as first and second grade english. Busy.

A few exciting moments. I spent this past weekend having an awesome shabbos in Kiev with two volunteers from the American Joint Distribution Community. The shabbos experience was amazing, as was the use of their laundry machine.

Also, last night my nieghbor's cow gave birth. Will send pictures ASAP.

And a special and hearty mazel tov to the Strassfeld clan on the birth of their new member, whose name I don't yet know.

more overly-deep and mildly cliched introspection to come soon

I’ve never been one who’s been all that sure of where he fits in. Going to a Conservative Jewish Day School the son of a Reform (liberal) Rabbi, my more traditionally observant friends used to tease me because my synagogue used an organ on the Sabbath, when the playing of music is forbidden according to Jewish law. To them I was always somewhat of an infidel, a yarmulke wearing impostor refusing to accept the validity of the laws as passed down from Sinai.

And yet, for the entirety of my adult life, I have been labeled quite the opposite, the token Jew, the Rabbi. My friends in University turned to me for their weekly (or monthly, or yearly, or sole) dose of Yiddishkeit. My friends in Poland turned to me to help confront the realities of that country’s anti-Semitic history. Here in the Peace Corps, in Ukraine, I am again in the shoes of this familiar role, the Rabbi and the token Jew. I am the example and the gatherer, the instiller of rites and the fighter of stereotypes. Yet still, I am unsure where I stand.

I am an American. I was born on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and could scarcely be more proud of it. I am the six year old who went on a trip to Washington, D.C. and decided to memorize all the Presidents by heart. I am the teenager who got emotional at witnessing the Capitol emerge from out over the hill and the 19 year old who got the jitters every time his intern ID badge let him straight into the 200 year old marble dome. I am the lost college senior who drove 12 hours through the night with his friends from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Washington D.C. to watch our nation’s first African American President get sworn into office. I am the Public Policy grad who was inspired by the new President’s call to service, who went online and started an application to the Peace Corps, unsure of where it might lead.

I am a Jew. I was circumcised on the morning of my eighth day and much of my fate has been sealed ever since. I am the 7 year old who visited Israel for the first time, who thought that everyone around was his brother. I am the 13 year old who was more nervous for my Bar Mitzvah than any other event in his life thus far. I am the 17 year old crying at the walls of the Kotel, newly emerged from ten days of Polish-Czech-Hungarian Holocaust immersion. I am the college student who every friday night showed up late to the party because he had to go to Shabbat dinner at Hillel. I am the college senior who cooked Shabbat dinners for 25 of his friends because he knew they wouldn’t attend one otherwise. I am the nervous young man setting foot in the Shtetl of Bransk, where his great-grandfather left 100 years before, saying the Mourner’s Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, in the actual graveyard of his actual ancestors.

And yet here I am in Ukraine, and every day more I spend here in my small village, every week that goes by where I don’t speak any english and don’t go to synagogue a part of me becomes a little more ingrained in this village life. I forget English words and use Ukrainian ones that just seem to fit the situation better. I recently had the pleasure of seeing my family in Jerusalem over the new year, and my sister was constantly chastising me for what she referred to as my “Ukrainian accent” while speaking English.

America is my birthplace, and there are certificates to document this fact. Israel is my homeland, as 14 years of Jewish education and almost a dozen trips to Israel have instilled. But Ukraine and Poland is where my great grandparents came from, where our traditions were borne and reared, where their identity was formed. Isn’t this place a part of me, as well?

Alot of people around here, when I meet them for the first time, ask me if my ancestors are Ukrainian. I’ve got a “Ukrainian” look, they tell me. I tell them, yes, my ancestors came from this part of the world. But more often than not I leave out the fact that these ancestors were my people, not theirs. These ancestors were Jews.

But then sometimes it becomes apparent that many of their ancestors where a lot like many of my ancestors, that maybe this sordid past isn’t so black and white. My director has often told me that many members of the community have some Jewish ancestry. As he put it, when you have people of different ethnicities living and mingling together, no amount of cultural differences or parental displeasure can overcome the solution to the equation of Boy meets Girl.

About a week ago I was sitting around the dinner table of the Technology and Physics teacher at my school. It was his birthday. Vassil Ivanovich has become, over time, one of my closer friends in the village. He is, as my Director so aptly put it, a “brilliant 43 year old with the smile of a 12 year old.” He cant take apart a computer with his eyes closed, and can fix almost anything. Yet he is constantly laughing at his own simple jokes, constantly viewing the world with a positive outlook. I once told him that he could charge 50 dollars and hour fixing computers in America. He told me it would be silly to charge when he could do the same work for free.

His wife, Olha Alexandrivna, is the Ukrainian language teacher at school, and also my language tutor. A small woman in size but large of heart, she is incredibly religious, and celebrates every holiday. I should note that there is a different Ukrainian holiday about every week, so finding anyone other than the local priest who goes through all the motions is quite the accomplishment.

Vassil and Olha have two children, Vannya and Marika. Vannya is my start guitar student, who has begun giving lessons himself. He dreams of being a programmer, and this week has gone to the oblast-wide competition to see how he fares against competition from larger cities and towns. Marika is in the fifth form and very bright, but sometimes has trouble pushing herself to study as much as she could. But she has a smile that could set sail a thousand ships, so for now we’ll let that suffice.

Rounding out the clan is Olha’s mother, which makes me even more in awe of Vassil. Any man who could live with his mother-in-law and stay married, let alone with a smile on his face, deserves a salute from us all.

Ukrainian birthdays are joyous events. They involve copious amounts of food and copious amounts of Vodka. At first it was difficult, because much of the food is meat, but by this point my vegetarian ways are well known in the village. (Author’s note: by this point, as the only American in a 600 person community, pretty much everything about me is well known in the village. Since my outhouse is in view of the street, it is both literally and figuratively news when I wipe my ass.)

On this particular birthday, Vassil Ivanovich pointed to the chicken on the table. “You can eat this. It is Kosher.” Vassil Ivanovich loves the fact that I am Jewish, and regularly plays “Hava Nagillah” and other Klezmer hits on his computer. His neighbor growing up was an old Jewish man, and his knowledge of Judaism, while not of an academic nature, is certainly more than any others in the community. So when he told me it was Kosher, I assumed it was just another of his jokes, his way of showing me that he understands where I am coming from. But then he told me he was serious. And then he told me why.

“Ask her what her grandmother’s last name was,” he said, pointing to his mother-in-law. “”Katz,” she replied, “She was a Jew.” And it was her grandmother who taught her the ritual way of slaughtering a chicken, and it was the way she taught her own daughter, and granddaughter as well. Here I am, in the middle of a Ukrainian village, and a Kosher Chicken is sitting on the table.

Which grandmother, I asked. My mother’s mother, she replied. It hit me like a truck. These children sitting before me, this guitar hero and princess with a knockout smile, were considered Jewish under Jewish law. Like their mother’s mother’s mother’s mother before them, they, too, were a part of the covenant.

I tried to explain this to them. The kids could go to Israel for free, for ten days. The son could go their to study. They could move to Israel and then go to America. They didn’t understand. This could change their lives.

But they didn’t honestly seem to care. Even Vannya, after talking to him privately, thought that the trip sounded cool, but “Ukraine is my home.” And the church is their church and their beliefs are their beliefs and no amount of fineigling by Talmudic scholars around the globe would likely convince these people otherwise.

And yet all they would have to do is prove that this maternal great-grandmother was a Katz, a member of the tribe, and the Orthodox Jews of Israel would open their arms wide and embrace these long lost witnesses of the revelation at Sinai. Meanwhile, my friends who have attended Jewish summer camp and youth grips and been active on their college campuses, well get those dirty mudbloods out of their house.

What part of who we are is choice? And what part of who we are is predetermined? What are the percentage breakdowns of my Americanness, my Jewishness, my universalness, my Shtetlness? Is there a place where I truly, wholeheartedly belong?

After returning from my trip to Israel, I showed some of the teachers at school the pictures from my trip. In most of them I was donning my yarmulke, my seperation between myself and God. Why, they asked, don’t you wear that in Boyarka? Why don’t you show us that here?

It was an unexpected question, and I began searching my still somewhat limited Ukrainian vocabulary for the answer. I didn’t want to always have to explain I am a Jew. I didn’t want people to see the article on my head and think, he can never be one of us. It was going to be difficult enough to fit in. Why make it even harder?

“I Zaraz, chomu ni?” And now, why not? I still don’t have an answer.

Fear, I suppose. Fear of anti-Semitism, sure, fear of putting myself out there. But there is also a fear of admitting to myself how important to me my Jewishness truly is. If I put on the Yarmulke here, it is likely I will never take it off. And that is saying a whole lot about a future life that for me still remains largely unclear.

How Jewish am I, really? How patriotic am I, really? How liberal, how conservative, how immature, how right, how wrong, how confused? People come to the Peace Corps to “find themselves.” I’m still looking.

Because everything I’ve found so far suggests that our identity doesn’t always give us a choice. We are White or Black, we are Gay or Straight, we are the child of a Jewish mother or we are not. And Vannya was born in Ukraine and I was born in America and Israel would let us both in, but for what, and why?

The truth is, I want to wear my kippah. I want to wear it all the time. And although I am a vegetarian, I sometimes want to eat meat. And I want to not use electricity on the Sabbath and I want to live in Jerusalem and sometimes I want to throw a black hat on my head and grow out my forelocks and spend the rest of my days in some Yeshiva basement filling my mind with millenia of knowledge.

But I don’t think all of that is me, it doesn’t fit with the identity I’ve always imagined. So Im either fighting for or against my natural inclinations, battling or forging a future me.

And maybe thats a part of the appeal to my time in the Ukraine. Here, in my village, I’ll never truly fit in. So perhaps it takes off a bit of the pressure of figuring out exactly who I want to be.

I WRITE this from a small village in central Ukraine, not unlike the one my great-grandfather left about 100 years ago in search of some far-off paradise called America.

News doesn’t travel too fast here. I only get two Russian TV channels, and I speak Ukrainian. My Internet only works when the wind isn’t blowing and precipitation isn’t falling, so the Ukrainian winter isn’t exactly the best time. So my friend Ben felt he had to call me to tell me about the events in Arizona on Jan. 8: a heroic and brave congresswoman, a crazed gunman and a bright-eyed 9-year-old girl who will never get the same chance I did to get inspired by the footsteps of her ancestors.

I grew up proud of my Jewish roots. But it was Washington, D.C., that was my city on a hill. I used to get emotional seeing the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, the Library of Congress. This was where the world was different, I felt. This is why I am here. This is where I belong.

And yet the more time I spent in D.C., the more I felt disillusioned by its self-promoting love affair. Every conversation I had with anyone I met in Washington quickly progressed to whom the person worked for and, even more important, what names were contacts in his or her phones and, later, Facebook friends. Washington was not a city where one made friends: It was a city where one built networks, created connections and brutally took down the opposition. It was a city at war.

Most of my politically active friends often debate in terms of winning or losing. How can we wedge this issue? How can we make the other side look like bigots or socialists? How can we demonize our enemies, who also happen to be our fellow Americans?

Rather than join the flock of my friends headed to the district, I decided to avoid that battlefield. I joined the Peace Corps and went to Ukraine to learn more about where my family came from and to serve America, my country, in as apolitical a way as I possibly could.

I used to dream of becoming a congressman; now, that dream is a nightmare. Not because of the shooting — if anything, the events of Tucson have reignited a passion to be the first to stand up in the line of hate’s fire. Rather, it is because too many of our members of Congress today are fighting a fight in which I don’t care to take part.

In the aftermath of the events in Tucson, Democrats will blame Republicans for loose gun laws and inciting violence, and Republicans will blame Democrats for politicizing a national tragedy. Both will be right and both will be wrong. I, however, blame them both — for fanning the flames of this debate, for refusing to compromise, for seeing only the worst in others and only the best of themselves.

The village I live in is a lot like the one my great-grandfather came from. It used to be 20 percent Jewish as well, before World War II. Now, I am its Jewish population.

While researching the history of this lost Jewish community, I found the names of Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis in slaughtering the local Jews. One of the men listed is the great-grandfather of one of my best students. She is a bright-eyed girl of 10, precocious, and loves learning English. She wants to be a doctor some day, because she heard that it is easy for doctors to move to America and make for themselves a better life.

Recently, I have been teaching her the difference between the present continuous tense and the present perfect tense of the English language, the difference between "I am forgiving" and "I have forgiven." The former denotes we are still in the process, the latter denotes a completed action. I don’t know where exactly I stand.

Sometimes, I still think about her great-grandfather and my great-grandfather and the hatred each must have surely held for the other. But I do know that if we allow all this hatred to continue, our country will remain far more imperfect than my ancestors imagined it to be.

In case any of you were wondering what happens when you try to dry your clothes outside in the winter...

HI! I know this is a bit delayed, but heres a fairly long peak into my daily life. Also, I want to wish a very happy birthday this week to Ruth Shavelson, who is turning 90 years young!

The eight nights of Hannukah

Wednesday, December 1:

I wake up around 630, which is a little later than I’d like, and then I proceed to lie in bed for fifteen minutes, which makes me later yet, still. I am tired, and I want to sleep. But there is no mechanism for telling the boss I’ll be in a few hours late. I throw myself out from under the covers and search for my slippers, because even with my gas heat at 40 degrees celcius it is still cold, very very cold, in my house. I throw on sweat pants and a JETS sweatshirt my mom just sent me, and I go into the kitchen to make breakfast. Today I am feeling rather lazy, so I fry some bread and glob some peanut butter on top afterwards. I iron my pants and sweater, throw some food to my dog Tuzik (the Ukrainian equivalent of the pet name “spot”) and head out to school. It is cold, so I wait for the bus to pick me up along its route.

I get to school, and I am immediately bombarded by my cadre of 6,7, and 8 year old female admirers. I must admit I rather enjoy their fawning---it gives me a nice ego boost, and it allows me to teach them as much english as I can squeeze out of the bottle. “Good morning!” They cry. “Good Morning!” I respond. I exchange a hurried rush of “Dobre Dien”s as I head up to my office, which is located on the second floor, near the director.

