Head (Whole Body, Actually) in the Clouds

I'm sitting here on a plane - a Boeing 737-700, to be specific - flying high above some mountains. I don't know which ones. Maybe they're the Alps. Or the Rockies. Or maybe even the Catskill Mountains (I have my suspicions about that one). All I know is that we're somewhere between Israel and Hungary. In fact, I know that we must be headed to Hungary because everything on this plane says "Malev HUNGARIAN Airlines" in big bold letters (we Hungarians are very proud of our airplanes, thank you very much).

So what am I doing, heading to Hungary? Good question. I'm glad you asked. Let me back up a little, and I'll explain.

My yeshiva has a tradition of organizing a trip each year to mekomos hakdoshim in Eastern Europe for those interested, shortly before Pesach. Last year, for instance, we traveled all over the Ukraine (some of my more keen readers may have spotted references to "The Ukraine Chronicles" in older posts on my blog - that was supposed to be a series of articles about our Ukraine trip, but they never quite materialized). This year, we're travelling to (or at least through) no less than five countries: Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, and Poland.

The trip is actually critical in helping the yeshiva function properly in the second half of winter zman. Here's why: as you undoubtedly know, there is an unfortunate syndrome that exists in many yeshivos known as "sof zman": as the long winter zman moves into its waning half, bochurim may begin to slack off a bit and start coming late to - or even skipping - sedorim. Not in our yeshiva, though: we have an "incentive" program, whereby if a bochur comes to all tefilos and sedorim on time (except for a few token misses which are allowed), he will receive discounts on the price of the trip, depending on his record. If a bochur has a near-perfect record for the entire latter part of the zman, plus he accomplishes certain bonus goals - such as making a siyum on the entire masechta being learned in yeshiva - then he earns the entire trip for free.

Baruch Hashem, this program is astonishingly successful, and our beis medrash remains packed with bochurim learning all their sedorim b'hasmada rabbah, long after the point where guys may otherwise begin to drop out. It is truly a kiddush Hashem to behold.

But I'm digressing (you older readers know that I tend to do that quite a bit; you newer readers better get used to it quickly). The point of this article is the trip. And I am pleased to announce that although on last year's trip I was dismally delinquent in in my reporting (come to think of it, this entire YEAR I've been dismally delinquent in my reporting), I will attempt not to be so dismally delinquent this year. (Yeah, I know the "dismally delinquent" stuff is probably getting annoying by now, but I like how it sounds. Dismally delinquent dismally delinquent dismally delinquent.)

This year, I will b'ezras Hashem be reporting directly from the scene... WITH PICTURES. That's right. Pictures. Yeah, I know I used to be against posting pictures on my blog for many reasons (privacy concerns of the people in the pictures, bandwidth consumption for mobile users, etc). But after trying it out with "The Purim Brigade" (below), I decided that maybe pictures are not such a bad idea after all. Especially since, in the words of some famous dead person, "a picture is worth a thousand words" - so that'll make my standard dismally delinquent 800-words-or-so posts a cinch to write.

So join me, dear readers, as we begin our journey into Eastern Europe. You won't even need a passport. You will even be spared the agony of eating dismally delinquent airline food. All you gotta do is check back here on a regular basis. Compared to how I used to post once a week or so back in the day when this blog was popular, this week will be a relative roller-coaster of posts, with a minimum of one or two posts every single day - maybe even more, depending on the amount of activity that day. True, they probably won't be 800-word articles, but it's better than nothing, I assume.

Okay, we should be landing soon. I'm going to stop writing for now. So I'm signing off with these words of wisdom:

Dismally delinquent dismally delinquent dismally delinquent.