Tzfat

I spent this past weekend in Tzfat, one of the four holy cities (the others being Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberias). I was there once before, in high school, and I remembered it being beautiful. As someone who goes to Friday night services pretty regularly, I love thinking about the fact that this is where Lecha Dodi was written, and really Kabbalat Shabbat as a whole was formed. The city has a lot of spiritual meaning.

The trip started out on Thursday by discovering that the 982 bus to Tzfat doesn’t actually leave from the Central Bus Station, even though that’s where you buy your tickets. Also, the big “23” on the ticket dosen’t mean “gate 23” but rather a zone. So… Lynley and I missed our bus and had to wait two and a half hours for the next one. Yay. At least I finally got to check out the mall that’s in the Cental Bus Station, and obtained something that you’ll probably only find in Israel—haggadot in a dollar store.

We finally made it to Tzfat around 7pm after a three and a half hour bus ride up and down and around lots of mountains. (It’s Israel.) Guidebooks tend to only spend a page on Tzfat as part of the section on the Galilee, so we got off the bus and had to wander around until we found a sign for our hostel, Ascent. “Go up the stairs and follow the map,” it said—what map? There was no map! Thankfully I remembered that someone at the office had called my phone to confirm our reservation, so the number was in my phone and I was able to call them for directions.

The thing about Tzfat is… even with a map, you get lost. It’s one of those places that maps can’t really handle, like the Old City of Jerusalem. For example, this:

That’s a road. There’s no signs and no stores or houses on it to indicate that it’s a road, no street numbers, but it’s very definitely marked on the map as Ma’alot Olei HaCardom. Such is Tzfat.

The first place we tried to go for dinner, Café Bagdad, kicked us out saying that they were only serving coffee, even though they were open for another half hour. (This was 8:30pm.) So we went to the next place the people at Ascent recommended, Café Milano. There we discovered that even though Tzfat is mainly known for kabbalah and art, there’s actually another piece to it: cheese. According to the faulty map there was entirely a whole cheese museum! (In actuality, no such place exists.) Anyway, this meant that there were a lot of cheese dishes at Café Milano. Lynley ended up getting something called “halumi salad,” which was actually pasta in teriyaki sauce with cashews, bell peppers, and halumi cheese. I got a cheese platter with roasted vegetables. Lynley very much got the better deal; her halumi salad was amazing. (I know cause I got to try some.) Take a look:

My cheese platter was okay. I really liked the labane, but of the other two cheeses one was okay and the other I didn’t really like. The veggies were also okay, not wonderful. But Lynley’s halumi salad… wow! Amazing. Just amazing.

After dinner we headed back to Ascent and went to bed. Then on Friday we woke up early and went to explore Tzfat before everything closed for Shabbat. Our first stop was Safed Candle Factory, where they really make art out of candles. Like, for example, the Temple:

or a whole bunch of penguins:

There was also one of David and Goliath and one of Samson tearing down the Philistine temple, but I wasn’t so interested in those. While we were there we also eavesdropped on a tour guide teaching a family a bit about how regular havdallah candles are made, basically by dipping string into melted wax multiple times and then weaving the tapers together while they’re still hot. It’s pretty cool. I actually spent as much money at the candle factory as I did for two nights at Ascent, which either says something about how cheap Ascent is or how impressive the candle factory is. Maybe both. And no, I did not buy a penguin—their faces were too weird.

From the candle factory we poked our heads into the Ari Synagogue (looks like a normal Orthodox synagogue, minus the women’s section) and proceeded to a street lined entirely with galleries of more conventional art—paintings, jewelry, and Judaica. There were some really beautiful things there, all of it expensive. There was even one shop where we got to watch weavers at work, which was really cool although I don’t understand why anyone would spend more than $100 on a really plain-looking matzah cover.

