Indeed, this post is severely overdue. So much has happened since the last time I wrote here that I’m almost not sure where to begin. Therefore, in true non-Israeli style, I shall begin at the logical place: the beginning.

Just over a week ago, we left on our vacation to Rhodes, Greece. In case you were concerned, we took a ton of pictures. In case you were further concerned as to why they are not posted in our photo gallery, let’s just say it takes some time to weed through 160 photographs. A condensed, “highlight reel” of pictures will be posted shortly. In the meantime, what made Rhodes such a nice place to visit was the availability of both nothing and everything, all at the same time. Our first morning there started out with a bit of nothing, and by that I mean sitting on the beach and having no particular place to be, including lunch as we had fully gorged ourselves on the breakfast buffet. Later that afternoon, we headed towards everything, in this case the old city of Rodos. Beautifully kept and much cleaner than the old city of Jerusalem, the old city of Rodos was built to its current size by a group of medieval knights called the Knight of St. John. While much of the old city has been made into a commerce center for tourists, there are still numerous churches (at this point mainly converted to Greek Orthodox), mosques, and homes that look like they hadn’t been touched in hundreds of years.

In addition to beautiful beaches, Rhodes was also once the home of some 5,000 Jews before World War II. Today, there is only one of the original six synagogues still standing in the old city’s Jewish Quarter. We were privileged enough to visit the old synagogue, and once the gentleman who keeps the key heard that 5 rabbinic students were standing outside hoping to get in, he immediately came over, even though the synagogue had technically been closed for over 2 hours.

We spent close to an hour with Sammy, himself a Holocaust survivor, as he told his story in Spanish. Lindy, our friend from Julia’s class and former student in Costa Rica, translated for everyone with a little help from yours truly (turns our a minor in Spanish does come in handy). Visiting the synagogue and meeting Sammy was truly one of the highlights of our trip, and certainly made a lasting impression on all of us.

We returned from Rhodes on September 1st, the day before my 26th birthday. On my birthday itself, we woke up relatively late, and soon thereafter got a call from our friend Tami letting us know that she was in town from Beersheva, a city in the south, where she is volunteering with Project Otzma. We invited her to spend the day with us and to crash on our couch that night. Little did I know that Tami being in town to celebrate my birthday was more than a coincidence.

After a nice, relaxing morning of doing not much of anything, and a delicious sushi lunch, Lindy’s husband Matt and Josh, another of Julia’s classmates, took me to the one and only bowling alley in Jerusalem. As it was Friday evening, around the time that even secular families have dinner on Shabbat, the entire place was empty except for us, which saved us the humiliation of having our pathetic scores displayed before an audience. Nonetheless, we had a good time, and we’ll certainly go back and play again.

I came back into the apartment after bowling to find a beautifully set table for three in our living room/dining room/extra bedroom (have I mentioned the apartment is small?). However, about 30 seconds after sitting down, our next door neighbor Rose knocked on the door and with an incredibly sad face told me that her Vonage (internet phone) was down, and that she need to get in touch with her grandmother. She begged me to come up and help her fix it.

So I trudged upstairs, trying to figure out what could have gone wrong with Rose’s typically stable Vonage, when I opened the door to discover 10 of my friends waiting in her apartment for a surprise Shabbat dinner party. All the food was David-approved, meaning that for the most part it either contained meat, potatoes, or chocolate. We had a very nice evening of food and friends before retiring for the night.

The one thing about my birthday celebration that somewhat disturbed me was the thought of what was happening on the other side of the world at the same time. It has been very difficult to process the events in Louisiana and Mississippi while sitting on the beach in Greece, and then at home in Israel, with only sporadic CNN updates to keep me informed. I’ve been reading whatever I can get my hands on from the internet, but truth be told, that just makes me feel worse for not doing more. And in the name of truth, doing more would mean doing something at all.

So I leave you with this: on the off chance that you were meaning to get me something for my birthday and just didn’t get around to it, go to one of the following websites and make a donation on my behalf. I appreciate your generosity, and so do these organizations that are trying to make a horrible situation a little bit better.

• America's Second Harvest
• The American Red Cross
• United Jewish Communities
• Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger