"I Ask Fish for Dinner, Learning Hebrew in Medical School," by MSIH first year blogger Jay Berkes

Hebrew ulpan teacher Michal. 

Hebrew teacher: How was your weekend? (Eykh hayah sof hashavua shelcha?)

Me: I ask fish. (Ani mevakesh dagim.)

Hebrew teacher: What? (Mah?)

Me: I ask fish. (Ani mevakesh dagim!)

Hebrew teacher: You ask what? (Mah ata mevakesh?)

Me: Fish (Dagim)

Hebrew teacher: What did you do? (Mah ata asita?)

Me: I ask fish, and I eat fish. (Ani mevakesh dagim, ve ani ochel dagim.)

Hebrew teacher: Ahhhh, you cook fish. (Ahhh, ata mevashel dagim.)

Me: What? (Mah?)

Hebrew teacher: You cook fish, not ask fish. (Ata mevasheldagim, lo mevakesh dagim.)

Me: I cook fish? (Ani mevashel dagim?)

So goes many of the interactions in my first year Hebrew class. Despite the daily reminder that I couldn’t hold a conversation with a four year old, though, learning Hebrew is an interesting little side project. From practicing the phlegmy throat sounds required for certain letters (think lechayim here) to understanding necessary phrases (where is the bathroom?) to reading and writing, I spend my Hebrew class periods bouncing back and forth between giddy joy that I know something and complete confusion at what’s going on.

Easily the hardest part of learning Hebrew while in medical school, of course, is the fact that medical school tends to get in the way of free time. And learning a foreign language, like training a dog, requires consistent daily practice in your free time. But with such a busy course load, it’s difficult to mentally switch gears into Hebrew learning mode. Luckily, two days a week we have a 2 hour class at the end of the day set aside for such training, and switching gears is just kind of forced on you.

While it’s a little tiring, and progress can be slow at times, learning Hebrew does help me feel slightly cooler when I order falafel or hummus. And as esoteric as that sounds, little victories are the bedrock of learning a new language. It’s easy to forget that when you hang out with anyone from a European country and hear them interact in 2-5 different languages, fluently. It’s also a little difficult to build up a cache of little victories of spoken Hebrew in Israel because so many Israelis are also fluent in English. If I had a shekel for every time I’ve tried to use Hebrew to buy groceries only to get a reply in English, I could probably go grocery shopping twice this week.

Polyglot jealousies aside, learning Hebrew adds a very interesting dimension to my medical school experience. To me, Hebrew represents another world of mystery here. Histology allows me to dive deep into the tissues of the body, and I get to see how nutrients squeeze their way to bone cells. Biochemistry allows me to draw out a map of how molecular interactions allow me to use energy. Immunology lets me see how the body defends against a bacterial infection the same way ancient armies fought battles. And Hebrew gets me further down the path of expressing myself and understanding others in a very novel way. Especially when ordering falafel.

With that said, my day of studying is over and I’m pretty hungry. I think I’ll ask some fish for dinner tonight. 

My New Golden Rule, by MSIH's first year blogger of the month Jay Berkes

Procrastination is usually pretty fun.

That’s what I was thinking this morning when I was riding through the hills outside of Beer Sheva on one of the many mountain bike trails that surround the city. I should have been studying for the upcoming microbiology quiz. Or the upcoming histology quiz. Or the upcoming immunology quiz. I probably should reviewed gluconeogenesis for biochemistry, and I definitely should have looked back over my notes on recombinant DNA technologies for molecular biology.

But, procrastination is fun, so I kept riding. And after our two week break for the Jewish High Holidays, I’ve rediscovered the importance of little vacations like that.

Nitzanim Beach Weekend

---

When you imagine your own personal getaway, the one in the forest, or on the beach, or in the city you’ve always wanted to visit, you do it for the solitude. Your own kind of solitude. You might do it for peace and quiet, or you might just do it for the difference that isn’t in a daily grind. It’s a grass-is-always greener thing, and it’s usually hyperbole. But hyperbole, like procrastination, is fun.

For me, solitude used to be the promise of efficiency; a window of opportunity. “If I can just get away, I’ll finally catch up.” It’s probably why I spent three weeks in a cabin in the mountains of southern Colorado studying for the MCAT. Or why I regularly spent my summers during college 1200 miles away from home…sorry, 1931.21 kilometers away from home. It might even be why I moved to Israel to attend medical school. But my break from school over the last couple of weeks has helped me understand what I really need out of little vacations.