And of course we had to go find the cheese. There are signs all over the place saying “Tzfat cheese à” or “holy Tzfat cheese à” all of which led to another and then yet another sign. Reaching the cheese factory is like going thorough a maze, literally. When we get there it was just a little place—a table covered with different cheeses, a few tables for sitting down, and a room with vats in it that are used to make the cheese. Unfortunately we didn’t get to find out how cheese is made (we’d have to come back on Sunday for that, except that we were leaving Tzfat on Saturday night), but we did get to try every single one of his cheeses. They weren’t expensive, either; I got small pieces of feta and the special Tzfat cheese for only $10. That plus the four rugalach I’d brought from Jerusalem were more than enough for lunch.

Cheese:

So Friday was good. Shabbat… not so much. It’s odd because when I said I wanted to spend a Shabbat in Tzfat, I was warned that Ascent was really, really Orthodox—which is true. However, I’ve spent Shabbat with the Orthodox before, and as long as I know I’m there for Shabbat and not for a long period of time, I even sorta enjoy parts of it. Organizations that reach out to non-Orthodox students tend to be really concerned about how you’re doing and completely willing to talk to you about Orthodoxy. They have this kind of excitement to them. The people at Ascent… didn’t really. There was a shiur before Shabbat, but it didn’t really go anywhere. After that was supposed to be “Candlelighting and orientation,” but in reality it was just lighting on our own and sitting around until time to go to services. Dinner wasn’t with families in Tzfat, as it usually is at Ascent, but all together in a room in the hostel with not so wonderful food. Saturday was more of the same, if not worse; downtime until lunch unless you got up in time to go to 8am services at a synagogue of your choosing, a meal in which there was no vegetarian option (brisket and potatoes that were cooked together with the brisket), more down time until 4:45, an hour-long tour of Tzfat, and then more down time until dinner and even more downtime until havdallah!

Honestly, if I wanted to stay in my room and read and eat crappy found, I could have stayed in Jerusalem. I wasn’t too pleased with Ascent Shabbat. Usually they pay attention to us. Usually there’s singing and words of Torah and decent food when Orthodox organizations try to draw people in (and presumably the rest of the year, too), and that’s what I was expecting. That’s what I paid for. I feel like it would have been different if we’d gone to families for meals, but the website made no mention of the fact that Shabbat HaGadol isn’t a Shabbat where we get hosted. If it had, we probably would have come another weekend.

It all just seems very odd to me. They asked us twice if we were vegetarian—once on the registration form, and once when they called to confirm our registration. There was at least one other girl in our boat, too. If you know more than 48 hours in advance that 3 out of your 10 English-speaking guests are vegetarians, how in the world do you justify ignoring it? Apparently they expected us to just eat the salads, with no warning that we wouldn’t be able to eat the main dish. Thank you very much for your consideration. I really appreciate it.

I think, in the end, I’m still glad I went to Tzfat for Shabbat. As much of a let-down as it was, as much as it was so not worth the 200NIS we paid for it, if I hadn’t done it I would have wished I had. I would have just continued to have this fantasy of Shabbat in Tzfat and regretted never experiencing it. And there were some good parts to it. I discovered that while no one drives on Yom Kippur, the Shabbat of Shabbats, in Jerusalem, no one drives on Shabbat in Tzfat, period. Not a car moving that I could see, at least not on HaAri Street or Jerusalem Street, the only two streets we walked on where cars can actually go. I also discovered that there are basically no cats it Tzfat. The entire time we were there, we only saw two—as opposed to the rest of Israel, where they’re everywhere. These things are interesting to me. They’re unique, the same way the history is unique. I just wish all of Shabbat was like that.

Police make all the difference

Police make all the difference in the world. Remember my first trip to Women of the Wall? It was pretty miserable, both due to the rain and due to the haredim's hatred. There were police around, but we didn't feel guarded; this was just a month after Nofrat Frankel was arrested. The next month the police made a barrier between us and the haredi women and it went better, though one woman was hit by a haredi. This month--G-d. What a difference.

The assault from the men's side was totally unexpected. They did not wait for us to start davening, but instead threw a bunch of chairs over the mechitza while we were still gathering, even breaking a leg off one of them. It wasn't even 7am, and the police hadn't arrived yet. Lots of chairs (and a video starting in the middle of it):

Notice how the women attempt to make light of it. This is how you have to think at Women of the Wall--ironic comments are about all we can do.