On Wednesdays I have the first two periods free, so I spend some time surfing my spankin’ net moderate speed internet in my office. You don’t know what you’ve got until its gone, let me tell you. I also attempt to prepare myself, as I know that during the break between first and second period, my counterpart will approach me with one of the following four criticisms:

I didn’t shave that morning. Which is true, but frankly I thought I had done a good job shaving the previous day and god damn it why the hell do I have to shave every freaking morning. If only I was somehow descended from a less hairy Jewish family. (Authors note: My wonderful gene pool has also kicked in as of late with my ever destined male pattern baldness. Hurrah!)

I did not adequately iron my pants. I actually did iron my pants that morning, but frankly I’m not very good at it, which is a ridiculous thing to say, perhaps. But I’m trying.

I look like crap. Which I do.

My clothes are dirty/they smell/I have absolutely no idea how to do laundry.

Today she decides to touch on all four, but she really emphasizes the last one. She insists I change my English lessons schedule that I hold after school, so she can come over and teach me how to properly do my laundry by hand. Forget the fact that I have been living here for about eight months now. I clearly have no idea what I’m doing.

I understand that she only criticizes me because she cares about me, and a part of me is flattered. She seens me as another son. But I already have one overbearing mother (love you mom!) and another one might just send me to the insane asylum.

At the end of 2nd period, the English teach arrives, only to informed me that she needs me to teach her classes for her fourth and fifth period because she is headed to the hospital. She recently became pregnant (shes 21 already, so a little behind the game on Ukrainian standards) and there was some sport of issue. I readily agreed, partially to help and partially because I really do enjoy teaching.

The res of my day was jam packed. 3rd period I had an individual tutoring session, fourth and fifth I taught 2nd and 7th grades, respectively, 6th and 7th period I had private tutoring sessions. This is not to mention the fact that during the breaks my guitar students wander in and out of my office in the desire to jam out a bit here and a bit there. It can get wild.

School was over at 230, and I missed the bus, so I had to walk home, about 12 minutes. It snowed for the first time the weekend before, and had done so continuously since then, so there was some sluddgery in my trek.

I got home, fed myself some bread and cheese (again, no time to cook) and I headed over to my counterpart’s house to get my water. My new house has pluses and minuses. A plus is that I now get my water from a faucet. A minus is that this faucet is in my counterpart’s house next door. So literally any time I want water, I have to intrusively enter their home and ask for it. It can get weird.

We fill up about 5 buckets of water as my counterpart displays the proper techniques for the washing of the clothes. Warm water for sweaters, hot water for whites, swish them around lots in the bins, scrub the edges together to get rid of excess dirt, pay careful attention to the armpits because I’ve seen you on hot days Jeremy and frankly your armpits ain’t so pretty.

We spent the next two hours with her barking orders at me, and telling me how bad I was at doing laundry. Luckily my ego has taken enough beatings over the last few months that I was able to take her criticisms in stride. Although, to be fair, I was incredibly tired already, and she certainly didn’t put her in a better mood. Her husband, the School Director (Principal), noticed my displeasure and said to me these golden words of advice, eerily similar to those of my own father: “Dzheremi. Tilky Skazhit Dobre.” Jeremy. Just say ok.

At a quarter to 5 I headed back to school. It was already dark so I brought my flashlight (the sun has been setting around 430). From 5 until 8 I proceeded to conduct English lessons from school. I got home around 815, and got ready to cook a little foot (boiled potatoes) when my mother called. She asked me if I had gotten her Hannukah package, replete with Candles, a Menorah, a few gifts, and a dreidel. I told her I had. She reminded me that it was the first night of Hannukah. I had almsot forgotten.My mother stayed on the phone with me as I set up my menorah and then lit the candles. We said the blessings together.

And it was evening, and it was morning, the first day.

Thursday, December 2: I again woke up at 630, because frankly I am just too tired to set my alarm any earlier. It is especially cold this morning. I almost crush my glasses while simultaneously looking for them and my slippers. I fry a few eggs but lack the effort to take it to a higher level. I make sure to shave, which I do without the aid of shaving cream. This is for two main reasons:

It makes me feel like a man

The shaving cream here makes my face break out. (Author’s note: Mom, this does not mean you have to send me shaving cream. Please do not send me shaving cream. If it will help, I will take out a billboard in New York City on the West Side Highway that will say “DO NOT SEND YOUR SON SHAVING CREAM.” But my Peace Corps salary of $150 doesn’t go a long way as it is, so maybe we can cut that one out.”

I get outside, and realize that this is easily the coldest day I have experienced thus far in Ukraine. I see my counterpart and Director waiting outside for the school bus, and since my hands are becoming frostbitten simply out of exposure to the air, I join them. Today there will be a small bazaar in the center of our village, where I have a weekly routine. I buy chocolates for the teachers lounge, and I buy my weekly allotment of cheese. I also realize the necessity of buying some new gloves. I brought some from home, but in wonderfully classic Jeremy fashion, I seem to have lost one. Exactly what I need to exacerbate my lifelong search for the one armed man who killed my wife and destroyed my pleasant life as a surgeon at a major Metropolitan Chicago Hospital. If only Tommy Lee Jones would get off my back.

I come to school to find that the English teacher is absent, and that there will be no English classes today. On some days the English teacher’s absence means that I have to teach an English class sans preparation. On other days it just means I have to find some other way to occupy my time. Ukrainians like to make decisions at the last possible moment. The whole notion of planning of advance is so foreign, that when I begin talking about events a month from now, I often receive quizzical looks. Its almost as if there is a glimmer of doubt whether a month from now, anyone will be here.

And yet my day is still surprisingly busy. I help teach a healthy lifestyles class, and I sit in on two geography lessons. Fortunately most country names are the same in both languages. I give three guitar lessons, and two individualized english lessons. During fourth period, I head to the first grade with my guitar. I have been writing simple english songs on my guitar to help them learn the language. The first was the alphabet song, albeit a Jeremy-Borovitz-variation. Then we did “I like to eat apples and bananas.” Now we are on “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.” I’m having all these flashbacks to Kindergarten. It can get nostalgic.

At the end of the day, my first post-school English lesson informs me she won’t be able to make it. I am disappointed and yet thrilled at the same time. This affords me the rare opportunity to actually relax for a bit when the school day is over. I head home and actually cook some food---fried potatoes with onions, garlic, mushrooms, and an egg cracked on top. My menu choices are somewhat limited, because I can’t really buy much in the local store. I am forced to eat whatever the locals bring me. Currently that means inordinate amounts of potatoes and apples.

It was supposed to be a light day, but I get a call from my neighbor as I am heading home from school. She has been trying to convince me to tutor her two cousins, who live in the village over. They go to a different school and frankly my time is scarce as is. But she guilts me into it, finally. So I head to school for two hours of english lessons, and then I head over to my neighbors house for one more. I am very strict with the girls, as this is our first lesson, and I don’t really want to do it. I tell them that homework is a MUST. The girls turn out to be both smart and motivated, though, so I get more enthused as the lesson goes on. Chalk another hour up to not having time to breathe.

I finally get home a little after 8. I am tired. I call my friend Stephanie, a fellow Wolverine and Jew. She will be going on her first trip to Israel in December with the Borovitz clan. I knew she didn’t have a menorah at site, so we said the blessings together as I lit the candles. I then informed her of my mother’s already laminated itinerary for our trip to Israel. (Author’s note: Mom, I apologize for all the references. i joke because I love.)

And it was evening, and it was morning. Day two.

Friday morning I woke up, for the first time, with the hope that I might actually survive this week. Not that it was ever in question, but, well, the morosity (jewish guilt) that occasionally consumes my being was becoming a little burdensome. I got to school and penned off a letter to my friend Vanessa. She suggested I write her a letter in Ukrainian cursive in order to practice my writing skills. A nice little exercise.

Friday was a lighter day. The snow was pretty thick so I spent much of my time playing in the cold thickness with children ages 6-9. I had three english lessons with students during the day. Friday is also the day where any teachers in the school who want an English lesson or to practice their English skills can come to me. There is one teacher, Ina, who has a dream of eventually starting a school for the deaf. She wants to learn english so she can learn American Sign Language, as well as be able to teach the kids how to read lips in English. You’ve got to admire someone who is trying to create a legion of bilingual deaf kids. Ina is an excellent student and truly wants to learn.

I also usually tutor Victoria. Victoria is 21 and is in University. She is doing a “work-study” program, where part time she is working in a school (her mother is the first grade teacher) and part time she is in classes. While part of her curiculuum is English, Victoria knows generally no English. Her English lessons consist of the following:

Victoria attempts her homework. Most if it is incorrect.

I try to teach her the basic grammar lesson that corresponds to her homework assignment.

After about ten minutes she asks if I will just do it for her. I tell her I won’t, and she begins to cry. Her husband doesn’t love her, her life is terrible, she can’t catch a break, she just wants a baby. That’s the basic jist, at least. Of course none of it is true; I’ve met her husband, he is a wonderful guy, and is enamored with her. But Victoria is adept at complaining, and eventually, I give in.

At the end of the day I had a lesson with Angela (pronounced An-Gel-Ah, with a stress on the middle syllable rather than the first), one of my star pupils. Angela is in the fifth grade and is easily the smartest student in her class. She is also incredibly driven, and has a remarkably clear idea of where she is headed in life. She is confident and a know-it-all, which could be annoying in some places but are exactly the qualities one needs to get out of the village. I have been struggling for some time now to light a fire under Angela, to get her to really study hard. I had remembered talking to Stephanie about a women’s empowerment summer camp she would be involved with. So I called Stephanie and asked her for more information. It turns out the camp is incredibly cheap but also requires the campers to be at a certain level of English. Perfect. I tell Angela about the camp, and she is enthralled. Fire lit (Hannukah pun not intended).

I go to my local store, and purchase grape juice and a challah. Of course they don’t call it a challah. They call it sweet bread. And they don’t talk about how its a Jewish bread. Thats largely irrelevant. I go home, clean my house, and set up my candles. I only have two candles left. They are pretty large, but I am unsure if I will have a chance to get out of my village to buy more before next Shabbat. I decide to cut them each in half. Hopefully, I am still Yitzeh, still adequately fulfilling the commandment. As per tradition, the Hannukah candles are lit before the Sabbath candles, because one cannot kindle a new flame after the Sabbath has begun. I call my friend Avital to see if she would like to light with me. Avital is in training as a PCV in Ukraine, and is also from my local area in New Jersey. In fact, we went to school together for about nine years. She unfortunately doesn’t have any Hannukah or Sabbath candles, so I figured it might be nice to do the whole shebang over the phone together. We light three candles and say the blessings.

We light the Sabbath candles and chant Lecha Dodi, welcoming the Sabbath into our midst. I say the Kiddush, the blessing over the grape juice, and Avital says Amen. I wash my hands and take the cover off my challah. I taste a bit for myself and a bit for her. And she says, Amen.

And it was evening, and it was morning. Day three.

I slept in on Saturday, which means until about 830. My mother had sent me a book that I wanted to read, and I resolved to finish it in one day. As a part of my ever evolving Jewish identity, I don’t use my computer on the Sabbath, which means I am unable to watch my plethora of TV shows and movies nestled into the safe confines of my external hard drive. So I cooked myself some eggs and then laid in bed for the next three hours reading. At around 1 some of the kids knocked on my door. They wanted to know if I wanted to go sledding. I acquiesced. Sledding in America is a lot different than sledding in Ukraine. In America, sledding often consists of one big hill with lots of little kids flying down it. In Ukraine, it involves children carving out paths on the hilly countryside and then seeing which of them can fly the farthest after being launched off of the ten foot ledge. I mainly watched.

I really rested on Saturday, which was nice, it being the Sabbath and all. I have really begun to appreciate since arriving in Ukraine, and really being on the job 24/7, the value of having a day of rest. I am tired a lot here, bordering on a state of exhaustion. It is so necessary to have time to shut the world off, to be able to flick a switch and ignore the crazy world outside your walls. Every day I am consumed with the lives and travails and troubles of the people of my village. Its nice to have on day just for me.

After sledding I went back home and did some more reading. Around 5 one of my neighbors called to invite me to dinner. Apparently it was sme sort of Ukrainian holiday, and they were celebrating. I should mention that Ukraine averages about 5-7 holidays every month, and they insist on “celebrating” every one of them. This consists of multiple shots of varying spirits and liquors, inordinate amounts of food, and minor hangovers. The sabbath nearing its end, I agreed, mainly because it meant I would not have to cook myself dinner.

The dinner ended up being myself with four other women and two small girls. I have learned my limit in Ukraine and drank only a modest amount. The women all drank me under the table, chastising my manhood in the interim. I went home and got ready to go to sleep, even going so far as to lie down in bed. Then I remembered it was Hannukah, and in my tipsy form I set up the four candles, lit them, and said the prayers.

And it was morning, and it was evening. The Fourth day.

Sunday I woke up with a bit of a headache. I dont drink much here, so even a smidgen can give me a wee case of the weelies come the AM. I took my time waking up but not too much time. Saturday is my day of rest, and thus Sunday is my day to work.

First I gave the house a good ol fashioned sweep. Then I collected all my carpets and hung them over the clotheslines, and I proceeded to beat them with a broom. It is therapeutic and exhausting, much like the Peace Corps in general. I then mop the floors of my house. I scrub down the counters and soak my dishes in warm water and soap. I scrape the bottom of my pans and change my sheets. Finally, I burn my toilet paper. Nothing life the sweet smell of your own burning feces to really get a start to your day.

After four hours of scrubbing my place clean, i take an hour or two to plan out my lessons for the week. Much of the lessons I give are ad libbing---I’ve always been a man who works well on his feet. But I have found it useful to at least mentally sketch out what I will teach for the week, look up any grammar rules I may not know (happens more than I’d like to admit) and write out my schedule that will undoubtedly change a million times.

It being Hannukah and all, and having some free time, I try to test my wit at cooking some genuine Latkes. I grate 10 potatoes and mix it with five onions, flour, and two eggs. I throw in some salt and pepper, and some chalula hot sauce for that extra kick (great care package, mom!). I then throw in some Kefir, which is similar to buttermilk. A smidgen more flour and then I fry it up. Surprisingly, they turned out delicious. I even brought one over to my counterpart, and she refused to believe that I had cooked it. Best compliment I could have received.

