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.