This is Halloween, Halloween, Halloween

Well, Halloween in Jerusalem is pretty much like any other night, except when you're at HUC! Wheee!

The Kef Committee (of which I am a member of) decided to throw a kick-ass Halloween party to bring a little bit more Americana into our lives (as if living in the HUC bubble isn't Anglo enough). Ari and I were appointed (or coerced) into co-charing the effort (read: doing all of the work) at the apartment of the amazingly cool and flexible Jillian, another Rabbinical student.

The planning process was fairly easy; we sent out some e-mails, came up with a theme (Halloween! is pretty much theme enough in a country that has no idea what Halloween is), came up with a plan for a "Witch's Brew," made a budget, and then Wednesday night, after a huge mid-afternoon thunder storm, went shopping. It was a tedious (We need twelve boxes of fruit nectar) and agonizing (Which bottle of vodka is really the most bang for our buck? Let's compare again) process, but strangely fulfilling. We also made handmade decorations - ghosts, pumpkins, a Happy Halloween sign, and Ari carved a Jack O'Lantern out of a melon.

The set-up last night (we had the party on October 30 because the 31 - today - is Friday, and thus Shabbat, and a Shabbat when we have an official HUC pray-and-eat at Har-El, the oldest progressive congregation in Israel) went smoothly, and Jillian and Amanda her roommate were total dolls about having our entire class on their spacious balcony. I had made a Halloween music mix the night before, and so we were all raring to go.

And the party itself was a smashing success. Everyone who came (about 4/5 of the class, plus SOs and some +1s) really came decked out. We had a Luigi, a pair of S&M Goths, Hermione Granger, a Facebook profile, Brangelina, a Hasid, a cat, a zombie, a sexy vampire, a bear, a Yankee (the ballplayer, not the northerner), James Bond, a scarecrow, Three Blind Mice, the wall of a public bathroom, and so on. I was a Bum; the costume itself went through multiple incarnations. I had some inadvertently torn clothes (two shirts, jeans) and wore those. I didn't shave for the last week, so I had some scruff. I wore my fisherman's cap, and unmatched socks, and carried around a tin can (partly a prop, partly in order to collect the 20 shekel cover) and a garbage bag filled with some extra clothes. jillian gave me bags under my eyes, and track marks on my veins. After the party had gotten into swing, I dragged my bag to a corner of the balcony, pulled out a blanket, and huddled up to sleep, like any bum would do. It was a very fun character to play.

The costume contest winner was my friend Jaclyn, who won dressed as Sarah Palin. She had the accent down, the clothing, the look, the pose, the condescension, the conservatism. It's ironic because Jaclyn is, well, as liberal as I am. In truth, her character was some perverse hybrid of Sarah Palin and Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin, but it was a lot of fun, and a well deserved costume contest winner.

All in all, it was a great party. Ari and I are really pleased with how everything went, how well the Witch's Brew tasted, how drunk and satiated everyone got, how much leftover candy and unpopped popcorn there was, and how much fun and laughter there was. Pictures!






Meredith "Facebook" Kahan


Jordan Helfman, Zombie Hunter


Minnie Mouse and a Yankee!