At around 4, Vannya calls. Vannya is the son of two of the teachers at school, and is in the midst of a pretty standard teen identity crisis. He is 15, his parents don’t understand him, and he constantly thinks about getting laid. The similarities are oddly familiar. As an outlet for his frustration, I started teaching him guitar. About four months in he has gotten pretty good, and he has even started teaching some of the younger kids in the village, including a pretty ninth grade girl whom he gives “private lessons” to once a week. Its definitely hard to change your image when you’ve grown up with the same 20 kids your whole life, but Vannya is giving it a whirl.

Vannya had seen on television that it was a Jewish holiday. So at about 7, I set up the candles and lit them and said the blessings. Vannya thought it was interesting, but his mother is very involved in the local church and as a part of his rebellion he isn’t much interested in God right now. I suspect that might one day change, but we will see.

And it was morning, and it was evening. Day Five.

Monday, Monday. The start of another week at school. Hurrah! The English teacher is absent again, which means I have absolutely no idea if I will be teaching English or not that week. They particularly enjoy keeping me in the dark. Additionally, the Vice Principal, who decides the work schedules, for some reason is not my biggest fan. I have tried my usual kiss-ass techniques but she is immune to my charm. Somewhat like most women I talk to in New York City bars. She lays down a decree that I will not teach any English classes while she is gone. However, the teachers of the younger classes (until fourth grade) still ask that I come in for 20 minutes, or longer. For them, I am double whammy: I teach the kids English, and they get a nice rest.

I talk to my friend Rachel today for quite some time. Rachel was in my training cluster, and is still one of my closest friends in Peace Corps. Rachel also has this wonderful habit of asking me for my advice, and then informing me she is going to do the complete opposite. I have a feeling she would get along well with some of my closer friends.

The teachers all saw a segment on the news about Hannukah, and they asked me to explain the holiday. When we get to the part about the oil lasting for 8 days, I am forced to head to the dictionary to look up the world miracle. Divo. They then proceed to tell me about a tree a few villages over that was struck by lightning, causing a formation that looks stunningly akin to the virgin mary to form.

I head home quickly after school, because my first English lesson starts at 330. I check on the clothes I washed the Wednesday before, and it appears they are still frozen. I also learn a brand new lesson: toilet paper can, in fact, freeze. Mental note: Bring toilet paper inside after pooping.

My lessons go well. Two of my students are Tanya and Alina. They are the smartest girls in the 11th grade, and they really want to make something of themselves. Tanya wants to be a lawyer. Alina does not know what she wants to be, but senses that she does not want to be beholden to a man for the rest of her life. I try my best to regale them with stories of my feminist mother. They still have trouble grasping why she kept her last name.

I head home at about 830 for the night. I am tired and hungry. I still had a Latke left over, and Tanya had cooked me Peroshki, which is basically a roll filled with either jam or cabbage. I call my friend Tommy before going to bed. He is smiling, as always. I put in the candles and say the blessings and kindle the flames. And then I head to sleep.

And it was morning, and it was evening, day six.

Tuesday was a mildly insane day. For some reason that I have yet to entirely gather, Tuesday there was a celebration at school. It involved the first graders receiving their first library books. Even though many of them can’t read. I think it might have been “library day.” One of the most interesting outgrowths of the Soviet Union is that almost every day is a holiday. Well, not really. But almost. We have women’s day, men’s day, policeman’s day, teacher’s day, student’s day, postal workers day, cossacks day, shevchenko’s day, artists day, politicians day, army day, victory day. The list goes on, and on, and on.

There was also a lot of snow, so during 4th period I went outside and built a Baba Cnih, or a Snow Grandmother (their version of Frosty) with the 2nd graders. I was especially useful in the molding of the bottom ball, and in the heavy lifting. Most of the 2nd grade girls have massive crushes on me, so they insist on poking me and then running away. Again, I do not remember being this popular in 2nd grade with women. In fact, if I remember correctly, most of 2nd grade was spent with my teacher trying to convince me not to cry so much.

I have four lessons in school on Tuesday, in addition to the holiday and my usual jovialty with the second grade. I go home and decide to take a bucket bath. Not to be confused with a bath of any kind, this consists of me heating up water, and then sitting naked in a giant bucket as I pour it over myself. Its pretty much the opposite of refreshing, especially when the freezing air outdoors creeps in through the cracks in the windows and I’m shriveling while curled up in the fetal position sitting in a plastic container in the middle of my kitchen with no door in a small Ukrainian village. Just another day in the life.

I go back to school and have three more hours of English lessons. I come home and call another volunteer, Rachel (a different Rachel than the one mentioned earlier, we will refer to this Rachel as Jewish Rachel). Jewish Rachel, through the wonderous system known as American Jewish geography, actually knows my cousin Cara. The first time we met, she informed me, “you have to call your grandmother more.” I figured Rachel might enjoy joining in on the Hannukah fun, so I give her a call. We light the candles, say the blessings, she joins in with resounding “Amens.” Then Vannya shows up unannounced at my house. He wants to have a guitar/therapy lesson. This will consist of him not understanding why Yulia, one of his classmates, keeps “playing games” with him. I do my best to assure him that I, 8 years his senior, do not understand women, either. I suggest he “plays it cool.” I later convey this message to my friend Vanessa, another Volunteer, over the phone, and she tells me I’m an idiot.

And it was morning, and it was evening. The seventh day.

Wednesday again, one of my busiest days. I have five lessons on average during the day, and then another three at night. Today it will actually be four because of scheduling issues. Also today some of the girls are practicing songs they will sing on Christmas. I am pretty content watching them sing songs in a language I can’t begin to understand (it is in old Slavic.) Apparently, on Christmas day, all the kids go around and sing songs to different people in the village. I am sorry I will likely not be there.

I end up playing basketball 2nd period with the 11th graders. I happen to be the second coming of Kobe Bryant (or perhaps Mugsy Bogues, but still he wasn’t so bad). None of them have any idea of how to dribble, so the game consists of my literally running circles around defenders and then getting my own rebound on my missed layup because they don’t know how to box out. Hell yea.

This week seems to be going especially slowly, and I am having one of my “what the hell am I doing here” days. I am tired, I am cranky, and I feel very unappreciated. Furthermore, I begin to wonder whether I am having any impact at all. One of Peace Corps’ big thing is sustainability---does this project have the potential to continue after you leave. Alot of the time I really am not sure if anything I do is sustainable. Rather I get the sense I am driving a bus and as soon as I stop everyone will hop out and no one else will get behind the wheel. This is very discouraging, and depressing. I want to do more, but sometimes I’m just not sure if I know how.

I am sitting in my director’s office, and our schools technology teacher comes in. He wants to start having a serious conversation with some of the local political leaders about building a monument at the old Jewish cemetery.

Andrei comes up to me seventh period. He wants to start doing English lessons. He says he knows he is lazy sometimes, but he promises to work hard.

Two first graders, Katya and Nastiya, approach me to show how they have learned the English Alphabet, although they mixed up M and N.

Igor approaches. We have been talking about restarting the school newspaper, and he wants to be Editor in Chief.

Vannya comes into my office. He has made up his own chord progression on the guitar.

That night, I have a lesson with the Verhulatsky family. They cook me Latkes. They heard I had cooked some myself (word travels fast in the village) and they wanted to show me how delicious they could really be.

My work here is no Hannukah miracle. An its possible this Oil isn’t going to last eight days, or eight years, after I’m gone. But I still feel like I’m doing something, as long as I keep focused on the small victories of every day.

I film myself lighting the eight candles of Hannukah. And it was morning, and it was evening, and it was the eighth day, but my story continues to day nine.

Hey all,

Here is a video I took from our Thanksgiving feast. In the video is Julia, Vanessa, and Paula, my three American friends, as well as Vannya, or Ivan, sitting in the corner. Vannya is a student in the tenth grade at my school. Playing the guitar is Vitaly, a friend of mine from the village who is studying to be a Veterinarian. And yes, ladies, he is single.

A rough translation of the songs chorus:

You are the sun, a gift from the sky

You are the early light on a spring's day

I want to love, but is it still necessary

For you have decided who will be with you, and it is not me

About 25 years ago, my Grandfather, Irving Appelbaum, had a heart attack. My grandmother, Cecelia, strong willed Jewish woman that she was (and is), resolved to keep him alive for as long as humanly possible. The staple of this effort lay in putting my grandfather on a very strict diet. No more cigars, no more scotch, no more cheeseburgers. And no more pie.

Cecelia was known the world over for her pies. Well, if not the world, then certainly some percentage of the population who would join my family for thanksgiving every year. My Grandfather accepted most of the restrictions, but on one he refused. He had to have pie on thanksgiving. And so my Grandmother found a not-too-fatty apple pie recipe, and a tradition was borne.

And so year after year in late November my family and I would trek to the airport and fly to Chicago, to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my aunt and cousins and Grandparents. And year after year we would eat turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes and cranberries and we would watch football and old home movies and we would be together as a family. And in the end, of course, we would indulge with Apple Pie.

This was my first Thanksgiving away from home. If there were two annual events that marked the consistency of my childhood, it was Passover in New Jersey and Thanksgiving in Chicago. I had missed this past year’s Passover by a nose, but I was so rushed in the jumble of excitement that was my initial few days in Ukraine that the shock of missing it all was hard to find. But this time around I am all ready well into my Ukrainian routine, 8 months in (man how time has flown, and also crept incredibly slowly) and thinking a lot more about home than I used to. It was hard to imagine that I wouldn’t be at the Thanksgiving table, that 22 years of tradition was coming to an abrupt end (or, optimistically, a pause).

The approaching holiday coincided with the fact that these past few weeks have been among my hardest in Ukraine. My workload has begun to spiral ever so slightly out of control. Full days at school, followed by 3-4 hours of English tutoring sessions at night. No one is pressuring me to take on such a heavy workload; I primarily bring it upon myself. But I can’t say no to these kids. My over bearing Jewish-White-Upper-Middle-Class guilt too much.

The perfect storm of stress and the sun setting at 4 O’clock and winter’s imminent arrival and Thanksgiving made me, for the first time since arriving, pretty homesick. I was, therefore, pretty glad when three of my Peace Corps friends, Paula, Julia, and Vanessa, decided to come check out my humble abode in Boyarka for the weekend.

I have a perfect place to host visitors. Plenty of room, extra beds, a welcoming community. The only problem lies, of course, in the fact that there is only one bus a day directly into my village, and it leaves from the Oblast center, Cherkassy, not far from where Vanessa is placed. Vanessa and Julia were arriving together late at night, and they were understandably nervous about finding the right bus. I assured them it would be easy enough. Just ask the bus driver if their name is Sasha or Petya, and if it is, ask them if they know Jeremy, the American who lives in Boyarka. Just a couple of small town folk’.

All worked to plan, and when Vanessa and Julia arrived, we set to work on a presentation, to be given at my school the next day, about the meaning of Thanksgiving. Wanting to balance American cliches of being grateful with historical accuracies of the desecration of a continent’s worth of inhabitants, we hobbled together a brief presentation that covered history, culture, and traditional foods. We topped it all of by drawing a “Thanking tree.” Vanessa sketched a beautiful tree with hanging leaves, and at the end of our presentation, we encouraged people to come up and write what they are thankful for. At first everyone was a bit hesitant, so I wrote down three examples: Cimya, Druzi, i Boyarka. Family, Friends, and Boyarka.

Then the crowd really got into it. First a few of the teachers came up, and then the oldest students, and then a group of seventh grade girls who have developed some affectionate feelings for our fair writer. (Author’s note: When I was in seventh grade, I couldn’t get a girl to talk to me. Now that I’m a teacher, they follow me wherever I go.) It only took a few minutes for the tree to get filled in. What are you thankful for? I was asking. Their answers were beautiful and humbling, honest and embarressing. Druzi, Cimya, Babusia, Zdorovya, Friends, Family, Grandmothers and Health topped the list. But not far behind were scribbled markings saying Dzeremi Natanovich, Jeremy Son of Natan. Our schools technology teacher even took it a bit further: I am thankful for Jeremy, and his parents, and his sister Abby, and his two grandmothers. Thousands of miles away and family was still around.

Its hard to speak for their impressions, but I think Vanessa and Julia were at least a bit jealous of my village. Vanessa and Julia had trained in a small village but now were placed in larger towns or cities, and they missed that whole “everyone knowing everything about you” feel. Paula, who arrived later that day, also lives in a small village, and she enjoyed comparing our various experiences.

While I love life in the small village, it can, at times, become suffocating. I know by face, if not by name, practically every person in Boyarka, as well as much of the surrounding villages. And I am known the region over, for there aren’t many foreigners, let alone Americans, dilly-dallying around this corner of the Ukrainian countryside. The Peace Corps has a set a core expectations they have given to us periodically through our service, and one of them is this: As a Peace Corps volunteer, you are on-duty 24 hours a day. In my village, this is very much the case.

The last few weeks have been exhausting. I have been working non stop, 12 hour days becoming a norm. I am always tired and I never seem to have a free moment to ourselves. I have been speaking and thinking and dreaming so much in Ukrainian that sometimes I forget English words. In the most innocuous way possible, I have been losing it, just a little.

I don’t really drink in my village. I try to always have a smile on my face and a positive attitude in tow. My frat kegger days are far behind me, and would shock any memebr of my community. My pessimistic sarcasm wrought from angst ridden teenage years watching too many Woody Allen films has no place in my new home. My doubts and fallibilities I try to keep hidden. I portray a version of my self I want them to see, for their benefit, for America’s benefit, for the Jewish people’s benefit. I am, at the same time, both more in touch with myself than I have ever been and farther from whom I know I am than I ever could have imagined. A life of contradictions is exhausting.

The girls coming to visit wasn’t just a break. It was a wake up call, a much needed injection of life and purpose and friendship that I desperately needed. Friday night we stayed up late, talking and drinking and laughing. We weren’t trying to escape the moment, however. The lack of running water and the outdoor toilet surely prevented us from pretending we were in some other place. But perhaps we were being just a bit more ourselves than our usual circumstances allow.

