Driving Driving

Having spent very little of the past 5+ years driving in New York City (aside from the occasional rental car for a trip), a big facet of my life out here in California is driving around. Yes, I not only grew up living in an Ohio suburb where driving was the modus operandi, but also spent a fair amount of time driving in high school and some in my last semester of college, when I finally had a car on campus. Nevertheless, driving around is a big component of my new job.
After starting out driving a minivan for the first few months of work, I am now riding around in my company's car, a Hyundai Accent (pictured at left) (pretty much half the size of the minivan), which is so much easier to park and maneuver and much better at fuel mileage.
The interesting thing with driving around so much with my job is that it reminds me of when I was on regional board for BBYO in KIO. When I was the regional מזכיר and the regional סגן, I visited every chapter/city (Munster, IN, Indianapolis, IN, Louisville, KY, Cincinnati, OH, Dayton, OH, and, of course, Columbus) and some of them I visited more frequently than others (especially Dayton), which included a lot of driving. However, a big difference is that the cities were further spaced out than they are here in southern California. Anyways, I was reminded of all that driving with my current job - it was good highway driving experience :)

Mezuzah on My Mind

A week ago, Rachel and I were in LA and bought a bunch of mezuzot for the house we are renting for at least a year in Long Beach (since there are a lot more doorways in a 3-bedroom house in California than there are in a two-bedroom apartment in New York City) and put them up that evening.
The following day was my first session holding a "Twenty Minutes of Talmud Tuesdays" class at CSULB and I led it on a section in the Talmud about where on the doorway to place a mezuzah. I figured it was relevant in my life since we had to put up a bunch of mezuzos and figure out where to place them.
By Thursday evening, I had noticed, while walking in the patio in the back of our house while holding my daughter that there was a mezuzah scroll on the ground. "How odd," I thought, "it must've just slipped out the bottom of the mezuzah holder." When I went around the back gate, I saw that the mezuzah holder's top and bottom were cast aside and it was parallel to the back gate. The obvious thing that occurred was that it did not fall on its own nor was it done by wind or rain - it was clearly done by a person. What I am hoping is that the removal of our property was a one-time occurrence and hopefully that person did not do it out of malice, nor out of anti-semitism, maybe just because we live in a housing association and it looked slightly different, someone took it off. If it does happen, again, the ADL will know about it.

Moving to California: Heading to the Other Coast For an Exciting Job

After living in New York City for over five years, my wife, my daughter, and I are moving out to Long Beach, California! And even though we just moved into a new apartment less than two months ago, we are packing right back up again.
On 9 November, we will be heading out to Long Beach, California to begin our new jobs. Rachel will be the new Executive Director at the Long Beach Hillel and I will be providing rabbinic support to colleges and high schools in the Long Beach area and in Orange County (my predecessor called the position the Alevy Family Campus Rabbi as part of Alevy Jewish Student Services).

Oh, and here's where you can get jealous: the average temperature year-round is in the 70s ;)