Shabbat shalom. Man. Nine months studying. I was NOT excited to begin. But now I realize that it’s not about what you do or sing for your preparation. My tutor who is also  my cousin, Rabbi Victor Reinstein, told me that it’s all about the experience and that you learn “man, that wasn’t that hard.” And he was right. I learned that if you just learn the strategy and the way to do things, it’s going to be easy.

Our portion was the story of Noah (If you couldn’t understand all the Hebrew I was singing, I’m going to give you a summary). If you don’t know the story of Noah, it’s about this guy named Noah who receives this message from God. God says because the world is so corrupt, he will destroy the earth by a flood. And Noah’s just standing there like, “Huh?” he doesn’t know what God’s talking about! So Noah, who’s completely baffled, has to create an ark to hold 2 of each animal in the world so there can be a world filled with animals after the flood.