Needless to say, I thought that the early chair throwing was an indication of a very bad morning ahead. It's not exactly a good sign. However, the men eventually stopped throwing chairs and the police came over to ask what happened and help clean up the chairs. Someone also said that they arrested the chair-thrower, which was the first good sign of the day. (According to YNet, they arrested two chair-throwers even!)

Once we started davening, the police formed a wall between us and the haredim. Surprisingly, the haredi women didn't bother us this time--one woman muttered about how the moshiach was never going to come this way when she walked past us, but that was it. The men were also surprisingly subdued. There was a little bit of shouting, but that didn't last. They mostly walked/danced around in a circle singing, supposedly drowning us out in their ears. For the first time ever I could hear every word the service leader said; the sounds from the men's side didn't overpower us at all us. Oh--and Mr. Recite Hallel at Us was back today, too. That was sorta weird--it almost seemed as if he was supporting us, except we knew better. (He was screaming "gevalt" last month.)

At the end of Hallel we were actually able to dance around in a circle ourselves, which one of the women said had never happened before. No videos of that because I was participating, but I think this is proof of what police--and overseas--support can do. When the chair-thrower was arrested I think it really changed the dynamics. The haredim no longer had the upper hand, and there were consequences to their hatred. They were in the position that we were in back in December, and even more so probably November. And why were the police guarding us? I think that has something to do with overseas--particularly North American--support for Women of the Wall. I mean, politics make my head spin, but when 29 Canadian rabbis send a letter to their Israeli ambassador supporting Women of the Wall and there is enough American support that the ambassador to the United States made a statement about the issue, that's gotta mean something, right? If nothing else, it'd probably make Israel look pretty bad if/when something bad happened to the Women of the Wall while they were davening, assuming they were following the law (not reading from the Torah and not wearing talitot). Why else would the police go from arresting Nofrat Frenkel to protecting us from the haredim, if not for international pressure?

I have to say, I will be perfectly happy if the Haredi men keep drowning us out by singing and dancing and reciting Hallel at us. These are all things that belong at the Kotel. Screaming insults and throwing chairs--those do not. What are the chances that they'll find this solution satisfactory, or that next month will be even slightly like this month? One thing I've learned over the past three months is that the reaction to our davening is unpredictable. Totally and completely unpredictable.

We went from our peaceful davening at the Kotel to an even more peaceful Torah reading with rotating Torah readers, including Devora, a fellow Rothberg student. Notice how you can hear the birds singing. Isn't that a nice end to it all?

Women of the Wall - Rosh Chodesh Adar

As I walked down to the Kotel from the Jewish Quarter this morning, the first thing I noticed was the large amount of men davening on the men's side--so much larger than the group there last time (see my post). There were more women, too, but what I noticed was the men--I suppose I saw them as more of a threat, and there were so many more of them. I know it's probably because it wasn't raining cats and dogs this time, unlike in December, but as I walked down the steps I got a bit nervous. More people means more chance of trouble, and there were a large number of police cars in the parking lot, too.

I got there early, so I went up to the Kotel for a little alone time and spontaneous prayer, something I can only seem to do at the Kotel. When I got back--the Women of the Wall meet just outside the women's section--I found some familiar faces, and it wasn't long until davening started.

I was surprised by how quiet it was at first. For all the men in the men's section, most of them ignored us, and in the beginning there was only one guy yelling "gevalt" at us. It was easy to hear Nofrat Frenkel, who was leading the davening--unlike last time, when we had to strain to hear the leader. Eventually more people started yelling at us, but it was the women who made more of a fuss at us, pointing and yelling. There were plenty of soldiers and police officers guarding us, though; they stood between us and the women, though I think I saw a bit of shoving at one point. I was in the back, up against the wall that marks the end of the women's section. I figured it would give me a bit of emotional support if necessary, since getting two hours of sleep doesn't so much make for stability. Overall, though, I thought it was pretty much okay. It wasn't until Hallel that we had to strain to hear Nofrat, when other men joined in the "gevalt" and the women were screaming. By that point our original gevalter was reciting Hallel at us--though I don't understand what the point of that was. Yes, we know. We were just reciting that, thank you very much.