---

As one of the many non-Jewish students at MSIH, with no previous links to Israel, this is my first time experiencing the High Holidays. In the days leading up to our break they were explained to me as a new year celebration in September (Rosh Hashanah), a day where no one eats or drives (Yom Kippur), and a week where everyone eats their meals in little wooden dwellings outside of their houses (Sukkot).

After being welcomed with open arms into a Jewish household for a Rosh Hashanah feast, talking with new Israeli friends about the importance of self-reflection during Yom Kippur, and seeing little beautifully constructed huts pop up throughout my neighborhood I began to get a little more perspective on the traditional undercurrent of the High Holidays. Specifically, the concept of teshuva (תשובה), which literally means “return.” In respect to the High Holidays it means repentance, and the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are especially focused on teshuva.

I’d never heard the word before a couple weeks ago, and I’m still a little fuzzy on the details, but I understood it as a kind of returning to your original nature, or refocusing on your real self. Personally, I’m no longer a practicing member of any religion, so I applied this idea of returning to your original nature and refocusing on your real self to the primary religion in my life: med school.

---

Mountain biking north of Beer Sheva

Moving to a new country is jarring. So is starting professional school. Put the two together, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Our first 6 weeks included an accelerated emergency medicine course, hours upon hours of studying Hebrew, being introduced or reintroduced to some heavy scientific topics, and the many tedious details of securing housing, utilities, groceries, and school supplies.  Throughout those 6 weeks, the holiday break became more and more of grass-is-greener type of window of opportunity; a promise to catch up on the growing list of “things to review.” By the time the break arrived, though, that list had grown so long that it became its own source of stress. I was overwhelmed with class, and I was overwhelmed with break…Until this concept of returning or refocusing started weaving its way through my mind…On one bike ride it reminded me of how inspiring the desert scenery is around Beer Sheva. On one hike it reminded me of how the challenges of medical school are easily trumped by the excitement of learning. And when I shadowed one of the orthopedic physician assistants in the emergency department it reminded of how rewarding patient interactions are.

Nico and Raphy duking it out in Krav Maga. 

My true nature, and my real self, is the reason I came to medical school. Whenever the stressors get too great and I begin to lose sight of that reality, I’ll just need to make use of little vacations to help me return to that reality. Whether that means doing an extra Krav Maga session with my classmates, camping out on the beach for a weekend, or taking the occasional nap, I know that returning to my original self will help check things off my list much more effectively than worrying about how long it’s gotten. And I have my first High Holidays to thank. 

My new golden rule for the next four years: Plan to Procrastinate.

Maybe Medical Students Shouldn't Always Look Before They Leap by Jessie Seiler

My roommate, also a first year MSIH student, just knocked on my door to ask if I had noticed whether the gate to campus we typically pass through was open when I passed by it this afternoon. I hadn’t wandered close enough to be sure, I told her, but it looked shut down from the street. On most days, we pass through an air-conditioned security office on our way to class, showing our student IDs and opening our backpacks for a cursory search. But since it’s Shabbat, and because we’re somewhere between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, we weren’t sure if that particular security check point would be open.

It’s a pretty trivial detail, right? But it’s the type of question that gets tossed around a lot. As first years, we’re still getting the basics sorted out here, and even though things are mostly manageable, we’re getting a sense of what it’ll be like to be in over our heads. Not in a bad way, necessarily. But we’re taking on a daunting task, and there will be times of uncertainty and struggle. We’ve all managed to find decent housing, but one of my friends is struggling to get an internet connection installed. Another has a defective student ID card, one that won’t magically open doors or unlock gates. My two roommates and I tried a few days ago to replace the ancient, exhausted laundry machine in our apartment, which resulted in a minor holiday-eve plumbing emergency. And another classmate was asking me today if I had a solid sense of how much we need to know about the cytoskeleton.

I had no advice to offer on the cytoskeleton, and I was pretty useless during the plumbing emergency, spending the 30 minutes or so when the water wouldn’t stop coming out of the wall taking photos (one of which I’ve included) and laughing merrily about it (my reaction to too many perilous situations, maybe). But lots of people here have good advice to offer about all sorts of situations. I can easily imagine that question about the cytoskeleton being answered in a half a dozen ways, with some of the experienced MSIH upperclassmen suggesting four extra-curricular textbooks that are guaranteed to have, between them, all we need to know. Another student might suggest a series of videos on the internet, and another will probably shrug and tell us to just attend the lectures and take decent notes. Yet another will tell us that we should be spending the first few weeks of school forming close friendships with our classmates and traveling around Israel, since we won’t have the time for that during our second year. And another student will dismiss that as ridiculous, pointing us instead in the direction of studying daily, even now, for the USMLE exam we won’t be taking for close to two years. In any case, it’s always good to ask questions. But we’re finding that we have more options than we can possible evaluate, along with the fresh requirement of sorting through all of them with a grain of salt at the ready.