On Saturday, after taking a nice stroll through the village, the girls and I got down to business. We had all gathered as much food as we could---a giant fish my neighbor had caught for me, onions, carrots, potatoes, pumpkins, apples, soy sauce, more potatoes, cheese, bread, butter, flour, baking soda, more potatoes---and begin to cook a feast for the ages. We made stuffing and mashed potatoes and vegan gravy. I was in charge of making fish burgers, which was an interesting endeavour that luckily gave no one salmonella. And Julia, at my request, ventured to bake an apple pie. It just wasn’t Thanksgiving without Apple Pie, that much I knew.

We cooked extra food, in true Appelbaum/Borovitz/Jewish style, correctly anticipating that four or five of the locals were going to stop by to get a peak at the American girls. After the food was cooked, and the table was set, we each poured ourselves a glass of wine, and the girls asked that I make a toast. My exact words are long lost, but I can still recall the basic jist:

Its easy to get lost here. Sure my village is small and there are only three roads, but its easy to get lost. We drown in language and swim through this strange culture and gasp for breaths of respite from the comparative insanity of our everyday lives. And so its nice, once in a while, to be among friends, just to remember that we know who, and where, we are.

And so we clanked our glasses and we drank our wine. Some guests came by and they tasted our food and we taught them some english and they taught us some ukrainian. I pulled out the guitar and played some American songs, and then my friend Vitaly serenaded us in Ukrainian and Russian. We played Uno and we told stories, we spoke of our old homes and our new ones, we were thankful for we had, even more thankful for what we have.

And in the end we ate Julia’s Apple Pie. And it may not have been as tasty as my Grandmother’s (although it was damn close) and it may have desperately needed a scoop of ice cream on top. But as delicious as the pie was, what it meant to me to have it was so much more important. My Grandmother’s pie helped my Grandfather live a little longer. Julia’s pie gave me that extra little jolt that I desperately needed to push my own adventure a bit farther into the future.

It’s been a while.

This entry was supposed to be about exhaustion----about the jam-packed pace of my daily life that has made an perception of hard work I had experienced up to this point seem like a distant memory. But then a day like yesterday happens, a transformative day wedged in the middle of end on end of transformative days. There are some days when I think I begin to understand my surroundings, these people, this experience. And then a day like Sunday occurs, and I begin to come to the realization that I don’t know anything at all.

When I arrived in my current humble abode in Boyarka, Ukraine, I sent out some feelers, via the well-connected network that is the Jewish community, to discover whether I could find any information about any Jews who might live in my vicinity. My endeavours were met with questioning success until one day I received a call from a man named Piotr, looking for “Jemy.” He said he had gotten my name from an American Rabbi named Martin Horowitz (whom I heard of via Rabbi Michael Strassfeld) and identified himself as the head of liberal Jewish communities in the Cherkasska Oblast, where I was placed. He only lived about an hour or so away! I could barely hide my excitement. Here were a group of Jews, attempting to pray right under my nose.

We attempted (in vain) to meet up on a few occasions, but it kept falling through for one reason or another. Finally, we set up a date. In all of Cherkasska oblast, there is only one pre-war synagogue that is currently in the hands of the Jewish community. This is in a small city Zvenaharodka, less than an hour from where I live. The Sunday after Simchat Torah, the day where the Jews complete their yearly reading of the Torah, the whole community was going to meet at this synagogue, to talk, to eat, to pray.

As I entered the synagogue in Zvenaharodka, I was overwhelmed by a familiar feeling, the same emotions that took over the first time I went to synagogue in Warsaw and first prayed with a group of Jews in Kiev. It was this hard to define notion of being home miles from home, a temporary cure for the chronic displacement that makes it so hard for me to stay in one place.

The moment I found Piotr, he embraced me, as if we had known each other for years. He incepted this bond immediately, this feeling that we were two peas in a pod, he and I, that we were brothers, that he was my father, that he was my friend.

Piotr was feeling a bit rushed. Today was a big day, he explained. We are going to read Torah, and we are going to sing, and we are going to conduct a Bar and Bat Mitzvah for three of our teenage Jewish members. But no one could really read Torah and only a few people knew the songs and how in Hashem’s name were we going to conduct a Bar Mitzvah anyway. The serendipity of the moment was borderline hilarious. Finally, I thought, $150,000 and 14 years of Jewish education was going to pay off, not to mention that handy ol’ rabbinical lineage.

And so when the time came to read the Torah, I read the last portion of Dueteronomy, talking of Moses death and the fate that waited the people Israel. I repeated the words, Chazak, Chazak, Venitchazek, Strong, Strong, and may we go from strength to strength. I taught them how to properly roll a Torah scroll from the end to the beginning, I taught them about the circular notion of it all, I read the first few lines of Breishit and I incepted the cycle anew. I chanted for them a tune that many had never heard, I did my best to give them a glimpse of a Judaism they hardly knew.

For this group of Jews were largely uneducated. Many had only discovered their roots in the last twenty years, and those who had known longer often hid the truth. When the three teenagers approached to participate in a ritual that had defined our community for almost two millenium, this coming of age, they were about as clueless as everyone else, about as clueless as I was myself. But I had seen my father go through the motions a million times or two, I knew the basic gist.

Place the Tallit, the prayer shawl, on your head. Repeat the blessing. Say Amen. Collect the fringes of the shawl, and wrap it around your finger. Bring the fringes towards the words on the Torah scroll, touch the words (with the shawl, not your fingers!) and bring it to your lips. Kiss the word of God. Repeat the blessing, after me. When I finish, repeat the process once more. And let us say, Amen.

Then, in the best Neal Borovitz imitation I may have ever pulled off, I recited the Birkat Cohanim, the preistly blessing, my Tallit on my head and my hands stretched out in a manner that would have made Leanord Nimoy proud. May God Bless you and protect you. May God be kind to you and be gracious to you. May god smile upon you always, and bless you with peace. And let us say, Amen.

There were a plethora of amazing things about this experience, not the least of which was not only was this my first pseudo-rabbinical experience, but it was entirely in Ukrainian. As I returned home from synagogue that day, I was imbued with a feeling of warmth. I felt really, truly happy. I looked forward to being with my new family sometime soon.

Life is hard in the village. Obviously I already feel like an outsider, the sole American. Yet the compounding of being a Jew, the ultimate outsider, can sometimes make this issue even more difficult.

I have often spoke fondly on these pages of my School Director, a man whose ideas and energy in many ways keeps this town moving. He is a good man, an honest man. He is also a Ukrainian man, and thus, on occassion, enjoys a drink or fourteen.

On one of these oh so special nights, he paid me a visit at my house. He proceeded to give a brief lecture on Ukrainian history, focusing heavily on World War II, the great famine, tragedies, death, destruction, and other happy topics. Somehow he segued into a discussion of communism, and Marx, Engels, and Lenin began to play into the discussion. Then he threw it at me, with the force a cannonball: “Jeremy. chomu bci yiverei abo anheli abo demoni.” Jeremy. Why are all Jews either angels or demons.

Suffice it to say I didn’t really have an answer for that question, or even an answer of how to respond to that question, or really any idea of anything to say at all. I guess in a way he was complimenting me, as I’m assuming he does not place me in the demon category. But there are honestly so many levels to that statements, so many language barriers and culutural barriers that prevent a serious discourse. I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing.

There is one family in the village over, the Verhulatsky family, who are exceptional exceptions. The family is guided by two brothers, one of whom has four children, the other who has seven. Six of these eleven students are at the top or near the top of their class. The others have either completed school or are under the age of 6. Nearly every member of the Verhulatsky clan comes to me on a weekly basis to have an English lesson. On Wednesday nights at six, one of the families comes to me in full tow: The first grader Luba, the fifth grade Lesya, the eighth grader Kolya and the eleventh grader Yuri, not to mention the father, Vitaly.

During our last lesson, the father asked me if my mother missed me. I responded with a bit of a joke, saying that my mother was a classic Jewish mother, and that she had been missing me since I left the womb (I swear it was only a joke, Mom!) This joke was followed by an awkward pause, and suddenly I realized: They had no idea I was Jewish. I hadn’t been keeping it a secret, but I hadn’t exactly been advertising it, either.

We began to have a discussion about religion, and God, and Jesus. They were a bit incredulous about the fact that I didn’t believe Jesus was the son of God. He was the messiah, Vitaly told me. You must acknowledge this.

I said that for me, when the messiah comes there will be peace on earth.

He told me that Jesus told us he would be back.

I responded that if Jesus comes back, I will be the first to admit I was wrong.

He retorted that then, it will be too late.

I stopped the conversation there in its tracks, knowing it can’t be leading anywhere good. I said that all people have the right to their own beliefs, to their own set of doctrines, to their own personal relationship with God. One thing works for me and something else works for somebody else. They were temporarily satisfied, but I could shake this notion that somehow I was now different in their eyes.

I had known for some time now that this area used to be heavily populated with Jews. In my village alone, 623 Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. No one seems to know, however, where they were killed, where they were brought and shot or burned or drowned or who knows what or why or when or how. I had often asked my Director for more information about it, but his hesitance was often quite clear. There were places to see, things I could witness. Later, he said. Not now.

Last week, Piotr called me. On Sunday, he told me, there would be a conference in Korsun, his home city, about the Holocaust. He had arranged a ride for me, he had set it all up. He looked forward to seeing me there.

He gave me the number for Oleksander, a name that was to serve as my transportation for the even. We arranged to meet in my village center at 830 in the morning. I didn’t think it would be hard to find him, because, well, its pretty rare that there are cars and/or people in my village center.

My suspicions prevailed, and as soon as I saw the blue Sovietsky style sedan pulling into the village, I flagged him down. As soon as he saw the funny looking American with the messenger bag, he stopped. I got in, we exchanged pleasantries, and went on our way.

It took a few minutes into the car ride for us to get to the juicy stuff.

“Ti Ivreyi?” You are a Jew?

“Tak. Ya Yivreyi. a vi?” Yes, I am a Jew. And you?

“Moye Tato bulo. Ale ya chrestiyan.” My father was. But I am a christian.

The adamance with which he emphasized the last part of that statement left quite an impression on me, one that lingered for the rest of the time together. He did not seemed ashamed, like some Ukrainians I have met, of his Jewish lineage. But at the same time, he wanted to be clear that he was a Christian, that he believed in Jesus, that he wasn’t quite one of me, not anymore.

He began to tell me what he knew of the Jewish communities that used to exist here, what he remembered and what his father had told him. When he grew up, there had been four Jewish families in Lisyanka, my regional center, and one in my village itself. This was post war, post genocide, post destruction. Almost all had since fled to Israel. I asked him about the war itself, about the Jews who had been killed. He slowed down the car and looked away from the road, into my eyes.

“Meni Treba tobi pokazati schos.” I need to show you something.

He took us down a side road of the main one, and then from there pulled onto a dirt path that could hardly be called a road at all. He drove us into the woods, and I briefly considered the notion that I was about to be dragged into some abandoned cabin and forced to perform some acts straight out of the movie “Hostel.” Instead, he stopped in the middle of these woods, right near a small gated off area.

As we approached it, he tried to paint a picture. Here there was a well. Here is where they lined them up. They threw the old people in the well first, saving the children for last. They thought if they didn’t throw the children in first, the parents would cooperate. One by one they drowned them, shooting the few with the courage to run. One by one until they reached 300, they killed all the Jews of Lisyanka they managed to round up.

There was a small monument there, a tablet sized stone commemerating the event. On this spot, it read, the fascists drowned 300 members of our community.

I was shocked it didn’t say Jews. Oleksander was more upset by something else.

“Tse ne bulo fashisti. Ukrayintzi robili.” It was not the fascists. Ukrainians did this. Ukrainians killed these Jews.

I wasn’t shocked. I had hear this story before. But to a certain extent I had convinced myself it wasn’t true. Not these people, not in this village, not in my place. Here we had a good relationship. Here we were friends. Here...it just wasn’t like that here.

Turns out it was.

Oleksander and I continued on our way towards Korsun, Our range of conversational topics varied, from what he does in Lisyanka (he is in charge of the electrical grid) to his family (wife, two kids) to whether or not his siblings identify at all with Judaism (they don’t.) He asked me why I didn’t believe in Jesus, and whether or not there were alot of Jews in America who did believe in Jesus. He asked, I answered and on our conversation went.

When we arrived in Korsun, I was immediately embraced by my now old friends. We were glad to see each other, and we did what Jews always do when they meet up: We ate.

While I originally thought the conference was about the Holocaust in general, it turned out it had a much more specific theme: Jewish Heroes of the Soviet Union. This refers to Jewish soldiers who received the coveted “Heroes of the Soviet Union” medal for their service in World War II. Think Congressional Medal of Honor, but perhaps a bit more prevalent.

The whole day, weirdly enough, seemed to a mix between a celebration of their Soviet Heritage and a celebration of their Soviet Heritage. Different community members stood up and rattled off the accomplishments of various Jewish soldiers, how they proudly served their country in the war. And more often than not, that person’s history was included with a sidenote, that their family was all killed while they were out at war. These people were celebrating a country that at best failed to protect its Jews and at worst willingly participated in their annhilation. They sang the Soviet anthem and danced Soviet dances and reminisced about the good ol’ days bread was cheap and dissent was forbidden. What was I missing?

Towards the end of the conference, a man stood up dressed in full army garb. He is currently a Colonel in the Ukrainian army, and was an officer in the Soviet Army before that. He also had some sort of Jewish genealogy, although precisely how much he was a bit reluctant to say. He spoke of his own army experiences, his own knowledge of Jewish war heroes. But he kept beating around the bush about his own Jewish identity. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it, not too much.

Later on, after the conference, Piotr offered him a Jewish calendar. He refused. What if someone saw?

It was important to this colonel, this army man, that the contributions of Jewish soldiers be recognized. But he did not want to be thrown in with their sinking boat. He was deathly afraid that others would paint him for another stinking Jew.

At the end of the conference, Oleksander stood up to say a few words. He talked a lot about Germany, and how the German government admitted its atrocities during World War II and has tried to rectify some of them. This includes a policy in the 60s and 70s of allowing free immigration to anyone of Jewish descent. Most of the takers were people who were then living in the Soviet Union. Oleksander spoke of the German President visiting the state of Israel in the early 50s and openly weeping. He spoke of repentance, and forgiveness.