Joel the Bum napping


Me, doing what I do best: panhandle


Swarming around Facebook; Sarah Palin in the back


The crowds


Iron Maiden


Scarecrow and Indian


Me at the end of the night

Top Five Istanbul Moments

And now, the eagerly awaited, final five of the Top Ten Istanbul Moments


Joel, Meredith, and Ari overlooking the Bospherous at Topkapi Palace

5) Getting accosted by the police (The Polis) in Kuzguncuk. Our second day – Saturday – we took the ferry to Üsküdar, on the Asian side, and walked around for a while, seeing the residential area and “how the other half lives.” In Meredith’s guidebook we noticed that there was an old synagogue in Kuzguncuk, so we walked a few km towards the hamlet. It was a very cold and windy day, and we were on the water, and there was wind, and we were much colder than we expected to be. Finally, after getting a little lost and miming for directions, we found the synagogue. We started to take pictures, but a pair of policemen stepped out from a booth and wouldn’t let us. There was a serious communication barrier; they didn’t speak more than 2-3 words of English, and we knew, as said, zero Turkish. We motioned to enter; they motioned, “No.” They mumbled something that I made out to be, “Muslim?” And then, “Christian?” Then one motioned to see Ari's passport and started thumbing through it. When he came across his Israeli student visa, the other policeman pointed at the visa, and then at Ari, and said, “Jew.” They’d figured us out. We were slightly nervous; we had no idea what they wanted. Were they protecting the synagogue? Protecting us? What was going on?

We’ll never know. They gave Ari back his passport and we hurried away, to have another adventure taking the bus back to Üsküdar so we could ferry back to the old city. But, when we went to Ortaköy (see #3 below), we did see another synagogue and got our pictures. We showed those Turkish police!



The new city


Me walking in the new city (photo courtesy of A. Lorge)

4) Dinner and “a show” on our first evening. After arriving at our janky hotel, Hotel Klas, we ventured into the heart of the old city (where the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, and Hagia Sofia are) for a late dinner and to see the old city at night. We were hustled into having a pretty good 3-course meal at Safran, a restaurant that had a Turkish band playing live music and a lady making the Turkish version of laffa in the front of the restaurant. The waiter was the spitting image, albeit a little taller and non-English speaking, of my stepbrother Adam. That was a little bizarre.

After dinner, on our walk through the old city, we turned a corner onto the main drag, and were overwhelmed with activity. About two storefronts ahead, a jumble of men started whizzing and yelling, and suddenly there was a man running right towards me, followed closely by two other men in white jackets. They almost ran into me, and the first man, the one being pursued, ran off. The men in white jackets turned their attention to another guy, in a long black trench coat, and started running after him with a white plastic chair. They threw it at him, and as he stumbled, they caught up with him and started punching him and beating him with the chair – in the middle of the street. The chair broke, and the guy getting beaten ran off, with shards of plastic chair thrown after him.

We’re not sure what the fight was about. Either the guys stole some baklava or hit on somebody’s sister (or mother?). Welcome to Turkey!


Me enjoying our meal at Safran (photo courtesy of A. Lorge)

3) Evening in Ortaköy. Both Ari’s sister’s friend and my friend Alea (who was in turkey for two months last summer) highly recommended we spend an evening in Ortaköy, a section of Istanbul in the new city, on the edge of the Bospherous, off the tourist path, and filled with a pulsating nightlife of restaurants, cafes, bars, stores, art gallerys, street vendors, a gorgeous view of Asian Istanbul and the Bospherous Bridge, and Turks doing Turkish stuff.

We had a dizzying, traffic filled taxi ride over there, and stumbled out of the taxi in a motion sickness induced haze, but alive and eager to see this area. It turned out to be a fantastic evening. We walked around a bit, and ran into a synagogue (see # 5), which made us feel vindicated after our adventure that morning. Then we found a delicious waterfront restaurant (the quality of the food was a pleasant surprise) with an incredible view of the water and a nearby mosque. Then we strolled and found a quaint café to sit at, drink tea, smoke melon hookah, and play cards for a few hours. The weather was cool but not cold. The staff was friendly. The tea and cake was delicious. The hookah was smooth and flavorful. The company was wonderful. The evening was relaxing, authentically Turkish, and really, really a lot of fun.





Shots of Ortaköy (the street and the Bospherous bridge, the synagogue, the mosque)

2) Walking into Hagia Sophia. I’m really not sure how to write about this moment, because it’s pretty indescribable. The exterior of Hagia Sophia was beautiful at night, and stirring during the day, but nothing could have prepared me for the interior. I’ve read about the church/mosque have wanted to see for years, and Ari had taken a class on Byzantine art and was really excited about the mosaics, but I was still totally swept away by the beauty. We were very lucky with our timing – we hit it right in the late morning, and the location of the sun hit the back windows and created this intense glow of light which accented the immense ceilings and coloring. The scaffolding – apparently it’s been in a restoration process for decades – oddly enhanced the experience. My guidebook said that Hagia Sofia was designed to mirror heaven in an earthly fashion. I think it comes pretty close.