So how do first-year medical students make decisions? And now that I’m worried about that, how does anybody?

Science done well seems like it’s mostly right, most of the time, for most people. When your doctor prescribes you a drug, her assumption is that you will react to it in the way that pretty much everybody does. But we all live within an unknown distance of a fault line that runs right through the best of our reasoning and experimentation. People with allergies to life-saving drugs are well within the seismic zone, but the rest of us know it’s there, too. My classmate with the inactive ID card, for example, is having one of those crazy experiences, something slightly outside the realm of the average: after all, the other 36 of us aren’t having the same problem. But she could also fall somewhere else on this crazy experiential spectrum. Maybe tomorrow, she’ll marvel at how lucky she is to find 200 shekels on an abandoned stretch of sidewalk.

Most of us fall somewhere within that average range of experience, most of the time. Most of us will win some and lose some. Which is fine, but we all also have to make predictions about how the future will go: will I make the bus if I run, or should I wait for the next one to avoid the possibility of getting stuck in the rain? If I try this new thing, will I like it, or will I wish that I had stayed with my old favorite? Should I take a risk or play it safe? So it’s not just first-year medical students who might be having a hard time making decisions. We all crave the knowledge of what others are doing, and we all want to learn from their experiences, good and bad alike.

So we solicit advice. These Be’er Sheva supermarkets have better produce and more reliable hours; this coffee shop sometimes gives discounts to students; go out with your classmates every time you’re invited to something – no, wait, stay in and study, because you really do need to know a ton about the cytoskeleton. And with this advice, we make decisions, hoping that we fall into the range of mostly all right experiences that most people have, most of the time.

Or maybe it’s not always like that. Maybe decisions can go one of two ways. You can test drive twelve cars, then go back and pick the seventh one you tried: compared to the others, it was the best option, and you’ve heard a lot of good stuff about this make and model. Or you can fall in love with a car you see on the street one day and put your money down, then and there, trusting in the car and yourself and your capacity for hard work to make this decision pay off. Maybe that’s how you have to do it, if what you’re looking for is something truly spectacular, something entirely outside of the ordinary. Something like a career in international health.

If you don’t know how far you are from that fault line where our experience stops being any decent guide, then you might as well take the leap. And if all first-year medical students, and all people, really, are going to find ourselves in over our heads at some point, at least we can choose how we get there, and who we have beside us.

Anyway, it’s Sukkot break! My classmates are scattered around the country, and indeed the world. I’ve included a picture of the strangely empty Caroline house lawn, one of my favorite campus spots, which I am sharing today with just one cat. It’s a little quiet, but it’s a nice change of pace, too. This is my last blog of the month, so you’ll get somebody else’s perspective on the first year experience at MSIH next week. Thanks for reading! Shalom, y’all!

Holy Days by blogger of the month Jessie Seiler

As a student at MSIH, you’ll be offered opportunities to attend Shabbat and holiday dinners with families connected to the school. Take them all, even if you’re not Jewish and you’re nervous about what to wear, what to bring, and not knowing the prayers. I wouldn’t have given this advice a couple of months ago, not being much of a fan of holidays. So here’s an explanation for my change of heart.

I know this is supposed to be a blog about the experience of the first years at MSIH, so I sincerely apologize for the fact that this installment begins in Israel, but then heads back in time to a week I just spent in Portland, Oregon. 

To make up for it, I’ve included a few photos from classmate Justin Hylarides, who has a real skill with a camera.  These are shots from the class trip to Jerusalem, which I missed for the trip to Portland. But after my short holiday, I made it back to sandy Be’er Sheva. I promise the blog post will remain more or less rooted there the whole time.

 To start in the middle of things: A few days ago, I was very, very jet lagged. It’s a long trip back from Portland to Israel, and my trip out there was exhausting, so I spent all those long flights as little more than a sentient pile of comfortable clothing with ear plugs, an eye mask, and an endless appetite for free airplane wine. But I was happy to be back at school, and the timing couldn’t have been more compelling: I had arrived just in time for the holidays. In the middle of unpacking and greeting friends and trying to wrap my reluctant, complaining brain around the quantity of class I had missed, I accepted an invitation to attend Rosh Hashanah dinner with a member of the MSIH faculty, a doctor. And on top of my jet lag, yes, I was indeed nervous about what to wear, what to bring, and not knowing the prayers.