As we left the Kotel plaza for Robinson's Arch, a few men joined our group, including Noam and Mr. Dubin. This made me think a little bit; I've told people a few times that (in high school, at least) I felt that one of the worst parts of being a woman was not being able to help make a minyan in circumstances that required adherence to Orthodox law. How must these men feel, who want to support Women of the Wall but can't because of their gender? Is it similar to the way I feel when I can't help make a minyan? Perhaps I'll ask next time I see Mr. Dubin.

The rest of the service went without a hitch--we walked over to Robinson's Arch singing Mishe Nichnas Adar, but no one followed us over. We read the Torah with no screaming people and no rain to disrupt us. There was a little bit of dancing at the end of the Musaf amidah, but not so much. It was just calm, really, a big contrast to the davening at the Kotel itself. Out of sight, out of mind?

It's hard to come up with concluding thoughts right now, as I am writing this before going back to sleep--and if two hours isn't enough for emotional stability, it sure isn't enough for thinking. Thinking back to December, though, when most of the men on the men's side were screaming at us, it's amazing how many people ignored us. It's even more amazing to me that the women were the ones who gave us the hardest time; I understand, sorta, that there's a problem with kol isha for the men, but what's the problem with the women? Do they feel like we're reflecting badly on womenkind? If anything, I think they're the ones doing that. All we want to do is pray.

I'm grateful for the soldiers and police officers who came to protect us. I'm glad that no one got arrested. I'm glad that my initial fears were largely unfounded--though, perhaps I didn't get the full experience standing in the back. Those in the front may have a different story.

Bigotry in Jerusalem

Lately, I've been feeling really sick of this city. I've already mentioned the anti-Arab bigotry that I saw on Rosh Hashanah and around Yom Kippur and at the soccer game, but I feel like I've been experiencing it a lot more recently--and not just bigotry against Arabs, but against anyone who's not Orthodox.

First, there was Masa's Security Issues Shabbaton on the last weekend of November. The weekend began with a Friday tour of the security barrier, run by the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem. We heard stories about families and villages cut arbitrarily in half and people who can't get past the checkpoints to receive medical treatment, and the absurdity of the situation hit me. I don't know much about the effects of the barrier--I am not an Israeli resident, but a representative from Stand With Us emphasized the effectiveness of the thing in stopping terrorist attacks--but couldn't they build the barrier around said villages, rather than straight through it? What security does splitting up families and communities provide?

And then there's the issue of Sheik Jarrah, where a Palestinian family was evicted from their home to be replaced by Jews (this over and above the houses that are being demolished), and the people who protest it keep getting arrested! Yaron, the youth coordinator of JOH, was one of those who got arrested the two weeks ago; he told us the story on Sunday, at which point he told me to be careful of what I do because they were deporting the non-Israelis who were arrested. (Whether that actually happened or not I don't know.) It's all really frustrating because really, there's nothing I can do. While others I know do go to said protests, I don't feel like I can ignore Yaron's warning--and even if I did go, what good would it do? Are these protests really doing anything?

Switch topics of a second to Orhodoxy in this city. I already posted about the protest I went to on the same weekend of the MASA thing. That occurred in the middle of a personal struggle of mine, in which I came out to my chevruta partner at JSSC and she freaked out. The following Sunday, the director of the women's learning program nearly kicked me out, telling me to "think seriously" about whether or not I wanted to be in the program, and lectured me about being a non-Orthodox convert and how she wishes the other movements of Judaism wouldn't call themselves Judaism because "Judaism has 613 commandments" and the other movements "are really different religions." The next week, someone else called me a "bad Ashkenazi" when I told her that my family's tradition is to follow the Sephardic rules for Pesach--because obviously, where my family's originally from matters much more than the customs of my family now. The same person compared my LGBT Jewish community at home to Sodom and Gomorrah, and none of the other (also Orthodox) people stood up for me. The head of the Hillel-Hecht Beit Midrash program "reserve[s] the right to talk to [me]" when I told him about what happened at JSSC and why--although he has since requested a copy of Rabbi Steve Greenberg's book.

