Fievel and Me

Greeting, welcome to my first ever blog post. For the next nine months I will be interning at non-profits in Jerusalem, Israel and Hyderabad, India (one month in Israel, four in India, then back to Israel for the remaining four) and will be using this medium to share with you all of my experiences, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, vendettas, and personal rantings about the trip.

 Let me begin by giving you a little history as to the name of this blog and my purpose for creating it. First of all, I hope you can gather from the blog's name a certain connection with the timeless childhood film, "An American Tail: Fievel Goes West." It is the story of a cartoon mouse, Fievel Mousekevitz, who immigrates from Russia to the United States with his family to escape persecution from the Russian cats (I'm hoping you get the analogy). Anyways, the title of my blog really has nothing to do with the Jewish mouse other then the fact that I was looking for a creative blog name and this was the best I could think of. However, when sharing the prospective name with my parents, they told me a Kutler family classic I had almost forgotten. When my brother was a young boy he loved Fievel. He had to watch the movie all the time. Around the same time as Ben’s Fivel obsession, Sears was selling an oversized stuffed animal version of the mouse, complete with beret and tunic. My parents tried to get the stuffed animal as a surprise for my brother but the Sears near their house was sold out. My dad ended up going to several stores and then finally acquiring the mouse at a Sears nearly an hour away in northern Baltimore. After working tirelessly to get the toy they revealed it to my brother, who to their dismay, looked at it for a moment and said, “What is it?”

So in honor or my parents, who have worked hard to give my brother and me everything we have dreamed of-- from stuffed animals to a year abroad in India and Israel-- this blog is dedicated to you. Thank you. I hope to explore Israel and India with the same energy and zest for knowledge as Fievel did when he arrived in America.