Shabbat

This weekend I had my first real Shabbat in Jerusalem. Last weekend was a bit of a let-down--on Friday night we students davened with a random group at the Regency Hotel who turned out to be some branch of Sephardim that mumble through everything, and then I slept through Saturday morning. This weekend was better. I moved into religious housing for the Shabbat aspect, but it turns out that my roommates either go home or visit family for Shabbat, so I had the apartment to myself. Friday night and Saturday morning I attended Ramat Gan, a Masorti (Conservative) synagogue just five minutes away from Kfar Studentim. I was really surprised to find a Masorti synagogue so close; Orthodox synagogues abound in Jerusalem, but Masorti synagogues are harder to find.

Ramat Gan definitely has an older population, but the congregants are friendly. I met multiple people who had ties to Brandeis, and others who were just curious about what I was studying. I find some comfort in the fact that I was able to understand when the gabbai called out page numbers in Hebrew, even though that's simple vocabulary--Level Alef (1)--and they weren't my page numbers anyway since I was davening out of my Sim Shalom. The d'var Torah was entirely in Hebrew, so I didn't catch much of it--he was talking about democracy and connecting it to the parsha somehow. Maybe I would have understood more had I read the parsha, but I don't know. I think the man who gave the d'var was American; he definitely didn't have an Israeli accent, and I could understand him better than I can understand Israelis. He spoke slower, too. But what good is my Hebrew if I can't understand it when Israelis speak?

I have to go back to class now. Break is over.