Look at the German country, he decried. Look at their economic success, at their business success. Look at how much they have been able to accomplish. They, a country who has admitted their mistakes and tried not to repeat them, has flourished. Ukraine, on the other hand, a country that has made it policy to turn a blind eye to any event where they are not themselves the victim, Ukraine, he told us, is stuck in the mud.

There was something very Christian in what he was saying, some Baptist tied belief in confession and forgiveness. And while I don’t prescribe to the ideology, and I don’t think that Ukrainian’s owning up to their past will change economic fortunes, he was making a point. This is a country with a very subjective view of the past. People on the left have one subjective view and people on the right another but overall few seem to be able to remove their emotions from their viewpoints, something I can strangely empathize with. Ukrainians have a selective memory. And for most, their Jewish past is something they’d like to forget.

While Oleksander was talking, he also identified himself using his patronimical name, as the son of Volf. The patronimical name is widely used in Ukraine---in fact, in school I am known as Jeremy Natanovich (Natan being my father’s Hebrew name). He wanted people to know that his father was Volf, his father was a Jew. Later on, when I was relating the story to my director, he mentioned that he knew the man, but that he often went by the name Oleksander Vassilovich, not Volfovich. With jews he was a Jew. With the gentiles he was one of them as well.

There are a lot of contradictions here, a lot of double sided coins and a lot of trickery and a lot of not being everything that it seems. Much of it I don’t quite understand. Are they anti-semitic or are they remorseful? Do they love my people or hate them? Is it fear or shame? Is it loathing or respect? Did we kill Jesus, or was Jesus a Jew? Am I an angel, or am I a demon?

I had to move recently to another house in my village. I was having a plethora of problems with my landlord. He wanted more money, he wanted me to take care of his yard, he saw this American, and possibly this Jew, and dollar signs flashed in his head. My landlord’s wife kept telling me to use less gas (when it is freezing outside), to use less light (when it gets dark at 4). There were problems.

The whole situation was stressing me out, so my director decided to find me a new place to live. My new house is much nicer than my old one (albeit still no running water, and the outdoor toilet needs some work.) I do, however, have a “sink,” where you pour water in the top, it comes out a faucet, and then drips into a bucket at the bottom. I’ll send video when I can, but it pretty much ahs changed my life.

This week, my director and I went over to my old house with my landlord, so we could walk through the house while they complained about how much they had to pay for electricity and heat and how much of the house they needed to repair. They were hurling accusations at me, telling me I was wasteful and despondent and irresponsible. I paid them their money and walked out of the house, too upset to deal with them any longer.

My director drove me back home, and he could tell I was upset. “Tze ne bulo ty.” It was not you. It was them.

He gave me a wide variety of consoling words, telling me how much good I was doing, how hard I was working, how much everyone appreciated me in the village. Then he brought up the landlords. Jeremy, he said, “Ty Yivreyi, ale voni Zhid”. You are a Jew, but they are Zhids, a derogatory term about Jews inferring they are cheap. Think of it as the Ukrainian version of the German “Kike.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. He was this man, who cares about me, who likes me, who was trying to console me. And how does he do it? By comparing those who work against me to my own ancestors. He tries to make me feel better by using a racial slur against my own people.

Some days the insanity and the contradictions and just everything I can explain and fail to comprehend becomes too much. But I think what I’ve learned is that I need to let some stuff slide. Intentions matter more than words. Maybe the past is dark and maybe the present is biased, but if I can laugh in the face of generations old anti-semitism, the future can’t be so bad.

62 years ago today, Decauter Illinois was rocked by the news that Cecelia and Irning Appelbaum welcomed into the world a baby daughter, Ann Harriet. History Hasn't been the same since.

Sorry I couldn't speak to you on your birthday, but I hope that Ukrainian kids trying to sing to you in english will serve as a sufficient replacement.

Hey all,

So about six weeks ago a couple of cats showed up on my doorstep. I gave them some food, and they decided to stick around. I named them Jeff and Ben, in honor of msr. Kaplan and Strassfeld, who have done quite a job calling me and keeping me sane these last few months. Then it turned out that Ben was a girl, so the kids started calling her Bella. Go figure.

ANyway, my cats are insane. They refuse to understand the notion of a litter box and so they poop all over the house. I lock them outside and they climb through windows. They are smart and devious and I love them dearly.

Heres a quick clip of my cat Jeff and an interaction he had with a possum. My counterpart explained that when cats kill animals and leave them on your doorstep, they are offering you a gift. Thanks, Jeff!

Hey all,

This is a video of me teaching! And my 2nd graders! Enjoy!

Here is a slide show of my completed trash pick up project. It went great! More to come soon!!!!!

The round of applause was thunderously rowdy, men whooping from their seats, refusing to let the clapping hands cease. Usually there comes a moment where an applause naturally dies down, where there is a general consensus that enough praise is enough. Not here, however. For here these men were bearded Hasidic Jews, and it was God they were praising.

This was my first Rosh Hashanah in Ukraine, the Jewish new year. Rosh Hashanah has always been an important holiday in my feeling, this beginning of the Jewish high holy days. Even during my years at University, I almost always flew home for Rosh Hashanah, missing classes and even a football game or two.

Here I found myself, in almost the geometric center of Ukraine, a land steeped in Jewish history, praying in a converted warehouse with 1,000 bearded pious men and bald Sephardic Israelis and wayward Modern Orthodox teens searching for a way to God. In the tent up the hill were another 1,000, as eclectic as we, with another 30,000 or so wandering the streets, grouping together, forming Minyanim, prayer groups, impromptu and in some ways more meaningful.

When I was interviewed during my Peace Corps Training about the site where I would live for the next two years, I requested only one thing: to be close to a Jewish community. No running water? no problem. No english speakers? Bring it on! But I have always needed and will always need a place to pray, a place to be with my fellow Jews. For unlike many other religions, while we certainly can pray alone in Judaism to fulfill the full breadth of our requirement we must pray in groups of ten. For the Orthodox it is ten men; for more liberal Jews, such as myself, any ten Jews will suffice. The Jew needs a community, even a small one. I am a Jew, and thus I am no exception.

As soon as I received the name Boyarka in that slim White Manilla Envelope that contained little of use but much too be imagined, my regional manager, Iryna, approached me to assuage any fears I might have.

“Jeremy,” she said, “you are only two hours from Uman.”

Uman? What the hell is Uman? The name sounded familiar, to be fair, but I couldn’t quite place it.

I pressed Iryna for more, for any more information she might have on this community. “All I know,” she said, “is that every year a bunch of bearded Jews with hats come to Uman for their New Year celebration.” The plot thickens.

It didn’t take much investigation to find out the secret to this small Ukrainian city. Uman is centered about half way between Kiev and Odessa, and is most famous for two thigns. The first is Sofivka Park, a giant memorial of grandeur landscaping that was built by a Polish nobleman for his mistress whom he killed for sleeping with his son. (Follow all that?)

The second is that it is the place where the body of Nachman of Bratslav, the old Hasidic Rebbe, lay interred.

Anyone who has ever been to Israel, especially to Jerusalem, has undoubtedly seen the graffiti along the walls. Na. Nach. Nachma. Nachman. Nachman Me-Uman. I remember learning on my twelfth grade trip to Israel that the followers of the Hasidic Sect believed that if every Jew in the world were to say his name as such, he would return in Messianic form.

Nachman of Bratslac was born in 1772 in the heartland of Hassidic Ukraine. Hassidim was a movement founded by his great-grandfather the Ba’al Shem Tov, and it emphasized a revolutionary spiritual approach to Judaism. Personal communication with God became a must; being in touch with one’s Nefesh, or Soul, became a prerequisite. Nachman saw himself as the inheritor of his Great Grandfathers legacy. He often times claimed his own brilliance and even alluded to his own messianic nature, and believed that he and he alone held the truest and most direct path to God. He also suffered from bouts of melancholy, if not depression, and often times struggled with his own growing influence. At his height, he stood alone against the all of the Hasidic Rebbes in Ukraine, creating a revolution within a revolutionary movement, ever the more controversial.

Rav Nachman also holds an intense following of very intense followers. Breslav Hassidim, as they are called, stretch their influence across the globe and believe that Rav Nachman himself will return to usher in the Messianic age. They read his writings and follow his teachings and even are rumored to hold on to some of the Rebbe’s secrets that he only divulged to his most devout students.

When I told my friends and colleagues in my village that I was considering heading to Uman, they were all extremely supportive. But they also all made comments, I hear anti semitic jokes sometimes, even from people i have grown to love and respect. Its jsut an ingrained part of life here, as unfortunately linked to the Ukrainian mentality as assuming that the next winter will be even harsher.

I really had no idea what I was going to do when I got to Uman. All I had was a play to stay with another Peace Corps Volunteer who lived in the city. I had been there once before, so I knew my way around a bit. As I headed towards the town center to meet up with Joseph, my fellow American (and a non-Jew from Arkansas), I saw two dark skinned men in Kipput approaching in the distance.

I approached them and, in my best Hebrew, said, “Slichah, Adoni, aval ani mechapes meekom tefillah.” Excuse me, sirs, but I am looking for a place to pray.

I threw them for a loop, I think. They did not expect this blond haired fellow with the classic Ukrainian plastic-bag-serving-as-a-suitcase in tow to whip out some words in their native tongue.

They asked who I was, and I told them. An American in Ukraine, a Jew in a tiny village once imbued with Yiddishkeit long since voided. I got a flattering response from them, to say the least. “Atah Tzaddik.” You are a holy man.

One of them was named Shaul, the other’s name escapes me. But Shaul gave me the low down on services, how to get there, what time to go. It starts at 5 am, he said. Later than 7 and you’ll struggle to find a seat. Plenty of places to pray, plenty of fellow Jews to pray with. Shaul also expressed some interest in my village. He took down my number, and we made very rough and idealistic and naive plans for him to come back to my village with me. It all seemed so normal, fellow Jews bonding over shared experiences and shared values.

I set my alarm for 6 am, and I was on my way to the synagogue, which also happens to surround the grave of Rabbi Nachman, by half past. I didn’t precisely know where I was going. But I had confidence in my Ukrainian and in the fact that no one was going to try and beat up some 23 year old American who was asking for directions to the synagogue.

Eventually I heard it, the wails. And soon after I saw it, the men draped in white robes and curly beads, peis draped in front of their ears so as not to disobey the ancient decree. And the forelocks were many and the hats varied but I saw them, and as I followed them there were more and more, and as I went after them the Ukraine around me began to immediately transform.

Have you ever been to Me’ah She’arim, the religious neighborhood in Jerusalem? If you haven’t, then unfortunately I have an entirely insufficient vocabulary to describe to you the spectacle that is the square kilometer or so surrounding Rav Nachman’s grave. Men in long beards praying on street corners, Hebrew advertisements for day time excursions to Odessa and Berditchev, schedules of flights back to Israel and the appropriate necessary shuttles. I was in a different world, a Jewish world, and yet I was still in Ukraine.

Eventually I found a place to pray, a large converted warehouse with a Torah instead of a stone grinder standing in its center. I open up the prayer book my mother sent to my small Ukrainian village, and I began to pray. It is an Orthodox prayer book, and I am unfamiliar with much of the liturgy. The men around me are swaying and muttering and shouting, all of it in ecstasy. It is hard to find my place. But every now and then a familiar prayer will be sung or a Psalm I recognize will pop up in the page and these moments serve as a beacon, bringing back to where I am supposed to be.

And then when I least expected something I never expected, the men around me began clapping. It was mild and then thunderous, rowdy. It was combined with whooping and sheer joy. It was counter to most of Judaism’s taboos. A service is not a place for clapping, I had been taught. We don’t clap. We pray. Why here? Why now?

The confusion of the collection of moments became a bit much for me, so I cut out of the service a bit early (this was at 230, by the way, after a solid 7 hours or so of constant prayer). My soul was tired, and I wasn’t quite sure that this was where I belong. I decided to go back to the city center, back to my friends place. Something about being with another AMerican, another Peace Corps volunteer, felt more familiar than this group of bearded Hassidim. This was a new emotion for me. I was surrounded by a sea of gentiles, and yet I felt out of place in this small reserviour of Jews.

Dozens of policeman were surrounding this Jewish compound. The Jews are good for Uman’s economy, and they cops are under strick orders to make sure no trouble rears its ugly face. I approach one of the policeman, and ask, in my best Ukrainian, the best way back to center.

Jak ty znayesh nasha mova?” How do you know our language, he asks. Sure, some of these folks know Russian. But Ukrainian? Who the hell are you?

I brisk over my biography, that I teach in a small village school about 2 hours north. It turns out he has heard of my village. We begin to talk about places we have been, tourist sites we have both been forced to see. And all around us the Jews are staring and the other policemen are staring. Why is our brother in his Kippah, why is he talking to this policeman, and so jovially? Why is our comrade in arms making nice with this invading Jew?

EVentually the policeman sends me on my way towards the city center, and I weave my way through Hebrew signs and bearded men and Ukrainians with ID badges so people know its OK that they are there. And every Jew I see, I greet them with a hearty “shannah tova.” A Happy New Year. Most of them are surprised, surprised that I am one of them and surprised that any one spends their time on such casual pleasantries in such and such a day and age.

One man eventually stops me, hearing my accent, seeing my clothes, wanting to know my story. His name was Yitzhak, he was an Israeli from Tel Aviv, and he insisted I come to his house for a bite to eat. I tried to refuse, but I secretly knew it was to no avail. Jews are like Ukrainians, in at least this on sense: if they ofer you food, there is no way to say know.

Yitzhak is fascinated by my presence in Ukraine. Why wouldn’t you teach English in Israel, he wonders? Why help these strangers, who hate us, before you help your brothers? It is a question I have gotten before, many times, and the truth is I’m still not sure of the answer. But I tell hom that I walk around in this village that used to be filled with Jews, as a Jew, and I am imbued with a sense of Yiddishkeit. I tell him that the people in my village accept me as me and like me as me and they also know I’m a Jew and theres something in that, as well. I tell him I am a one-man anti-semitism fighting team, and I tell him that if we are to do as our tradition teaches us, to be a light to the nations, well then we may as well go to the darkest places in the hope of making the biggest impact. I tell him all this, and he is intrigued, and he calls my work holy.