And then there's Women of the Wall; the arrest of Nofrat Frankel which I have mentioned multiple times in this blog, and the abuse that we suffered last Friday. I am reminded of this every time I ride the 4א through Ge'ula and see the streets full of men who look exactly like those who were yelling at the Women of the Wall and women who look exactly like those who have insulted me for my identity. And I think, how can one live in this city. How can one take insults to oneself, and then look up and see all the other, much bigger bigotry going on around her? And when I mentioned it to one of our madrichim, his only response was, "What bigotry?" What bigotry, indeed. Have you lived here so long that you can no longer see it?

I know that America is not innocent of racism, but I still look forward to my upcoming month there. I need a breath of fresh air, or at least air filled with problems that I'm used to.

Women of the Wall

This morning I got up really early to head down to the Kotel for Women of the Wall’s monthly Rosh Chodesh minyan. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have made it: it was rainy and windy enough that my umbrella kept turning inside out; the friend who was supposed to go with me slept in; I wasn’t exactly awake at 5:50am when I had to leave the apartment; and I don’t really go out of my way for feminism in the first place. (Blame it on reading books and articles from the 1970s.) However, last month’s arrest of Nofrat Frankel made me determined to attend, if only to support a fellow queer Jew who wanted nothing more than to daven at the holiest Jewish place in the world. Besides, I haven’t been to shacharit for a while, and I miss singing Hallel.

As I mentioned, the weather was miserable, but there was still a nice group of us huddled together under umbrellas. Someone behind me commented that if they wanted to break up the Women of the Wall by arresting one of their members, they failed and did the opposite; I’m inclined to agree, since someone else said that this was the worst weather she could remember meeting in.

For the first few prayers, everything was fine. But by the time we got to Psalm 150, men were gathering next to the mechitza and behind the women’s section shouting something at us—maybe “ki va,” maybe “toeva,” maybe “give up.” Of these “toeva” makes the most sense, except that… it doesn’t. What were we doing wrong? We were on the women’s side of the wall. We were in the back, so we weren’t interfering with religious women who wanted to go up to the wall. We didn’t do any parts of the service which require a minyan, even though there were definitely at least a minyan of us there who count women. I saw very few women wearing tallitot, at least outside of their jackets (I didn’t even bring mine, since I was warned that being an American meant I could get deported if I made trouble) and while this is something Orthodoxy forbids, it isn’t listed as a toeva (abomination) in the Bible. Also, while one woman came up to us and started screaming, everyone else was a boy or a full-grown man standing on the periphery. They didn’t have to look at us. They didn’t even have to listen to us; we weren’t being very loud, and they certainly could have overpowered us with their own prayers rather than shouting at us. Of course, their shouting forced us to raise our volume; we spent the rest of the service struggling to hear where we were in the service, and when one of us picked it up we had to sing loudly to signal others of our place.

After we finished the Amidah, we headed—slowly, so as not to slip on the wet Jerusalem stones and drop the Torah—to Robinson’s Arch, the area designated for women and mixed groups to read from the Torah. The men followed us, still screaming, held back by the police. To drown out the screaming, we sang—Al HaNisim, Banu Choshech, Ahavah Raba, Esa Enai—songs of strength and hope. Because it was raining we were told we could read the Torah in a covered space near the Arch, but then that permission got revoked. “It’s an archeological site,” we were told, “tourists are going to be coming through.” (Even though the site didn’t open until 9am, and it wasn’t even 8:30 at this point.) We ended up going to the actual Arch, huddled once again under our umbrellas, where Nofrat Frankel chanted the Torah portion out of a chumash rather than risk the Torah getting wet. We, of course, did not get this privilege; I left the service soaked through multiple layers, and too cold and wet to walk to the bus stop. I paid 40NIS to take a taxi home, but at that point I didn’t care.