But I shouldn’t have been. It turns out that my general rule for these things – dress as if you’re going to visit your grandmother – holds up fairly well here; that you’re allowed to ask your host if you should bring anything; and that nobody expects you to magically be word-perfect on the prayers of a faith that isn’t yours. That’s not why you’re invited.

I’m not a religious person and my sense of holiness is a little vague, so holidays in the States sometime felt to me like very isolating times. As a kid, I associated them with not seeing my friends for a few days, since they were being whisked off on vacation by their parents or staying behind closed doors for what I could only assume was the torment of spending hours and hours with extended family, soberly playing board games and reverting to the behavior patterns of their childhoods. So I went a little nervously to the Rosh Hashanah dinner.

More than anything, it was a family meal. Sure, the host offered a couple of prayers at the beginning, and we all used the traditional greetings and words wishing each other a good new year. But beyond that, it was really a time for these four generations of a family to be together. We talked about the youngest member of the family, the great-granddaughter, who slept through the whole meal. Somebody made gentle fun of one of granddaughters, who is shy in English and apparently very forthcoming in Hebrew. Pictures were taken and shown off, courses came and went, and conversation flowed in Hebrew and English.

Through the haze of jet lag and the stupefying effect of a delicious and very long meal, I realized that I had been asked over for a holiday by a complete stranger. We don’t often consider doing that in American culture. But how special is it to invite somebody into your home? We do it so often on mundane occasions – the repairman comes around to fix your washing machine, or your friend drops by to pick up that book you promised her – that we don’t see it as being that big of a deal. But we know it’s different for holidays. All the traditions your family has spent generations accumulating are there to be shared with a stranger. All the closeness and intimacy of a family gathering are being observed by an outsider. When you bring a stranger to your home for a holiday, you’re inviting them to join this intimate moment of communion: communion both between family members and between what is human and what is holy.

Which brings me back to my reason for missing the class trip to Jerusalem, on top of several days of class. Oregon is ten time zones away from where my classmates were attending class lectures and histology quizzes and important meetings, and I was there for my brother’s wedding. My brother and I weren’t really raised together. Being invited to the wedding wasn’t like being invited as a stranger to the Rosh Hashanah dinner, but I would still be seeing family members I hadn’t had a chance to be with since I was very young. I would be defining my place in this family by attending the wedding.

I could talk about how beautiful the occasion was forever, but I’ll try to be brief. To see my brother and new sister-in-law stand together and make a promise was to witness a miracle, and the act of adding my blessing to those of their other family members and close friends was the closest I’ve felt to holy action in years. Because to be included in a wedding like that is to be invited to a holy day. You come together, everyone gathers close, you sing or speak or whisper a blessing out loud and hope that it comes close to the one that is moving through your heart, mind, and whole body in a way you could have sworn (because you’re a medical student) was reserved for your blood alone, and something about your coming together to celebrate, thank, and bless offers protection, comfort, and joy.

It was a much greater moment of communion than what I would be experiencing in a few days at the Rosh Hashanah dinner, but it prepared me for it: to see the holy and the human, and to accept a place in a community when you’re invited in.

So that’s why my advice to future MSIHers is to go to all the holidays they can. Because attending a brother’s wedding and being invited to a holiday dinner have a lot in common with what it felt like to be embarking upon a public health program, or what I imagine meeting a new patient for the first time will be like. It’s about learning how to accept a generously offered place next to somebody new or in a new world and family, at a moment when something holy is happening.

"Every day is Valentine's Day at MSIH", by blogger of the month Shauna Dunton

Valentine's Day

The middle of February marks our 6th month of attending the Medical School for International Health, of living in Be’er Sheva, Israel, of knowing and growing very close with our classmates, and of being far away from our loved ones at home.

Our time here is truly flying by.  We have learned so much and we have gotten so close to one another in such a short time.  In fact we have become so close as a class that we find any excuse to spend more time with each other which is quite incredible considering we spend eight hours a day with each other at school already, not to mention that most of us live together. For example, we recently celebrated Valentines day together as a class by having a “breakfast for dinner” Valentines Day Feast complete with card signing for each and every student in our class. There were heart shaped pancakes, french toast dyed pink, and loads of loving glances at one another as you might expect at such an event.

In other news, this past Thursday, two of our classmates played in Light Opera Group of the Negev’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. It was an amazing production and about half of our class came out to support them in this great endeavor. The acting and the dancing were spot on and I know we’ve all got those catchy tunes still stuck in our heads a week later.

Fiddler on the Roof

Last but not least, on Monday night a group of woman from all years of MSIH put on a spectacular production of the Vagina Monologues. I had watched a production of the monologues performed at Colgate University where I went for undergrad, but as another student in our program pointed out, it was quite powerful to see this production done by an array of multi-talented women that are all going to become doctors.