Interior shots of Hagia Sofia

1) Getting stuck in an elevator. On Saturday, our second full day, we had our Asian Istanbul and Grand Bazaar adventures (see #5 and #9), and returned back to Hotel Klas around 5PM really cold, tired, needing showers and having to use the bathroom. We walked into the elevator, pressed our floor (which was two flights of stairs from the lobby), and went up. But not all the way up.

The elvator doors opened suddenly, and then quickly closed. We could see a quick glimpse of wall and sheet rock and metal. Meredith gasped. The elevator was between floors, and the doors opened and closed on their own, leading to nowhere. We stopped, and the moved up a bit, and the doors did the same thing. We looked at each other, silent, and I think our hearts imploded a bit. Then the elvator moved again, and did the same quick, partial open-close between floors. We all took a deep breath – it was a very small elevator, and I could feel my already small bladder getting tighter and tighter – and I hit the alaram button.

Nothing. No sound, no noise, no alarm. It didn’t work. We had no phones. We didn’t speak Turkish. Nobody knew we were in here. The hotel looked empty. People wouldn’t be returning from their day’s adventures for a while. No one was coming to rescue us. Time to panic.

We take off sweaters, unload backpacks, pull out snacks and take a seat. We might be here for a while.

We hit “Lobby,” and the elevator descended, and did the same thing. Then we hit “5,” thinking this elevator, the rear elevator, opens onto the restaurant and perhaps there will be someone there getting ready for the dinner hour and notice something it wrong. Well, we were right – sort of. As we stop halfway between floors “4” and “5,” we hear voices. They’re talking in Turkish, saying things we don’t understand, but we realize that they know we’re there! The elevator door opens again, this time it stays open, and Ari jumps up, and grabs the outside door – the bottom of the door on the fifth floor. He pushes and pushes and pushes, and sort of breaks the door, but we see faces peering out at us, talking loudly in Turkish. We respond, “We’re stuck, we’re stuck, we don’t understand you.” Finally, we get that they want us to step back. We do, the elevator rises to the fifth floor, and we stumble out, breathing in the stale Turkish air of freedom.

All in all, we were only in there about 10 minutes, but it felt like 10 hours. It really capped off an awful hotel experience, and summed up a lot of our feelings on Istanbul. We struggled back to our room, collapsed in hilarity, and played a really intense game of Oh Hell.


The three of us in front of the "Elevator of death"

Istanbul is not Constantinople

and it’s certainly not Byzantium either. It’s sort of a whole new, unique, strange, wonderful, horrifying, beautiful, foreign, Western, Asian, difficult, obtuse, smooth, dark, windy, clean, askance, familiar, hilarious, ridiculous place. After returning last night, I’m still not sure what to make of it. There’s something to be said about a city that physically straddles the border between Europe and Asia, because emotionally, mentally, architecturally, spiritually, personality-wise, behaviorally, etc, it straddles the spirits of both continents too.

In A Passage to India, E.M. Forster continually makes the point that India is an indescribable place; there are 100 Indias, each with their own feeling and indefinable except through experience. I think there might be 100 Istanbuls, or even 1000, each slightly more strange and wonderful and indefinable than the rest; I think Ari and Meredith – my wonderful travel companions – would agree as well. So I’m going to start my blogging on the Istanbul adventure (and I think adventure is a pretty apt noun) with, in homage to David Letterman and The Flying Squirrel, an attempt to name simply ten Istanbuls.

