Beit Cafe: Bereshit

The first official Beit Cafe of the year was a huge hit! The theme of the evening was "Bereshit: Getting to Know you." The plan was to have a nice relaxing evening for our classmates to display their talents in a casual setting. In addition to fun, we also wanted the evening to have a tzedakah component to it as well. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was one of the three organizers along with Joel and Daniel. We decided that for this beit cafe all of our proceeds would be donated to the International Movement of Progressive Judaism. I was in charge of organizing the talent show portion of the evening. I put together a program of different acts. They included everything from a dramatic of "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe, to a performance of "Tribute" Tenacious D, to an original poem, to a performance of West (Jerusalem) Side Story, and more. Everyone worked so hard on their acts. It was really nice to see. We have really talented members of our class! Our MCs for the evening were Meredith and Ari. They wrote a really cute song to the tune of "Under the Sea" from the Little Mermaid. I'll post the lyrics below. They were incredibly amusing.

In the middle of the evening was an auction to help raise money for the IMPJ. Some of the items were from students last year that wanted to sell things from their apartment like a hairdryer, heater, map of Jerusalem, a cooking bowl, a shuk cart, etc. These were auctioned off in a silent auction. In our live auction there were services donated by current students such as dinner, a yoga lesson, guitar lesson, etc. Some of the items went for more than 200 sh'kalim! I also happen to be the proud owner of 4 guitar lessons. I can't tell you how excited I am to start brushing up my guitar skills formally.

Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time and did a great job when performing! But the most successful part of the evening for me was that we raised 2400 sh'kalim (approximately $675!) to be donated to the IMPJ. Not bad for one evening of fund raising!

A quick note to those interested: My m'karer (refrigerator) is now fixed! I have cold food again! Life is good.