He then makes a request of me. There are Ten Psalms, he says Ten Psalms that Rav Nachman felt were the Ten most important Psalms in the bible. Our Rebbe wanted us to say these Psalms on the New Year. Say them, he implored me. Say them, and your holiness will only be greater.

Unsure as I ever was whether or not such shenanigans really work, I say the Psalms anyway, partly to be a good host and partly because I simply enjoy Jewish prayer. And saying these Psalms in this place did feel just a bit magical, a mixture of tradition and mysticism that struck the right chord. But as I finished the Psalms and handed Yitzhak back his book, I noticed that his place was a mess. He was renting it, I knew, from a Ukrainian for an exorbitant price. And in his mind this price allowed him to treat it like his trash can. He showed me the utmost hospitality, because I was one of his own. These dirty Ukrainians, however, only deserved to pick up the trash after him.

Yitzhak’s mindset was seemingly shared by many of the Hassidim in town. Litter isn’t exactly a foreign concept to this country. But it truly pained me to see Hebrew writing on bags of potato chips, on water bottles, on candy wrappers, strewn across the Umanian landscape. They didn’t care. They simply didn’t care that this was still God’s earth, that these were still people. Even if we are the chosen people, isn’t that more a place of responsibility than a place of privilege? Doesn’t it mean we have to do more, not that we are simply better? How can our moral compass change depending on the person and who their mother was and who her mother was, as well?

The next day, I decided not to return to the religious services. Instead, I went to Sofiika Park, a monolith of nature that is the other famous part about Uman. My friend Stephanie, another Jewish volunteer whom I knew from the University of Michigan, came to meet me in Uman, and we went to the park together to participate in the Tashlich service. Tashlich is probably one of my favorite services of the year, because U can really feel its impact immediately. On the second day of the new year, Jews take pieces of bread and throw them into a body of water, physically casting away their sins. I always try and think of specific people as I throw these crumbs into the sea, of things I’ve done wrong and of how I can be a better son, a better brother, a better friend, a better human being. Its hard work, sometimes. But it helps.

So there Stephanie and I are, and I’m chanting some Hebrew and wearing my Kippah and Ukrainians are doing there best to stare. And yet I don’t care, because I am in the process of purifying my soul. And they don’t really seem to care, its just that its interesting and something to look at. And I throw my bread into this Ukrainian water and I feel better, and so does Stephanie. Sometimes its just nice to get the things that are bothering you about yourself off your chest.

And suddenly I remembered the clapping again, bringing holiness to a place that was void. And these sins I was throwing in to the water was a form of clapping itself, a tacit admission that this place is as much my home as any other place. I am a Jew and an American and also a human being and I am as imperfect here as I can be anywhere. But in this thought I was seemingly alone.

We were in the midst of ten days of forgiveness and yet these Jews had no interest in forgiving. These Ukrainians 60 years ago had watched the murder of their brethren, and some had participated. This country was full of jew-haters. This country was less than. This country was their toilet. These Hassidim, these so called righteous men, are clapping, but making only the bad kind of noise. They are ignorant to the disruptive impact they have on other people’s lives. They don’t care who they are hurting. They are clapping, and they think that is enough.

But was the clapping itself truly enough even for Nachman? Was it the act itself, or was the act simply a symbol for courage under fire, for letting your voice be heard in a hostile environment? Is the clapping similar to the sound of the Shofar, the ram’s horn, which signaled the ancient Israelites to approach the battlefield, to attack? Judaism does not have very many passive symbols; our holiest book, the Torah, is often referred to as being alive.

Nachman, in addition to the clapping, placed a huge emphasis on being alone, and confessing one’s sins out loud. He was a very tortured human being, constantly feeling as if he was not measuring up to God’s expectations of him. As a young boy, he used to enjoy rowing a boat to the middle of a lake, alone, and sit there all day, discussing with God his internal pain, his failures, his shortcomings.

A few years after Nachman died, not far from where he lived, was born a young man, Taras Shevchenko, who over the course of his lifetime would evolve into the voice of the long suppressed Ukrainian people. Shevchenko is more than a literary icon, more than a figurehead. He is a part of every man, woman, or child who calls themself a Ukrainian, he is more ingrained in the consciousness than Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln put together. Shevchenko is not only a part of Ukrainian culture, he embodies it.

As a prt of my cultural integration in my community, I have begun studying some of his poems, albeit mainly the ones they usually teach in fourth or fifth grade. Recently I was reading one, and a passage caught my eye:

I sit in a boat

In a body of water

And there I will be alone

With only the sky to listen.

Two men, a few generations and a wide cultural gap apart, spouting the same ideas, the same philosophies, philosophies that were also being echoed on Walden pond half a world away. Two men, Nachman and Shevchenko, two strains of a similar mentality coming to fruition in the breadbasket of the world. And yet I can’t help but wonder how few people have read both these philosophers in their native tongues, or even at all.

When I returned home to Boyarka, one of the first calls I received was from Shaul, that nice Israeli man I had met on the street. I was excited that he had called, albeit a bit late. I was already home, I told him. If he would like to visit my village he may, but it would be a bit difficult to reach.

He asked me if I knew any village girls he could meet.

Because this was his trash can, his toilet, the sanctity of these women did not matter. Shaul was looking to praise Rav Nachman and he was looking for a good lay, and I’m not that confident it was in that order. This was in the ten days of repentance, the ten days when were are supposedly being judged by God. Shaul’s God, when it comes to Ukrainians, apparently looks the other way.

After I heard from Shaul, I headed to the house of Tamilla, my counterpart, and Kolya, my Director. We talked about my trip, about the experience, my impressions. Then they showed me an article in the newspaper. Two Ukrainian men were beat up by the Hassidim. The Hassidim thought they were being robbed, although they weren’t. Not, that I’m sure, most of them cared to ask, after they got caught up in the mob mentality of beating on a couple of Jew haters. They blame them for the fact that 70 years ago none of them asked why, none of them said stop. But who among US asked why? Who among US said stop? And yet these are my brothers, my achim, moyi brati.

Tamila and my director did not have very nice things to say about these Hassidim, these righteous men. But they didn’t just call them Hassidim. They called them Jews. They were not talking about me, I knew. They liked me. But those OTHER Jews, they are bad people. They cheat and they steal and they hurt and they don’t care who gets in their way. These are bad Jews, they say. These Jews are bad.

And so I say the Psalms of Nachman and I commit Shevchenko to memory. I try to understand Nachman’s relationship with God and Ukrainian’s relationship with each other. And I try to understand if I can bring some holiness to this place, infuse some Yiddishkeit without becoming a hated Jew.

The other night I headed to my Director’s house to drop off the money for our project. We received a $500 grant to build some trash cans, and try and clean up our village just a little bit. It was another one of those moments where I remembered how lucky I was to have such a strong partner in my Director. As soon as I handed over the cash he sat me down. “Nam Treba Napisatee Bizness Plan.” We have to write a business plan.

So there we were, writing down how much tools would cost and how much wood would cost and how long we have to do it in. Then he looked at me and exposed himself, just for a moment.

Jeremy, he said. There is a monument in the village over, a monument built to the holodomyr. The great Ukrainian famine. Millions starved to death by Stalin. Scar on Ukrainian history. There is a monument, Jeremy, and no one ever goes there. They just drop their trash there as they pass by. Lets build a table, and some benches. Lets build a trash can there. Lets clean it up. Whats the point of a monument if no one ever goes there to remember?

I readily agreed. It was still in tune with the project’s ecological theme. It was still making this a cleaner place. And it was important to him.

About an hour later, after eating dinner and watching some Russian TV that forced me to read the Ukrainian subtitles, my director went back up to me. Jeremy, he said. We could also build a Pamyat, a Memorial, at the Old Jewish cemetery. Who the Jews were. What happened to them. What was here.

I never brought this up to him, I never said that this was something I wanted or needed. He might make anti-semitic jokes sometimes, but he wasn’t talking to a Jew. He was talking to me, and he knew this was important to me, and he wanted to show that I was important to him.

I was in Kiev the day before Yom Kippur, wandering around with my friend Rachel searching for the El Dorado of Chinese Restaurants. She suggested we ask outside a music shop where a groovy Ukranian dude was smoking a pipe. He didn’t know where the restaurant was, but we went inside anyway. A man approaches me, says his name is Sasha. I tell him that I live in a small village and while I have a guitar, I’m in the market for another one. I’ve been trying to teach some kids to play, but it’s hard when you only have one.

We get to talking. Where is your accent from? America. I have relatives in America! So do all Ukrainians. My relatives are Jewish. I’m Jewish. So am I.

The next ten minutes are a blur, us comparing synagogues in Kiev, playing Jewish geography, talking about our favorite Rabbis. We start throwing Hebrew into our Ukrainian and English mix (he lived in Israel for 8 years). We are talking about our identity and our heritage and our religion and our atonements. He asks me how much I wanted to pay for a guitar. I said 400 hriven. He grabs one guitar. It says 600 hriven. Take it, he says. I can’t, I say. You are right, he says. Take this more expensive one instead. And a free bag to boot.

I don’t know how to repay you, I said. Achi, he says, Mi Brat, he cries, my brother, he proclaims. You don’t have to. You are doing good work.

In our parting words, after exchanging numbers, we wished each other the traditional Yom Kippur wish. Gamar Chatimah Tovah. May you be sealed in the book of life.

And here was Sasha, a man who had lived in Israel and yet chosen Ukraine as his home, a man who has read Shevchenko and yet surely knows of Nachman, a man who identifies as a Jew to a strange American he meets in his store. Sasha showed me I do not have to choose this world or the other, I do not have to be either a Jew or an American or a Ukrainian or one of them or one of us. Life can be much more inclusive, if only we open our hearts and minds to let it.

So I forgive the Hassidim for their Hatred and Intolerance, I forgive the Ukrainians for the Past and their Ignorance, I forgive Shaul for his over active Labido and I forgive my Director for his anti Semitic Jokes. What other choice do I have?

And so instead of concerning myself with symbols of things past I will continue to immerse myself in the actions of things present. I will keep giving guitar lessons and keep teaching English and keep throwing around the baseball and keep building trash cans and keep making the Ukrainian famine as important to me as it is to them, and keep on being proud that I am a Jew, and keep on lighting the candles every Friday evening.

This is how I choose to clap, this is how I choose to bring holiness to a place. And maybe, if I clap loud enough, the Hassidim and the Ukrainians and Shaul and my Director and the Jews of the world and the bigots of the world, maybe, just maybe, they’ll begin to start clapping, too.

Hey all! First off, great news. We raised the money for the trash can project! Hold on to your wallets for now, because for sure there will be more projects to come. On another note, here is the slideshow i promised a while back. First High Speed Internet Connection! Jeremy

Hey everyone! Below is a slideshow of when some kids and I picked up some trash on our street. We do bi-weekly trash pickups in the neighborhood. Litter is a huge problem here, and actually I have started my first project to combat the issue! I applied for a grant for $500 from this organization to build trash cans in the school shop class. We are then going to place the trash cans around the village, and have the kids set up a volunteer system to collect the trash and bring it to the trash hole that works as the dump.

Anyway, now I need your help! Please go to this website http://appropriateprojects.com/node/333 and read about my project. If you'd like, please then contribute a small amount of money to fund my project. I've already gotten the money, but this organization does its fundraising on the tail end. Please support my project so I can hopefully get more grants in the future. (Note: I am not looking for one major donor. In fact, I'd prefer smaller donations of about 10 dollars. This is a part of Peace Corps Goal 3, bringing it back home) Thanks!

(Note: Slideshow didn't publish. Will try again soon)

The sky looks bigger here.

Its hard to say why, its hard to pinpoint whether its a change in perception or a change in landscape or a change in my geometric position on the Earth. All I know is that every time I look up I am staring at something far grander than I used to see back home.

Then again, I’ve got some time to see what the sky has to offer. During Pre-Service Training, there was hardly time to breathe. Another lesson was to be planned or another noun tense to be studied. And I’m certainly busy here at site, playing with kids and meeting community members, writing grants and picking up trash. But some days, like today, a SUnday in late August where rain drizzles the day away, I find myself with some time. Usually all I have to do is poke my head outside onto the street and I’ll be bombarded by children, just looking for something to do. “Budesh Hulyatee, Dzeremi?” Won’t you come out an play? But today the calls are nought, today there is rain.

I think back to my own childhood, rainy days in Paramus, New Jersey and sunny summers at Camp Tel Noar and everything I had that they don’t. Every time I;m too tired to play, I remember that these kids can’t pop inside and look for a good movie on cable or surf the web for some cool new game. And for many of them, their parents can;t be there to occupy their time, because their parents are at work or working in the fields, or drunk, or 200 miles away, or 6 feet under ground.

When I was younger, my parents had a rule on school nights. One hour of television, no more. Want to be entertained? Read a book.

And read I did, devouring novels and biographies and mysteries and Anecdotal legends of American Folk Lore. But at some point the rules melted away, and Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill and the Boxcar Children were replaced by Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin and the children of South Park. Suddenly, if I wasn’t watching the tube I was sitting on AOL, waiting for the girl I like to sign online so I could see if her away message reflected that inside joke we had made together in science class.

The Internet made my emotional teenage years at least a bit more full of angst. And I can only begin to imagine the compounding of this angst in an age of status updates and tweets and BBMs and a small black box in your pocket that irrevocably intertwines you and the world.

Its pretty easy to see the benefits of our newfound connectedness. The breadth of human knowledge is at our fingertips. We can find friends long since forgotten in an instant. We are never alone. And any time we need direction we can just flip on our GPS and that robotic female voice can tell us where to go.

I am of the last generation of Americans who will remember life without the internet. When I walk around my Ukrainian village, a place yet to be saturated with PDAs and IPhones, I try to imagine the pluses and minuses High Speed Internet will bring. We will expose the children to a world that they never knew existed. Yet at the same time, we will expose the children to a world we never knew existed.