Top Ten Istanbul Moments

10) Getting scammed at the 360° Bar. Our second night, we went to Istiklal Caddesi, in Beyoglu – the new city; across the Golden Horn from the old city, but still on the European side of the Bospherous – which is the main strip of restaurants, stores, movie theaters, pubs, bars, and clubs. It was a happening place. Our dinner consisted of Ari people watching while Meredith and I gorged ourselves on faux (yet still strangely delicious) Chinese food at FastWok. Then we went to 360° Bar, a recommendation of Ari’s sister’s friend. It’s at the top of a building and had a fantastic night, almost panoramic, view of the city (hence its name). It was very sleek, very Western, lots of shiny surfaces and smartly dressed waiters. We asked for a menu; they didn’t have one. So we ordered, received pretty weak drinks but enjoyed them and the view. When we left, the bill was outrageous. I kept thinking bars in Israel are expensive, but this really took the cake. So, never again order with out a menu.


Istiklal Caddesi at night


The bar itself




Views of the city from the bar.

9) Meredith getting hit on in the Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is pretty bizarre. It’s like a huge, cavernous shuk-style mall, with every vendor selling pretty similar ware. We went on Saturday to get lots of pashminas, which was a bargaining story in and of itself. Meredith wanted to get Turkish hookah tobacco for her brothers, and was bargaining with a guy, and it was took expensive, even after the bargaining, so we left. Then the guy comes running after us, yelling, “Pretty lady! Wait!” He comes up to Meredith and says she can have the tobacco for free if she’ll have dinner with him. Meredith grabs Ari and says, “Well, he’s my boyfriend so I don’t think I can do that.” Ari looks a little befuddled, and says, “Yes, of course.” And so we quietly, and quickly, back away.


The (book) bazaar

8) Using hand gestures to communicate. Never before have I felt so totally unable to converse. Very few people spoke English, and when they did, it was the storekeepers in the Grand Bazaar or the people who worked the touristy locations. Never the cab drivers, the hotel workers, or the police (see below). So we got very good at mimicking words – especially numbers for cab fares – with our fingers. We even had a whole silent conversation on the bus, trying to figure out and pay the bus fare. The whole lack of verbal communication experience made all three of us appreciative our level of Hebrew, and I think gave us all a renewed zest of using, despite whatever embarrassments encountered, our Hebrew.

7) Ari’s “free” shoeshine. On our last afternoon, we’re walking from the Orient Express train station to the Suleiman Mosque, and we pass a shoe-shiner walking in the opposite direction. The shoe-shiner drops a brush, and Ari picks it up, calls back to the guy, and gives it to him. The shoe-shiner is very grateful, and, through very, very broken English, offers a thank-you shoe shine. He starts shining Ari’s shoes. A friend of his walks by, and with some prompting starts giving Meredith a shine. (I have on sandals, so a shoe shine wasn’t really in the cars for me). During the shine, the guys are giving us some cock-and-bull story about cataract surgery and their family and gifts to friends. I don’t know. After the shine, they start hassling us for money. They made it pretty clear that the shine was a thank you for picking up the brush, but of course they wanted to be paid for it.


Ari and his shoeshiner

6) The old city at night. Our first evening started out very eventfully (see below) but ended on a wonderfully serene and beautiful note. We were staying at a hotel about 2 km away from the center of the old city (Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Hippodrome, etc) and so we walked down there to see it, before going inside these places the next day. It was beautiful. The Turks really know how to take care of their historical monuments (and how to modernize their city while keeping the ancient parts intact) and these monuments are the biggest, more important, and arguably the most beautiful. It was astounding. We were blown away by the human accomplishments that went into the construction – and this was just the exteriors.





The Blue Mosque





Hagia Sophia

Tune in tomorrow for 1-5!

flying to Byzantium

This afternoon, I am off to Istanbul (not Constantinople, although I really think we should all go back to referring to it as Byzantium - Romans and Turks be damned!) for a four day vacation with Ari and Meredith. I'm terribly excited, as you might be able to imagine, to be somewhere totally unfamiliar, and foreign, and almost exotic. It's a city that straddles two continents, contained within it thousands of years of history, mystery, magic, and enchantment.