I’ve read people wonder why the Women of the Wall can’t be satisfied with praying at Robinson’s Arch in the first place, since it is, after all, still part of the Wall. But from what I saw this morning, I have to wonder how anyone can pray there. There’s just one long path leading up to the wall, no space to really gather. It is, after all, an archeological site and not a prayer site (but somehow still acceptable for us to use, and whereas the space indoors is not?) Imagine praying in a synagogue the width of your bathroom; that’s about the width of the space at the Arch. And they wonder why we can’t be content to pray there!

You may notice that I’ve been using the word “we” a lot in this entry. This is natural for an entry about an event I attended, but I feel like it’s more than that. As I get more and more fed up with the Orthodoxy of this city (more about that to come), I’ve come to identify with this group of women a little bit. All they want is to pray, once a month, at a holy site where some people pray every day. They’re not there to be disruptive; they just want to be themselves and practice their religion in a way that’s meaningful to them. And if this minyan is a way to carve out a little space each month to do that, and in the process perhaps show those bigots that there are other people in this world who are entitled to pray at the Kotel too, all the more power to them. They’re not meeting next month—nor will I be here—but come February, I’m definitely going again.

If anyone is interested, the New York Times ran an article about this same minyan. I'm under the rainbow umbrella, and no it isn't mine.

Added 11 March 2010 - Youtube now has two videos from the December meeting of Women of the Wall. The first gives the overall experience (minus the bulk of the service where we were being screamed at); the second shows the Haredi reaction to our davening.

Rosh Chodesh Kislev

If you've spent any time around religious Jews, you know that there's a whole ton of holidays around September/October and then nothing until December. It's the longest stretch in the Jewish year, and it's especially visible in Israel, where the entire country goes from Rosh-Hashanah-Yom-Kippur-Sukkot-Simchat-Torah insanity to two months without a single break. It's so bad that, here at Hebrew University, the Jeff Seidel Student Center had their "Hanukkah" event 25 days early, on Rosh Chodesh Kislev.

I put Hanukkah in quotation marks up there because while the event was advertised as a Hanukkah event, we never really got to the Hanukkah part. Instead, Rebbitzen Tsipora Dahan cooked up a storm and had the best meal ever at her house. I'm not kidding: homemade bread (including rolls with an onion filling!), soup, kugels, eggplant parmesan, sweet potatoes, pecan pie, cheesecake, sufganiyot, peanut butter balls covered in chocolate, lots of other small chocolate things - all made by Tsipora, except the soup. It was amazing, seriously the best food I've had in a really long time. I asked Tsipora afterwards if she was going to become a chef when her kids grew up, and she just laughed and said that it's a hobby.

We were supposed to do Hanukkah crafts after dinner, but we didn't finish eating until 10pm--after starting around 8:15. During dinner, however, we had the obligatory Jeff Seidel Orthodox idealism. Stacy and Tsipora brought in a musician, 12th grader Hadassah Haller from Ramat Beit Shemesh, who sang what must be the Jewish version of Christian music - not religious songs, per say, in that they weren't prayers, but songs that are focused on Hashem and religious life. One that really struck me was Chanale's "My Business":

Is the way to happiness the path to success?
Can I be satisfied if I'm something less
Than the doctor, the lawyer, they hoped I would be
So what if I'm happy, just to be me?

Each day, every hour, on me they depend
To be mother, a sister, plus a wife and a friend
I have a profession, though no PHD
Yet today I am happy just to be me!

Chorus: I don't need a license, don't need a degree
For I'm in the business, of a woman, you see
My life's full of meaning and my home's full of light
I don't need all that money to be doing all right

I don't need a mansion with riches inside
My children are diamonds, and my family's my pride
Why should I travel, I'm where I want to be
Can you find me a woman who's got more than me?

