The Sweetest Goodbye (with Chocolate Chips)

For the past four years, I have been intensely lucky to study full time at an amazing place called The Drisha Institute for Jewish Education. Drisha is an institute for advanced Jewish learning for women of all backgrounds, from the most basic beginners to advanced Talmud scholars. I have loved my time here, and when I look back on how much I have learned, grown and matured, I am truly awed to realize how much has been done for me. However, my time here is coming to a close-- on Thursday, I am graduating their three year Scholars Circle program and will be moving on to start a PhD. I am incredibly sad to be leaving, but will always be grateful for my time here.

As you have likely learned by now, us sisters often bake to express our emotions. So this time, I made something very simple-- chocolate chip cookies-- for my classmates and teachers as a small way of saying thank you. At Drisha, we have a long tradition of what we call celebratory baked goods to share the good things that have happened in our lives with each other. So these are my contribution.

To the cookies-- as you know, I am loyal to the Nestle chocolate chip recipe, but I'm moving in a week and realized I have no butter left, but did not want to bother buying more. So I went looking for a recipe that used oil (because I have a margarine phobia) and found this one, from the kosher caterer Levana's. Although I had some mishaps (think spilling a cup of oil all over the counter), I was really happy with how they turned out. The one thing I changed from the recipe was I ended up baking them longer than was called for. Despite the warning about them getting too hard, they were still very raw after 10 minutes, so I left them in for about 13. And they were delicious.