My brother has spent a lot of the last year, as his role of an Asian Studies major, lecturing my family and me on the pitfalls and nuances of Orientalism and Occidentalism, warning and rebuking us for falling into ethnocentric or anachronistic sterotypes. But I just can't help it. I mean, come on! Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express in Istanbul - and that's certainly a prime piece of anachronistic occidentalist literature if I've ever read one. There is something incredibly exciting in the foreign, in the exotic. I'm just concerned that we'll get there and realize Turkey is just Israel-lite.

Adam has been telling me not to smuggle opium back into Israel. My first response was, "We've already sewn the pockets into Ari's jacket, so it's a little late for that." Then I moved onto some line about having the Afula mafia put a price on my head if I don't deliver. Now he's joking that if we do that, we'll end up in a Turkish jail, which isn't a Turkish delight. To which I added, "On a moonlit night." I'm not sure if he got the They Might Be Giants reference. (On a sad, side note, I lost a rather steep bet to Meredith when she proved to me that TMBG did not in fact write Istanbul [Not Constantinople]. It's a cover. Who knew? Had you ever heard any other band perform it?)

Before I go, I leave you with a line from something that has been on the forefront of my mind these past few days, and which I encourage you to read in its entirety, Yeats' poem Sailing to Byzantium:

Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

'tis the season!

In America, "The Holidays" means Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and that lovely period between those days when the freeways, movie theaters, and shopping malls are entirely stuffed.

In Israel, "The Holidays" means Rosh Hashonah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and the few non-chag days between them when life doesn't function, except to decompress from and get ready for the next holiday.

This month, the month of Tishrei (which in 2008 almost perfectly overlaps with October), is the Israeli/Jewish equivalent of the American holiday season. People have many days off, schools are closed for a good two weeks, it's primarily time spent with family and close friends, there are lots of attendance at services, and an ungodly amount of food (see my RH post for my own foray into "more time eating than praying").

There's also this electricity in the air that one really feels in the states as people get more and more excited and into the Holiday season that I really felt strongly here (albeit here there's less emphasis on consumerism). It wasn't so much in the days leading up to Rosh Hashonah, but in the days following, and leading up to the rest of the holidays. In the time period of “the chagim,” everyone is really, really excited. Everyone greets one another with “Shanah tovah” (Happy new year) all month long; it’s also, like Santa in the states, written on all of the Coke bottles.

During the past weekend, the preparation time for Sukkot (what we’re smack dab right in the middle of right now), I would see people driving around with loads of palm fronds on the top of their cars that they are bringing home to use as the roof for their sukkah. The first time I saw that, I thought, “Oh, someone has a Christmas tree. In Jerusalem? In October? Oh, it’s palm fronds.”

What also struck me is how intense this period is. Especially this year, when none of the chagim fell on Shabbat but in the middle of the week, every holiday butted up against Shabbat. Rosh Hasonah or Yom Kippur or the first day of Sukkot (a chag in it’s own right) would end, and then suddenly it’s Shabbat! There’s hardly anytime to recoup and rest up before jumping into the next holiday. It was very intense.

The final piece of the holiday-chagim parallel fell into place for me this afternoon, when I saw the most amazing Sukkot Parade. Much like the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years Day Parade, this Sukkot Parade involved elaborate floats, marching, fabulous costumes, minutely choreographed dances, and thousands of Israel-loving evangelical Christians. During Chol HaMoed Sukkot (literally, the secular days of the festival sandwiched between the chag days on the ends), thousands of Evangelical Christians, from all around the world, take some biblical phrase literally and come to Jerusalem during the “Feast of Tabernacles,” take over the main streets, and march around Jerusalem in a parade yelling, “We love Israel! Shalom! Jesus loves you Israel! We love all of you!” It was a total, kitsch loaded trip.

Here are some parade pictures:

hosting and boasting

After the Kippur ended, I realized that (literally) the next day was Shabbat. And I had no Shabbat plans. It just crept up on me, especially after the intense Day of Atonement. Hastily conferencing with Meredith, I decided to have a little Shabbat dinner at my apartment. I suddenly got very excited, because this was my first opportunity to host Shabbat dinner.