There's not much vacation, get no time to rest
My house is my office, and my kitchen's my desk
I work for Hashem, yes, the Torah's my trade
Maybe I'm overworked but I'm not underpaid

Chorus

I really don't know what to think about it. On one hand I'm all for going after what you want and not what people expect from you and I completely agree with not needing to be rich to be happy, but I have a problem with the rest of it. "I don't need a degree... I'm in the business of a woman, you see"--are you saying women don't need an education? Are you saying that the purpose of a woman's life is to take care of the house and the children? If that's what you want to do, fine, but... the business of being a woman, really? I feel like the song "Just A Housewife" from Working conveys the same thing but in a much better way. Otherwise it just feels like they're shoving the wonders of Orthodox living down your throat--which, I guess in a way, is the purpose of Jeff Seidel.

Overall, though, I had a really good time at the Rosh Chodesh event. Hadassah's voice and music was really beautiful, even if I had to take the songs themselves with a grain of salt, and I still can't get over Tsipora's cooking. You know, I could really get to like Rosh Chodesh this way.

The art of toveling

Today I discovered the art of toveling. Or rather, my roommate needed to tovel her utensils, so I figured I might as well do mine too. Why not? I'm in religious housing, after all. Besides, I never managed to ask whether it was a problem with the sponges if I didn't.

It's actually a beautiful ritual. The point of kashrut is that eating is an act of worship, one of many that we compare to worship in the Temple. Thus, we treat dishware the way we would have treated articles of sacrafice preparation in the Temple times: we dunk them in the mikveh to make them holy. It's not something that I would particularly care about normally--I don't pay attention to the kashrut of dishware, period, nor do I really concentrate on the meaning of what I eat--but that doesn't mean it isn't a beautiful analogy.

Estie and I took the trip to the mikveh this afternoon. It was a nice walk, since it's actually not overly hot in Jerusalem for once. And there are so many mikvehs here! The shul we went to--right down the street from Kfar HaStudentim--had three of them: one for men, one for women, and one for dishes. (Estie said that at her shul in America they only have one that's used for all three purposes.) The one for dishes is a little structure in the middle of a courtyard, with two steps leading up to it and a metal lid. It wasn't very deep, but sitting on the side and looking into it reminded me of our foremothers drawing water from their wells. In a way, we were drawing water from this mikveh, as holy water dripped off our utensils and pots when we brought them out of the mikveh.

The process is simple. Open the lid, say the blessing, submerse the spoon/fork/pot/whatever into the water, let go for a second, take it out. Repeat until everything is done. Then you close the lid, gather your dishes, and leave. That's it. And yet, walking away in the sun with a plastic bag full of toveled items felt really, really nice--even if I know that the feeling will completely the first time I go to make pasta and burn myself on that newly holy pot. Oh well.

Rosh Hashanah (part 2)

There was a rather stark contrast between the first day of my Rosh Hashanah and the second. First, I had two very different meal experiences. Saturday night, Sarah and I were paired with six girls from Neve, a women's seminary, at the home of an older couple, the Bornsons. The meal was very long--lasting from 21:00 - 23:30--but it didn't seem long at all. It was really my mental image of an Orthodox holiday meal, with the man sitting at the head of the table giving little bits of Torah thoughout the meal, but interactively. The meal was calm, everyone was nice, and the food was wonderful. It was also dairy, which made it even better for me because I didn't have to feel guilty for not being able to eat the food that the family had prepared.

Lunch today was also dairy, but otherwise it was a very different experience. Our hosts were also older, but four of their nine childen were there (ages 15 and up) along with two of their grandchildren (12 and 15). Before the meal one of their daughters (19) was teasing her nephew (15) and mock-arguing about whether girls were smart enough to learn Gemara, which (as Sarah pointed out) was even more amusing once you remembered that she's his aunt. There was also a lot of Hebrew being spoken there, since our hosts' son-in-law doesn't speak English. I was rather proud of my ability to catch a lot of what he was saying, even though I missed a key word that changed the meaning of the whole thing. On the other end of the table, the (grand)mother was telling us family stories--how she made aliyah, why she had kids, etc. There was still Torah, but it wasn't so prevelent and the meal was much shorter. Once again, the food was amazing.