A few years ago, a few of my friends started their own independent music label called Underwater Peoples. These entrepreneurs devoted much of their company’s time to producing actual Records, 7” and 11”, and CDs, mix tapes from High School days past. In an increasingly digital age, their endeavor was an ode to the tangible, and ode to the real.

On of the artists who has contributed to their label is a folksy guitarist and part time poet who goes by the stage name Liam the Younger. The first song on his album After the Graveyard has one of the most beautiful and prescient words about the internet I have ever heard:

“And some day the internet will be our version of the Wild West

And we will be remembered as we now remember them

Some will be folk heroes, and others will be villains

As we sing the songs, oh the song about them.”

We are entering unchartered territory, a great global frontier journey that lacks a GPS to guide us, no crystal ball or algorithm to tell us where we’re heading. And we’re heading there mighty fast, and I’m relishing the chance to slow down, just a bit, just for a while.

I’ve had this theory for a while now, this notion that my generation, that first generation who came of age along with the internet, can be classified as Generation Delta, constantly changing over time. Things are moving so fast that no matter how many times that robotic voice tells us to turn left 500 feet ahead, we don’t hear her. For as fast as we are going someone is inevitably going fast, and suddenly we here of some doomed Donner pass and we take it, all the while knowing we may be digging a shortcut doubling as a grave.

I recently read an article in the New York Times, about a group of prestigious psychologists who conducted an experiment with themselves as the test subjects. Leaving their cell phones and email behind, they went on a five day rafting trip, as a test to see whether people’s attention, and general brain function, has been altered by our addiction to technology. All the scientists, skeptics and believers alike, felt something change by the end of those five days. As one scientist put it, “you hear things you didn’t hear before.”

I hear things here I didn’t hear before. I go outside and I see a sky that stretches on forever, stars that give the darkness a glimmer of hope. Every day feels truly beautiful, and I just can’t tell if its that life is slower or that I’m not checking my email every five minutes or if the lack of pollution and skyscrapers has just upped this place’s rank of the visually appealing scale. Or perhaps its just a delusion, my own desire to try and be happy here fooling me into thinking that things are grander, all around.

My mother told me to take a kindle. “What will you do when you run out of books?” My father keeps pushing me to get internet access. “How can we talk to you? How can we see you?” My friends still think I’m crazy and maybe I am. And I could still get a kindle and I could still work on getting internet but I’m happy the way things are, and I think a part of me is afraid that if I get to connected, I’ll again be trapped by the yoke that forced me to flee halfway around the world in order to escape.

So when the Director of my school, who is slowly becoming my Ukrainian Folk Hero, talks of his dream of bringing high speed internet to the village, I am torn. I see his dream, I empathize with his vision. And yet I have come to truly appreciate this way of life, to value what it is they hold dear. I love that kids play together in the middle of the street and that neighbors don’t need to call before popping by and that everybody is in it together because, frankly, the same cold winter is coming for us all and the same gigantic sky looms above us.

Something about the internet changes all that. It makes the world go a lot faster and it makes the world a hell of a lot bigger and suddenly, when you can play chat roulette with people all over the world, when you can watch live views of the New York street half a world away and when you can let all your friends across the globe know what you are thinking and feeling at a given moment, the sky above just doesn’t seem so big.

A few years ago, after returning from my junior year abroad in Warsaw, Poland, I concocted another in a long line of wild schemes pertaining to my future. Following a late night/early morning, alcohol induced conversation with my friend Sam, we hatched our plan. Over the course of a year, we would travel the world, each week visiting another Jewish community. In our minds the trip would take us from Melbourne to Mexico City, from Johannesburg to Yemen, from Lima, Peru to London, England.

For Sam and I, it was not simply a thirst for adventure that fueled this quest. We had both grown up in the Conservative Jewish movement, we both had Jewishly active parents and grandparents, and we both felt a personal connection to our faith and culture. Sure, we wanted to see the world, but we also were looking for something we knew existed, however veiled and convoluted this something may have been.

Eventually our around-the-world dream puttered out. Financing was hard to come by, a combination of a bad recession and the mild insanity of expecting wealthy Jews to indulge a couple of hyperactive upper middle class lost in the depths of their own thoughts and perplexed notions of society.

We wanted to see if we felt it. We wanted to know if we could show up at a Synagogue with a bunch of people who didn’t look like us and couldn’t speak with us and didn’t seem to be like us and still feel a connection. We wanted to know the strength of this shared experience, the Jewish experience, and to see how strong were these ties that purportedly bind.

Last week, I attended a Peace Corps conference in Kiev about volunteerism in Ukraine. The conference was great for a variety of reasons---I spent a weekend with Natalia, I got a lot of great ideas about volunteer projects I could start in my community, Tamila (my counterpart in Boyarka) and I were forced to really have serious conversations about what we could accomplish together. For me, however, the most jovial part of the conference was the chance to relax and revel and reflect with 30 or so other Peace Corps Volunteers in Ukraine.

The majority of the conference participants arrived with me in Ukraine just a few short incredibly-far-away months ago. But almost a third included stragglers from older groups, volunteers with a wealth of experience and knowledge garnered simply from living a life far different than most can imagine. I also had the chance to see many of my old friends for the first time in two months, familiar faces who I feel like I’ve known a lifetime.

Stephanie is actually the Peace Corps volunteer I’ve known the longest. She was my GSI (graduate student instructor) in a Public Policy class I took at the University of Michigan. In celebration of just another in a long line of understatements, we didn’t quite hit it off at first. As she alleges (and I hardly remember), after the first day of class I came into her office and told her she was being too intense. As I allege (and she hardly remembers) she once saw me out at a bar and refused to acknowledge that I was waving in her direction. Yet it was a brief conversation we had that pushed her to apply to the Peace Corps, and it was a bizarre turn of events that landed us in Ukraine at the same time. As a fellow Wolverine, a fellow Jew, a fellow American, Stephanie and I are able to share with and trust each other in ways I suspect is not often so easy among two strong willed individuals. Furthermore, we have seen each other perhaps a combined 10 days in the last 5 months. But something about being here, something about not understanding the same language and gasping for laughs at the same cultural misunderstandings, makes everything that came before matter a little less.

Bernie is 79 years young, and resembles a caricature of a Jewish grandfather one might find on a mildly hilarious TV sitcom. Back in New York City, where he is from, it probably would be a little strange for me to call him up out of the blue and ask him if he wants to head out to the bar. But that is exactly what we did, every night at the conference. As we knocked back the beers (as a side note, Bernie regularly outdrank me and lightly chastised my lightweight status) and scoped out Ukranian (and sometimes American) girls, it felt like just a few bros having a good time. I sometimes jokingly refer to Bernie as my Peace Corps grandfather. It is probably more accurate to just call him my friend.

Tommy was my roommate at Peace Corps staging in Washington, D.C., and just the simple fact that we knew each other one night before the rest of the gang assigns us to a level of “old friends” that is both completely ridiculous and makes perfect sense. Tommy thinks I’m hilarious, and he has a way of taking my jokes to a whole other level, raising our comedic duo to epic proportions. One of these days, we say, we will have our own t.v. show, our own stand up routine. For now, it suffices for us to keep each other on our toes, and happy.

Dan is practically like a brother at this point. We lived together in Borova during our three months of training, through our ups and downs. Although I am definitely the moodier of the two of us, so more likely my ups and downs. That man is a rock, a running back who pushes back against bullshit lineman thrown his way. His site has been less than ideal, his counterparts less than supportive, his language suffering greatly because they speak Romanian in his small village on the border. But Dan pushes through, because that is what Dan does.

Do i really know any of these people? Its hard to say. But just the chance to roar about football saturdays in the Big House or to klink the occassional glass or share the occasional smile or remember the battle before us is a nice respite from our day to day experiences and challenges.

We understand each other. We express a million emotions back and forth with a smile or a gesture or a Ukranian phrase or a less than desirable toilet.

It is nice to not always be an enigma, a puzzle, an alien, a foreigner, an intricate exhibit. For life is good when we can sit back and relax and revel and reminisce about our shared experiences, to have someone know who we are without it really mattering who we really are.

We are all changing, and yet we are changing together, perhaps not in the exactly the same way but certainly in the same direction, and its a road that no one who hasn’t been where we’ve been can ever understand.

Oh how it is nice to clink the glass and empty the bottle into the wee hours of the morning, discussing everything and nothing, Ukranian women and Ukranian Jews and Ukranian anti-Semitism and Ukranian neighbors and Ukranian smiles and Peanut Butter and Chalula Hot Sauce and the New York Jets and the Appalachian trail and the best Bagel with Cream Cheese and Lox on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

And as we sit with the bottle gradually less and less half full we swap stories and lay future plans that weren’t quite like that and may never be we all seem to understand that we’re just trying to comprehend the shared experience and individual meaning of this wild ride.

Heres a video of my bachelor pad. It is poorly edited. Enjoy!

Last week, I built a seat for my toilet.

Shitting has always been an important part of my life. When I was younger, I used to spend a significant amount of time on the toilet, usually reading. It was my first place of solace, the only room in the house with a lock on the door. I relished in the room’s silence, in its solitude, in its sanctuary. My parents would often begin screaming my name at the half hour mark, warning me of a future hemorrhoids infection or bed sores, et. all.

I was never one of those kids who could shit in the woods. My senior year of high school I went on a three or four day hike in Israel with my classmates, and I remember the unfortunate difficulty I experienced popping a squat just a few hundred feet from our campsite. Suffice it to say the experience did not go well, and constipation kicked in as a sort of self-preservation reflex.

A bad genetic pool (dad, heres to you) has given me a buttox of excessive size and costume, and I have always felt this relegated me certain needs not necessary for the common man’s poop. I need more space, I need more toilet paper, and most of all, I need a place to sit down.

When I first arrived at Natalia's, I was a little hesitant about her toilet. Outdoors, a wooden board hovering over a deep hole, I never imagined I could get used to using such a device on a regular basis. But after a month or so or mentally induced constipation (or physically induced because I started drinking water from the well) my trips to the outhouse became more routine. I got used to it.

When I first arrived at site, Natalia’s outhouse seemed liked the ritz carlton compared to my new accommodations. No place to seat, a hole that was not very deep at all, plus a need to burn my poop every once in a while because otherwise things would start to get sticky and unfortunately that language is not very figurative. The first few weeks were tough, and I would often time my bathroom visits to coincide with my time at school, a safe haven with all sorts of fancy gadgets like toilets that flush.

But then one day I decided enough was enough. I was going to grab hold of my constipation and trepidation. After consulting with my landlord, I grabbed a bunch of bricks and stack them one on top of the other over my pooping hole. I lined the inside with plastic from old bottles, so cleaning shit off of bricks wouldn’t become a weekly activity. I bought a toilet seat in the regional center and placed it on top, and suddenly I was living the high life. Suddenly I could sit down while I shat.

What was perhaps most absurd about this whole procedure was its relative normality in my every day life. The previously inconceivable had become commonplace, even trite. Challenges of last week had became daily rites of today, the life I used to live had become a remnant of some futuristic time into which I had had a momentary, 22 year long glimpse. How does the abnormal become so very normal?

There is a laundry list of daily activities that were once unimaginable and yet now seem all too casual. Every day in the early afternoon I head to the well with two empty buckets of water. Usually I’ll then take one of those, climb the ladder to the roof of my outdoor shower, dump it in, and then refill it, to make sure Ill have enough water for the next 24 hours. If I have to do laundry I’ve got to allot 2-3 hours, so that the water can boil and that I can be sure to get it all done, space being scarce in my limited amounts of buckets.

I don’t remember why people use dishwashers.

If I don’t go to the bazaar on Saturday in the regional center (which means catching the 630am bus) I’m going to have a tough time finding food for the week). But I have to be a little careful walking to the village center so early in the morning because the cow poop is extra fresh, littering a road that is more often trodden on by hoofs than the wheels of a car. Tractors not included.

Free time is a distant memory, kids constantly asking me to play in a foreign language that sometimes I understand and sometimes I don’t, a confusion wrought more confusing by the mix of Russian and Ukrainian in the everyday surgically constructed village tongue.

And yet this is all so normal.

For me, this speaks to the great adaptability of the human spirit. I have often thought here of my uncle, a man who lived a life of crime, who drank and stole and conned his way through about 20 years of his life. And then, he changed. He became a new man. He became a man of God. My uncle is now a Rabbi who runs a rehab center in Los Angeles, He has traded his former surroundings for a new one, a better one, and it has made him a better man.

I, too, am undergoing a transformation, although perhaps not quite as drastic. But that which once seemed right and wrong, that which one seemed hard and easy, has mutated. The scope of what I can and cannot do is being self-examined under a new lens.

They say that change comes from within, and maybe, to a certain extent, thats true. But I think the first step of real change is changing the expectations you have of the world around you.

In the internet age, the world must be at our fingertips 24/7. So when our BBMs take half a minute to go through or the touch screen on our Iphones are slow to respond, the world comes crashing down. But what if instead of expecting the world, we only expected a newspaper, and if instead of expecting to have the ability to talk to everyone, we were contented to have the opportunity just to have a real conversation with a friend or a lover or a relative or a neighbor next door. Change what you expect from the world, and the remainder will be infinitely more rewarding.

I no longer expect a faucet with water and I no longer care about cow poop lining the streets and my fingers are calloused from scrubbing my clothes together. But this is a new world I live in, and consequently a new me, and inadvertently, this was a part of what I was looking for. CHange your situation, and your expectations, and you can change your life.

Although there is nothing in the world like being able to sit down while you poop.

There is a certain loneliness here, a sense that no matter how hard I try I will continue to remain at the periphery of their lives. Sure, there are brief moments of acceptance which though possibly feigned feel increasingly real. But then the next day or possibly the next hour when the alcohol has settled or the moment has passed I return to the sidelines where I belong. I want to help, but I think in their minds I am little more than an experiment, an American to observe and to be observed.

My three weeks at camp were a rush of comedy and drama and excitement and education. I learned a lot, my language progressed, my vantage point of this country and its people continued to morph.

When I first arrived, one of the prospects of the camp experience that excited me most was the other counselors. Ranging from the ages of 18-25, these were a group of young, educated, intelligent and motivated adults, patriotic, interesting, outgoing. These were the people who could become my friends in my increasingly isolated world.