Vagina Monologues

You might think at this point in my blog post that we may not realize that we are here to study medicine, but believe me, we do! I will elaborate on all the things we are doing in the classroom in my next blog post.

Until then, lehitra’ot!                                                 - Shauna Dunton, 1st year blogger of the month

For the incoming first years.....by blogger of the month, Virginia Byron

I’d like to conclude my stint as class blogger with some parting words of wisdom from my classmates to the incoming MSIH Class of 2018 as they patiently await the beginning of their next adventure.

We sat around the bonfire one night during our last month of class and compiled a First Year Bucket List to pass down. It is our wish (and expectation) that you will create your own unique experience over the next year, and that surely you won’t need any help from us in figuring that out. These suggestions are more a reflection on our year and the things that made it especially rich.

Dear first years,

“Keep your classmates close.”

“NAJEEB 4 EVA” (you’ll figure that one out in due time)

“Take time to learn everyone’s story. This school attracts many incredible people.”

“Be inclusive.”

“Have Shabbat meals together for the first month, even if it’s just hummus and pita.”

“Relax, travel as much as you can, and take it as it comes.”

“Loosen up.”

“Take time to be involved (volunteer, school activities, anything in the community around you) so that you don’t miss the amazingness of being here in the whirlwind of studying.”

“Figure out your best study habits early and stick to them.”

 “Appreciate all that your classmates have to offer. There are some amazing people around you.”

 “Love life.” (not that you need a reminder, I’m sure)

And finally,

“Don’t listen to anyone, do whatever you want.”

Love, 2017

Stay tuned for a final post from a very special guest blogger, back by popular demand!

Yom Hazikron, Memorial Day, by Baila Litwak

Military base 

            Every year Israel celebrates those who have fallen protecting the country since her independence in 1948 until today. On Yom Hazikron, Memorial Day, we remember the soldiers who died in the field, those who we’re in service but passed away from non-military causes, and those killed by terrorism. This year I spent the night of Yom Hazikaron at an air force base. Like so many families in Israel, my boyfriend’s family has lost someone in the line of duty and we went to his base to pay our respects. Every base where someone was killed takes responsibility to commemorate that person every year thereafter and has a Yom Hazikaron ceremony for those fallen heroes. At the air force base, every family of a soldier killed is assigned a current air force soldier to escort them. First stop was the memorial building where the names and ranks of every soldier who died from the base is displayed on the wall and there were pictures and biographies of every one of them that the visitors could read. Then was a dinner at the general’s club, and finally the ceremony. The ceremony had speeches, and songs, and every person’s name who died from the base was read. The whole night was very well done and clearly showed how important the base feels it is to dutifully honor their men and women who have died.

            On the day of Yom Hazikaron itself people go to the military bases to visit their fallen family members. On the way to the cemetery youth groups hand out flowers that people can bring to the graves, and volunteering soldiers hand out bottles of water. At each military grave in the country there is a soldier who is assigned to stand there from early in the morning until the memorial ceremonies are over. Each soldier who has been killed has a soldier from his/her same unit standing by his/her side. Just like the base takes responsibility for those who have died from their base, the units never forget their soldiers and they make sure to have someone, every year on Yom Hazikaron, honoring those who gave their lives for us and the country.

            The beauty of Yom Hazikaron is that every soldier is remembered. Every one of those soldiers were fighting for the same things, safety and peace, and every one of them is remembered for that. At both the ceremonies I attended the speeches spoke about the diversity of the men and women who fight for Israel and how even with that diversity all Israelis share the same past, fighting for our right to exist in safety, and have the same hope for the future, peace.

            The night that Yom Hazikaron ends Yom Haatzmaut, Independence Day, begins.  Yom Hazikaron is one of the saddest days, along with Yom Hashoa, and Yom Haatzmaut is the happiest. The juxtaposition of those two days shows the reality in which we live in Israel, fighting to protect ourselves while celebrating our home and all the incredible things it has to offer. That night there are concerts throughout the country to help people transition from sadness to fun. The next day the country gathers with friends and family and barbecues or hikes. I went to a BBQ in Jerusalem and as I entered the city I saw the whole city leaving to be outdoors enjoying the beautiful land.

            The month leading up to Yom Haatzmaut people starting hanging flags from their homes, car windows, and anywhere else they can. On Yom Haatamaut nearly everyone is wearing blue and white. It is truly moving to see how proud people are to live here and how happy that opportunity makes them.  - blogger of the month, Baila Litwak