We can only fit six, seated, at the kitchen table, and only have meat and milk dish sets for six (yes, my kitchen is kosher; more on that in a later post), so I had four classmates over: Meredith, Deana, LuAnne, and Jordan. Including Adam and me, that made six. I got a little overambitious, and cooked a (hopefully) scrumptious meal throughout Friday afternoon.

The menu:

Roasted chicken, marinated in and roasted with white wine, apple juice, thyme, apple slices, red onions
Roasted sweet potatoes with thyme and apple cider vinegar
Couscous with toasted pine nuts, apricots, and raisins
Sautéed eggplant with thyme and apple cider vinegar
Dessert: baked apples filled with chocolate

It was an ambitious menu, and while there are about three dozen things I would have done differently, I’d made nothing before and it all came out eatible at worst and delicious at best. The crowd was loquacious and jovial, lots of flowing wine and an extended, tremendous, postprandial song session of Shabbes zemiros.

Since the meal was apple-themed (due to both being in the month of Tishrei and celebrating the Jewish new year still, as well as it being fall and apples are in season), for a late night oneg (fun) we played Apples-To-Apples. Thanks to David and Alea (thanks, really), this game is now one of my favorites. It’s addicting. Adam brought it with him (thanks Adam) and so we played.

I dominated the first part of the game, and technically won, but we kept playing but by the end of game Meredith had the most adjective cards. It’s a buttload of fun and I and very excited about hosting many more Shabbat dinners and then playing Apples-To-Apples, and flaunting my mad ironic/irreverent/cleaver/funny word skills.

The Kippur in J'lem

Yom Kippur in Jerusalem was like no other Yom Kippur I’ve had. It was totally unlike the YK I was expecting I would have – based on what the Israelis told us to expect. It was indescribable, profound, and astounding.

I suppose the Kippur preparation started with Rosh Hashanah, when we made the transition from RH into the ten days between the two holidays. Religiously, we’re take this time and ask forgiveness from our friends and family for things we have done to hurt them in the past year. Emotionally, it’s a time to check in with yourself and reflect on the last year and focus on what I’ve done wrong or what you’re happy with. In the days leading up to RH, I didn’t notice anything special about the city. But the days between RH and YK were electric. Everyone was moving and talking in a more energetic way; the world functioned differently. I could taste Yom Kippur.

The day itself was virtually magical. Whereas RH resembles Shabbat – just two days of it – YK everything shuts down. Everything is closed. No one – no cars – are on the streets. The entre city, literally, is on holiday. It’s the one day of the year when every Jewish resident is observing the holiday together. After Kol Nidrei services, a group of students took a walk down to the German Colony, and there was literally not a single car on the road; it was almost like something out of a zombie movie. Throngs of people were walking in the middle of the streets, talking and walking and thinking and little kids riding bikes and families out together and couples strolling and groups of students learning in the middle of huge intersections and teenagers having song sessions and Israelis just enjoying the evening. The mood was bizarre; it was almost joyful, and yet at the same time very unfrivolous. Everyone was taking themselves seriously, but enjoying life, understanding the gravity of it all, while experiencing the world around them.

The HUC services were so much more rewarding that the RH services. I’m not sure why this is; I think part of me knew what to expect from them, as well as the novelty of seeing my friends and classmates perform in the choir had worn off. I had also gotten to a place where I was more familiar with the melodies and could sing along much easier, which made it feel more like praying, instead of a cantorial and choral concert. It was, again, wonderful to be with community and my friends here, because so much of the chagim is being with your community. I really felt that my last few YKs, in LA, had been missing that, and even though YK is a very personal holiday, the sense of community is very important.