My first hour at camp, not a soul spoke a word to me. I was understandably a bit nervous, unsure of what exactly I was supposed to do or where exactly I was supposed to go next. Finally, somewhere in the middle of hour number two, Katya, the 25 year old head programmer, started quizzing me on my background and purpose and why the fuck am I here, the usual hodge-podge of queries which were old habits by this point. Silence followed by intense interest, strangers to best of friends, this was the beginning of my roller coaster ride at Ukranian summer camp. I wavered between being an asset and a burden, much of the group seemingly undecided as to whether or not they were glad I was there.

The counselors were, for the most part, a tight knit group. I arrived at camp at the start of the second session, the majority of the group having already spent three weeks together, bonding, getting to know each other. And in comes striding this American, with his fancy gadgets and strange attitude and slightly odd sense of humor. And why the hell is he always smiling? What the hell does he have to smile about?

The third night in, the Director of the camp asked me if I would stay up and have a few drinks with some of the other counselors. I readily agreed, eager to ingratiate myself to the group. For the first time I really felt like I was beginning to connect. We were laughing and joking and prodding and poking and we were friends and I was happy. Then the next day came and the reset button had been hit. I was again extraneous. I was again alone.

This was a common occurrence, a few days going by where the counselors would drink without inviting me or the gang would hang out without nary a word to that silly American, then an invitation and a jolly good night followed by days where I was a pale ghost wandering the camp’s pathways. Why was I trapped in these middle school insecurities?

And sometimes, when they weren’t ignoring me, there were treating me like some combination between a child and a slave. Why don’t you go to sleep Jeremy? Why don’t you go shower with the kids? Why don’t you get out of bed immediately? Why are you still awake, reading deep into the night? Why are you here? What do you offer that we don’t, what besides your place of birth makes you special? Who the hell do you think you are?

Kids are remarkably perceptive, and they could often tell that the other counselors viewed me as something immensely less than. And so sometimes when I would tell them not to touch my things they wouldn’t listen. And sometimes when I would tell them to stop talking they would spit more words in my face. And sometimes they began to mimic the same questions as the counselors, who the fuck are you, why are you here, you can’t tell me what to do.

But these moments were all a collection of sometimes, a seeming indecision on the part of everybody there whether they liked me or grossly mistrusted me, whether I was one of them or a perennial outsider who could never belong. Their indecision became my indecision. Their uncertainly about why I was here became my uncertainty about why I was here. And sometimes I felt very alone.

Why aren’t these Ukranians clamouring to get to know me? Why aren’t they all groveling at my feet, imbued with gratefulness for all I have done for them? For all I plan to do for them? Why won’t they be my friends? Why wont they say thank you? Why do I need them to say thank you?

I began to reflect upon an experience I had two summers ago, when I was taking a Statistics class at NYU. A kid in my class was named Jacopo, and he was an art history student from Italy who was spending his summer exploring what he had always heard to be the greatest city in the world. Jacopo was fine---nothing special, not exuding coolness but not terribly bothersome, either. He took down my number, he friended me on Facebook, he texted me to hang out. And sometimes we did. But other time I just didn’t want to bother, it was to much work, his language good but not great, my patience wearing a little too think. He was fine, but I have my life. He was interesting to learn about, but my interest only stretched so far. He was a sometimes. Just like me.

I am now Jacopo. And yet do I regret what I did, how I treated him? Has standing in his shoes changed the way I felt? Unfortunately, not really. I had my own life to live in New York that summer, my own issues to deal with, my own struggles and challenges and girls and friends and activities.

And these people have their own lives, as well. This country will go on with or without me, summer camp would have been summer camp all the same. So how can I continue, knowing that I am forever an outsider? How can I allow myself to care, while knowing that sometimes, others won’t have the time to care about me?

One day at camp, I was shooting around the basketball by myself when I noticed a skinny girl of about ten playing volleyball by herself, if you could call it that. She was smacking the ball in the air as hard and as fast as she could, chasing it down, lathering, rinsing, repeating. The whole process looked ridiculous, and yet I sensed in her some of the same loneliness I felt in myself. She was too old to play on the swings with the little kids, and too small and not a good enough player to get in to the real game.

SMACK and one of her misplayed hits rolled right up next to me. I dropped the basketball and ran the volleyball towards her, and I asked her if she wanted to play.

Her accuracy didn’t get any better with a partner, her gauge of her own strength gave me plenty of exercise as I ran after wild bumps. But I learned her name was Ivana, and I learned she was wildly uncoordinated. I learned she had a great smile, too.

About ten minutes in, the kids needed an extra for their volleyball game, and asked me if I wanted to play. I said I would, but only if Ivana could play, also. The kids protested. So did Ivana. But I stood firm and soon there we were in the midst of a heated completely unimportant game.

When it was Ivana’s turn to serve, she tried to renege. Ya ne Mozhu, she proclaimed, I am not able. Mozhesh i Budesh, I proclaimed, you can and you will.

Turns out she couldn’t. Not on the first try, at least. The second and the third failed too (I convinced the kids to give her a couple extra whirls.) Ivana was devestated, but through a variety of funny faces and self deprecation I managed to dig out a smile.

The next morning Ivana and I practiced her serve for an hour. I showed her different ways she could make up for her lack of strength, how to hold the ball, how to hit the ball, how to believe she could do it. When we stepped into the game later that afternoon, the kids on our team groaned as Ivana stepped up to hit it. The groans morphed into gasps as she smacked the ball in its center out of her flat hand. Gasps turned to cheers of triumph as it sailed over the net and an older girl swung and whiffed, Ivana’s triumph in the form of an Ace.

It didn’t matter to Ivana that the next serve went about 30 feet out of bounds, and that she never really had a good serve the rest of the day. Until she went to sleep that night she had a smile on her face, the satisfaction of her momentary acceptance, the joviality of that brief instance where she was part of the team.

I realized that Ivana did need to always be accepted, she didn’t need to sit with the cool kids at lunch and she didn’t need to be loved by the world and she didn’t need everyone to be her best friend. She was so damn satisfied just accomplishing something, just improving something about herself, that nothing else really seemed important.

I will never be a permanent member of any team here. I will also be the alien, the foreigner, the American, the outsider, the short hairy Jew with contact lenses and fancy gadgets and strange customs and clothes and my God his accent is terrible. I may not become best friends with anyone, I may never truly make it into to some “inner circle.” I will almost certainly never be Ukranian. I can, however, learn to be satisfied with my best.

Accepting things the way they are has never been easy for me. I’ve never been one to take failure lightly. Yet if Ivana has taught me anything, it is that we cannot expect to wake up one morning and be the star, to change the face of a nation, or a village, or a person while standing on one foot. Life here has to be about incremental steps in a positive direction, about going up to the line and trying to land that serve and being happy if just one makes it through.

Sometimes we won’t be welcomed. Sometimes we won’t be thanked. Sometimes we will not be included and we will not happy and we will be lonely and I will be alone.

But other times I have to find ways to be content with small victories, to be satiated by those transient moments of success, however fleeting.

When I arrived at camp Prolicok (pronounced Pro-lee-soak) very early on a Tuesday morning about three weeks back, I was a little lost. I meandered into the campgrounds from my taxi, and stood around, guitar in hoe, for about five minutes without seeing a soul. I tried my best to not look impatient, or nervous, or like an American. I also tried to look cool. Suffice it to say I went 0 for 4.

FInally a man in a car pulled up. “Alexander Alexandrovich?” I asked, the name given to me by Tamila as the Camp’s Director. Yes, he nodded. But he was heading to the regional center for a bit, why don’t I just sort of hang out on that stoop over there.

This was the beginning of my introduction to a different form of summer camp, one void of such American-Jewish staples as morning activities, clean ups, organizational structure, or hyper-concern that a camper might accidentally die from excessively acting like a child.

Its hard to really detail the hilarity of my past three weeks. At least once a day I would start laughing out loud, often at inopportune times, reveling in the strangeness of the experience for an American like me.

As I began to touch on before, American Jewish summer camps are center around a schedule. 740 wakeup. 815 lineup. 825 breakfast. then cleanup, and morning activities, following by a small break before lunch. Afterwards we have more scheduled activites, more plans, more events written in tattoo ink some of which may have been planned a decade before.

Ukranian summer camp is, for the most part, void of plans. When I first got to my bunk, I asked my co-counselor, Nadya, what I should be doing. She sort of shrugged and said, “play with the kids?” I asked her what we would be doing for the morning, and in a weird de-ja vu she shrugged and said, “play with the kids?”

Play with the kids. This job may seem like a cinch to some of you. But kids get bored really easily. And they get bored even easier when you dont speak the language and, while attempting to explain the intricacies of a game, they look at you dead in the face as if you are an alien speaking in clicks and sounds that barely register in the human ear.

Thats not to say there were NO plans. For instance, we ate like clockwork. Every day at 830 was breakfast. Which was followed at 11 by second breakfast, which was usually yogurt or fruit with cookies. This was followed by lunch at 1, dinner at 4, and supper at 7. Every day. We ate five meals a day every day. If I hadn’t stuck to my vegetarianism and been forced to pick at barley every fourth meal, Ukranian camp Jeremy would have been all too reminiscent of plus-size Camp Tel Noar Jeremy. And that Jeremy had a lot of trouble getting girls to dance with him at the socials.

The new and improved Jeremy, however, was dancing the night away with the Ukranian chicks at camp. And by Ukranian chicks I mean the lovely ladies of bunk 7, who range between the ages of 6-10. They thought I was fiiiiiiinnnnneeeeee. And by dancing the night away, I mean every night. Because there was a two hour discto-tech, or dance club. Every night. And the kids never grew tired of it. There are five or six russian pop songs I now know by heart without having a fucking clue what they mean. Luckily if I ever get strand on a Russian version of American Idol I’ll have a fighting chance.

Every day my bunk 7 groupies would vye for my affection. There was Masha, who one day wore a shirt that said “You say I’m a bitch like its a bad thing,” a slogan I noticed in the middle of dinner one day that almost made me joke on my potato. There was Tanya, who could get surprisingly violent, tell me I was a tree and start hanging on my neck in a fashion that made it hard to breath. There was Vika, the youngest of the bunch, who one day asked me why I don’t speak to her in Ukranian. To which I said, “Ya Rozmovleeyayoo Ukrainskoyoo Movoyoo,” I am speaking Ukranian. To which she said, no you aren’t.

While the bunk 7 girls were fascinated by my foreign allure, they had a little trouble grasping why my language was so shitty, or why my accent sounded like I had a cotton ball in my mouth, or why I couldn’t roll my R’s. Also, one of the most frequent questions I received was whether or not I had seen Big Ben. I then explained that I lived in America, not in England. To which they either responded “Hollywood” or “New York.”

While many things at camp were different, some were oddly familiar. Like pubescent teens and their raging hormones. I became pretty close with one of my co-counselors, Nadya, who was 31 and had an almost 13 year old daughter who was one of our campers. One day I walked in on her daughter, Katya, playing spin the bottle with two boys. I yelled at her to stop, and she yelled at me back, saying that I wasn’t her father and she could do whatever she wanted. When I told Nadya about this later, she was gushing with happiness. Her little girl was growing up!

Camp gave me a great peak into gender roles in Ukraine, and how they differ from those in America. The Camp had a small but usable weight room, a few machines, a few free weights. All boys, according to camp policy, had to go to the weight room three times a week. All girls---in the words of Nadya, “they don’t need to go.”

“Cleaning time” occurred every day after breakfast, although it paled in comparison to my own camp cleaning experience. We were graded on the cleanliness of our bunks, and the bunk with the highest mark was rewarded with a prize. Each of the bunks at camp Prolicok had a cleaning lady, so the whole notion of the kids cleaning up after themselves was somewhat of a misnomer. Additionally, all the work of cleaning up in front of the bunk was left to the girls. I can only imagine my mother’s reaction to reading this right now. I assume she is shaking her head and saying something like, “Bella Abzug is rolling in her grave.”

Once in a while, the camp would plan a special activity to do during the day. About mid-way through they planned a relay race through the forest, complete with different games and challenges and acitvities. The whole thing was actually quite cool and original. The caveat, of course, is that the relay race was called “Indian” and all the kids painted their chests, made fake bow and arrows and yelped whooping noises. I mentioned to the Director of the camp, Alexander Alexandrovich, that this whole thing would be considered racist in America. He sort of shrugged and smiled, a then a few days later dropped the n-word pretty casually in conversation.

That being said, the Director of the camp is actually a pretty great guy. Hes smart, accomplished, and gives back to his community. The camp is a side job for him---he works as a middle man for trading goods in the region. He also goes out of his way to make sure that if a kid wants to come to camp but can’t pay, that he or she can still come.

He also was intent on making me feel very welcome. Like my third day on the job, when he pulled me into his cabin right before the evening activity to take shots of vodka. When I quit after three he accused me of not being a man.

Another evening, I was coaxed into having a beer with two of the other male counselors around my age. After the beer they “found” a bottle of vodka. Two hours later, the bottle was empty and they had sat me down to watch those awful “9/11 truth” videos in Russian. I then had to explain to them in Ukranian that, no, I did not think it was a giant conspiracy.

One of the last nights of camp, we celebrated Halloween. What was funny is that in many ways, this faux pax Ukranian Halloween was more true to the spirit of the original American holiday. Everyone dressed as ghouls or witches or vampires or zombies. And girls didn’t use it as an excuse to dress sluttier than usual, as they did at the University of Michigan. At the same time, Ukranian women usual dress heavy on the cleavage to begin with, so I’m not really sure of the next step.

By the time camp was over, I was dead tired. The kids had worn me out, the counselors had fed me booze, my bed had practically broken my back. Yet as tired as I was, and as much as I yearned for the confines of my home in Boryaka, I realized that scarcely a moment had gone by where I didn’t have a smile. Because while to me camp was crazy, to them camp was just camp. But viewing in the prizm of comparison with my own camp experience, I very much feel that, for the first time in Ukraine, I really got a hands on cross cultural lesson.

Also, I got to spend three weeks basically playing with kids, which isn’t half bad.