I did decide to go to the Kotel for davening this morning and there was a ruach-filled group of guys there, but at 8:00 they were already davening mussaf. However, I did get to hear U'netaneh Tokef, which I love depite--or even because of--it's powerfully morbid translation. I had my moments of connection at the wall, but I also discovered that it doesnt have the same power over an extended period of time as it does over a short visit. As shocking as it may seem, I think I had a more meaningful Rosh Hashanah at Brandeis than I did in the Old City.

And now, it is bedtime. Dev has a test at 8am and needs to sleep whether she is tired or not.

Rosh Hashanah (part 1)

Rabbi Marcus said that the goal of the Heritage House Rosh Hashanah in the Old City was to make it “the best Rosh Hashanah of your life.” It’s not doing it for me. It’s just not. Several points which are making this the case:

- The mechitza. I’m usually okay with mechitzas, but this one is a solid grey curtain going all the way to the front. It doesn’t bother me so much that I can’t see the guys—well, except for when the guys are singing and no one on the women’s side is. But what bothers me is the fact that I can’t see the Torah, or the ark for that matter. How can I stand in front of an open ark when I can’t see the ark in the first place? What goes does hearing the Torah reading do if I can’t see the actual Torah. Forget for a moment that it would never happen in an Orthodox synagogue, but how do I know they’re not just reading out of a chumash? I need to make a connection to the Torah and the ark in order for Rosh Hashanah to be meaningful. I need to see these things, and it’s not happening there.

- Last night we were set up in pairs with families for dinner, and the wife of the family I was with didn’t get side down for dinner! “NAME, we need two more plates.” “NAME, water.” All the time she was bringing things in and out, and it wasn’t just the husband who was acting like this, it was the other guests, the friends of the family! When I asked her if she ever got to sit down, she said “Maybe once the kids go to bed, but it’s fine. I like it this way.” She didn’t look happy, nor was the majority of her in-and-out due to kids. Her husband never offered to help, nor did the other guests. What is this? Why can’t she sit down to her own Rosh Hashanah dinner? It bothered me.

- I’ve also been hearing a lot of bigoted opinions this Shabbat. A couple times a Muslim family walked by and the guest who sat next to me muttered as soon as they walked by. “I’m fine with them, but I don’t want them as my neighbors! Why can’t they stay in their own quarter?” (Sound like 50s/60s era America, anyone?) A couple of times they mocked Conservative Judaism, but those comments were at the other end of the table so I didn’t quite catch what was being mocked, other than a rabbi taking a tourist group to see a church. Sarah, the other student, and I got asked if we wanted to make aliyah, and one person asked me why I didn’t want to, but I didn’t feel like I could reply. This was the first time I’ve ever felt that I had to be closeted about being Conservative--let alone everything else I have to be closeted about!

There are also smaller things. There are also classes upstairs during the repetitions of the amidah—“when the service seems like it goes on forever”—and the entire women’s section empties at that point. Until then, it’s too crowded. Pages are called whenever they change, and if we get reminded to say “Adonai” instead of “HaShem,” or to stay out of the aisle during the Amidah so women can get out (which doesn’t happen, btw), I’m going to scream. I don’t know what I’m going to do about tomorrow. I can’t concentrate in there. I’m thinking of going to the Kotel and davening by myself. Maybe I’ll be lucky and there will be a group of particularly loud, ruach-filled men there and I can follow along with them.

Challah baking

This afternoon, Rebbetzin Tspora Dahan from the JSSC invited students to her house to bake challah. I am thoroughly exhausted, and there were seven of us working on it! I can't imagine how the rebbetzin--or anyone else, for that matter--does it alone. Granted, we did a double batch, but in order to do the challah blessing you need 2kgs of flour worth of dough. That's a lot of challah. That's a whole lot of challah.

We made challah at Brandeis once, but it was interesting to do it in an Orthodox setting. We learned about sifting the flour, checking the eggs for blood, putting the raisins in water so that any bugs float to the top, and of course the challah blessing. This is all stuff we didn't do at Brandeis. Oh, the complexities of religious life...

I made two round challot with cinnamon sugar on top for a sweet new year. One will probably be my breakfast over Rosh Hashanah, and the other will go to my Rosh Hashanah meal hosts.