meeting with destiny

The next day, the 22nd of December and the 5th of Tevet, is also a special day in the Chassidic calendar; for some reason, I was never quite sure why, it is a special day of books, and people are supposed to buy books, and give each other books.
(side note: very sweetly, Mayanot got a book for each of the girls here, Feminine Spirituality, a translation and discussion of a discourse by one of the Chabad Rebbes. Although the book itself seems interesting and the ideas perhaps even inspiring, it is painfully obvious that the editors did not even use spellcheck—the first sentence in the preface describes the books as a great addition to the “Chassidic Jewish Herirage series,” and that is only the beginning…sigh.)

I had the chance to meet up with a friend of mine from when I had studied in Berlin with the Leo Baeck institute; although Omri is an Israeli, he and his wife have been living for some time in Stockholm, so it was an occasion to see him in the Eretz. The meeting was proof that although I have been living here for nearly four months already, I still don’t necessarily know all there is to know of the area, and he showed me a coffee shop, and then a tasty café that I hadn’t seen before.
Although he personally is Israeli secular, I was telling him about what I am doing here, and the studies I am doing at such a frum institution, and about how the previous day had been my Hebrew birthday, and we had a fabrengen. Suddenly inspired to know what his Hebrew birthday is, he took out his Israeli ID to check (interestingly, government issued IDs still have Hebrew birthdays as well as secular dates listed on them). Since his English birthday was coming up, he thought maybe his Hebrew one was, too. And what do you think?—his Hebrew birthday is the 5th of Tevet, that very day. Coincidentally, we had stopped at a second-hand book store already and bought some books, honoring both his birthday and book day…we agreed that it was appropriate that his birthday should be book day, and he an academic.