Another reason I think this YK was so powerful was the fast itself. I really felt it the entire day, but it wasn’t debilitating or painful. It was a meaningful fast, definitely. The challenging part was the walking – to and from my apartment to school involves a rather large hill, so I minimized my own apartment walking (I took my contribution to the breakfast potluck over on Wednesday before the fast even started). But it all came and went fairly simply, and really enhanced the spiritual level of the day.

The break-fast as well was a lot of fun. Lisa, Meredith, and Deana (roommates) hosted our entire HUC class at their apartment. They had about 50 people, a shitload of food, a fair amount of wine, and whiskey, delicious cookies, and a lot of lap sitting (but thank God no grape throwing). Something about not-eating/spiritual fulfillment makes 20-something Jewish professionals act about 10 years younger. The evening really capped off a very meaningful, memorable, and amazing Yom Kippur.

"We're a team of mavericks!"

I would much prefer it if Tina Fey were John McCain’s running mate. For one thing, she’s much funnier than Sarah Palin (and that’s actually saying a lot). For another, I agree with her politics (there’s an episode of 30 Rock where she tells Jenna [Jane Krakowski] it say on MSNBC that she supports Barack Obama, and Jenna ends up saying Osama bin Laden – hilarious!). But seriously, wouldn't that be awesome? McCain-Fey form America? Talk about unconventional.

During the debate watching party this weekend (the debates are on at like 3AM here, and while we all get Fox News, no one wants to stay up all night to watch Joe Biden and Sarah Palin bicker, although of course I’ll be up all night to watch election returns come in next month), I had a hilarious time watching Palin express her love, and Joe Biden’s love, for Israel. Yeah. They both love Israel. Makes me feel safer.

Head of the Year - Day 2

My second day of Rosh Hashonah started with an all-class potluck at my friend Adena’s apartment. By the time I arrived I was still full from lunch (and dinner the night before) but Adena made delicious pumpkin soup, and Nikki made carrot ginger soup, and there was delicious quinoa and couscous and dessert, so really, how could I not eat?

For morning services on second day, Jaclyn, Meredith, and I “shul-hopped.” We started at the synagogue at the Conservative Yeshiva, which was very much like a conservative shul in the states, except we brought the average age down by about 40 years. It was basically a congregation of old immigrants who like conservative services. Next, we attended the Great Synagogue, with their amazing choir and cantor. But they didn’t even have siddurim for their congregants (people bring their own) so I couldn’t really follow along. Our third stop was at the Italian Synagogue, a Sephardic congregation in downtown Jerusalem. I had never really been to a Sephardic service, and I loved it. The serviced moved to a totally different pace and rhythm than a regular Ashkenazic service, and I really want to go back.

We finished the morning at Har-El, the oldest progressive shul in Israel, and where HUC had relocated for the morning. The service there was pretty much the same as the services at HUC the previous day, except totally in Hebrew – sermon too.

For lunch, I went to the home of Sally Klein Katz, my education professor. She and her husband have a second day RH lunch every year, and invite their friends and family, and their students. So there were a bunch of HUC students (the ed students, Sally’s rabbinic reflection group, and some HUC students they knew from when they worked at URJ camps in the states) and lots of other people; faces I’d seen at various shuls, and a girl I knew from UCLA, and people I’d met over the last few months. It was a lovely, lovely afternoon. But I was totally full for food, and nibbled throughout the afternoon.

I went home and napped, and then went to Leslie’s apartment for a final meal: dinner. That evening was awesome; even though I was totally stuffed and bloated, I managed to put down a big plate of chicken (finally a meat meal!) and rice and roasted veggies and potatoes and salad and lots of wine. The evening morphed into this bizarre retrograde of middle school behavior: throwing grapes, and dancing to one-hit wonders from the late 1990’s, and stuffing grapes down people shirts, and wine spills, and bad hip-hop music from the 2000’s.

It was a great holiday, and incredibly fascinating to walk around Jerusalem for two days in a row and see everyone on their way to shul or to meals, but the whole city settled in to the holiday. In the days leading up to RH, every time I would talk to someone (a store clerk, a teacher, a bus driver) we would say, “Shanah Tova!” It was amazing to be in a place where everybody celebrated the holiday. Never before had RH seemed like such a legitimate and real holiday, instead of something we Jews so secretly and on the side. I loved it. And I’m very excited for Yom Kippur.

Head of the Year - Day 1

Literally, Rosh Hashonah (ראש השנה) means “head of the year.” Or, figuratively, it can be translated to mean new year. Specifically, in colloquial English (and Hebrew too), it means the first two days of the month of Tishrei, during which Jews celebrate the creation of the world (yes, we say it happened on this specific day 5769 years ago – I’m sure Bishop Usher could tell you what time) and start the process of “cheshbon nefesh,” of checking our souls, of looking at ourselves this past year and thinking about what we are proud of and what we could have done better, at least in regard to our fellow human beings. This leads to Yom Kippur which we finally atone for the sins against God, and start the year anew and refreshed. But more on YK later.

RH normally, for many American Jews and me, is a time spent with family. There is a fair amount of time spent in services, but the holiday is really based around family and community being together. It’s much more a communal holiday than YK, but since they occur in tandem, RH gets a bad rap. I’m not actually sure why either of them get a bad rap, but it may have something to do with fasting…

There certainly is no fasting on RH however. In fact, this year, I spent a disproportionate amount of time at meals, than I did at services. Monday night, Erev RH, I attended HUC services. The HUC student choir, made up of the cantorial students and a few other students who made up the bass/tenor sections, sang beautifully. The rabbi was our Dean, Michael Marumur, who is a Rabbinic Rock Star; the hazzan (cantor) was Eli Schliefer, who is, apparently, the patriarch of modern Reform cantoring. He’s very old, and sings in a very old, slow style, but was fantastic.

The service itself, as with the other HUC services I attended, focused disproportionately on the performative aspect – the choir sings, the cantor sings, the rabbi talks – without much by way of communal participation and praying. This is mainly done because HUC services are learning experience for the cantorial students, who all have solos and amazing voices. The downside is the very prayer-able congregation (mostly students) aren’t really able to pray. I went because HUC is my community here and I wanted to support my friends in the choir who had been practicing for months. And who sang beautifully. But if this were the states, I would have hated the service and not gone back. I need a service, especially during the chaggim when I can participate fully and actively. But in this context, it was fine. It was lovely. It was community.

For Erev RH dinner, HUC hosted a RH Seder (yes, there are not just seders on Passover) and five course meal, complete with a seemingly unlimited wine service. Most of the class was there, and it was a great way to start the holiday, together as a community. The seder was led my by friend Jordan (who was half of the bass section in the choir) and he had every table make a skit/pun about a food that’s part of the seder (e.g. pumpkin, beets, wine, fish head, dates). My group was dates – we made a pun with the English name (Can I offer you a date? Sure. How about tomorrow night?) and the Hebrew name – Tamar (A date tamar-ow! Tamar-ow night!). It was a lot of fun. The food was mostly pretty good. And Meredith and Harrison finished the night with a song session.

For morning services I returned to HUC. The service was more of the same, and literally more of it, as I oscillated between states of awake and sleep. Anyhoo, after the service was Tashlich (a service in which we toss bread crumbs into running water in order to symbolically cast away our sins), which I had been asked to lead. I was very nervous, but I felt I put together a good 6 minute service, including some singing, some Psalm reading, some reflection, some bread tossing, and some singing. I was very pleased with my efforts and how the congregation took to the service. The feedback I received was also very positive, which made me feel pretty good.

Lunch was at my friend Amy and Sarah’s apartment. They had “brunch” themed lunch, with all sorts of delicious items: baked french toast, polenta, potatoes, fruit salad, glazed salmon, pecan pie, apple crisp, kugel, mimosas, and wine. It was incredibly scrumptious and tasty, and a really nice group schmoozing and reflecting and just being together. That afternoon, I was exhausted, and then there was a full day of RH left to go!