'Tis the Season

We had a wonderful Rosh Hashana last weekend - enjoyed 4 great meals at various friends'/faculty members' homes and tried out services at two different places. On Friday night and Saturday day, we went to Kedem - a fairly small minyan, which was similar to a conservative egalitarian service in the US. The service was held in a community center about a 15 minute walk from our apartment. We saw many fellow Pardes students there, and it seemed that the majority of community members were American. It was a nice, more intimate and familiar service, although not as "singy" as we would have liked as we really enjoy all of the High Holiday melodies. But they welcomed us to attend without tickets, which was really nice since most of the services here are booked full for the holidays.

For the second day, we went to the Great Synagogue (see photo), located about a 45 minute walk from our apartment, closer to the Old City. Our experience there was almost complete the opposite than that of Kedem as there were hundreds of people whom mostly seemed to be Israeli. The sanctuary was pretty incredible - quite grandiose with beautiful stained glass windows and a huge balcony (where the women sit) overlooking the whole main room. The service was orthodox in style and there was both a cantor and a full men's choir - so needlesstosay, a bit different than what we are used to. And unlike at Kedem, the seats were definitely assigned to and paid for by individuals members, and it was a bit challenging locating a vacant one. The women's section was filed with quite religious (frum) women and children who were certainly dressed-up more than at other places. It's a bit hard to describe, but it reminded me of being in Brooklyn for Shabbat except that the facility was probably the most exquisite synagogue we have ever seen. The absolute highlight of being at the Great Synagogue was the shofar blowing. Since the first day of Rosh Hashana fell on Shabbat, we didn't get to hear the shofar until Sunday. And the acoustics were so amazing in the synagogue that the shofar sounded very pure, clear and penetrating. It was great - well worth the trip!

Some highlights of our meals included homemade challah, brisket, corn beef, carrot soup and of course the Zimonim, which are foods eaten that represent specific themes of the Rosh Hashana holiday. In short, the whole tradition of eating these foods is based on playing word games at the Rosh Hashana table ... the Zimonim that are traditionally eaten have names (in Hebrew) that coincide which the themes. In our Halacha (Jewish law) class, our teacher actually asked us to come up with some Zimonim in English. The best one we came up with was "plums" to "plummet away our sins." Some of the more traditional foods eaten are dates, figs, pomegranate, and pumpkin. It was fun to eat all of these random foods throughout the holiday!

Otherwise, we really enjoyed having more familiarity with the Rosh Hashana service and the various customs of the holiday after spending time in our classes discussing these ideas. I know that Max also really enjoyed wearing his new, white Tallit (prayer shawl) for all of the services - the same Tallit that served as the Chuppah for our wedding.

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After Rosh Hashana, we had a shortened week of classes - it was the last week for those students that were only at Pardes for the holiday period, so we had to say goodbye to them. We had a Yom Iyun (day of preparation) on Wednesday night after classes to prepare for Yom Kippur. We stayed at school until almost midnight attending various classes, eating dinner, doing s'lichot (prayers of repentance) and finally watching the Israeli film, Ushpizin, which was quite interesting and appropriate for this time of year. We specifically enjoyed a class taught that night by the dean of Pardes focusing on our individual T'shuva - the process of recognizing what you have done in the past year and addressing how you want to change in the year to come. The idea is that our fates for the next year are written (in pencil :) on Rosh Hashana and then sealed on Yom Kippur. So these 10 days between the two holidays, known as the "10 days of repentance" are really a time to think about these things in detail.

Yom Kippur begins in about 4 hours ... it's a bit odd that the holiday starts so early ... it's because we went off Daylight savings time last night, so we are now only 6 hours ahead of EST. In anticipation of this Day of Atonement, last night after Shabbat, we headed up to one of the most religious communities in Jerusalem - Meashearim. It was quite a site to see everyone dressed in their classic garb - black long jackets for the men and the women covered from head to foot with long sleeves and long skirts. We went to this neighborhood because we heard that there would be people practicing the custom of Kaparot (from the same root as Kippur), which means atonement. This custom involves taking a live chicken by the wings and circling it around your head while you recite a blessing that basically says that you are putting all of your sins onto this chicken and thereby removing them from yourself. After this is done, the chickens are donated to charity. I know this sounds a bit odd, or maybe even cruel or barbaric, but we felt that it was sort of a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And after hearing about this custom for years, we thought it would be neat to participate on the night before Yom Kippur. We were with about 8 other Americans - we split into 2 groups of men and women since the custom is for men to use roosters and women to use hens. And the young religious boys who were manning the chickens completed the act while we read a passage in Hebrew. It was a little smelly and sort of awkward all crowded together as a chicken was going round in circles over our heads, but interesting enough! Overall, I was just happy we didn't have to actually touch the chickens :)

We finished off the night by heading to "downtown" to hang out with friends at a hookah bar, grabbing a few beers and finally stopping by a waffle stand to enjoy a waffle filled with vanilla cream and chocolate - yum! Downtown Jerusalem is always so crazy on Saturday nights - and it's nice that we starting to find friends to hang out with and enjoy the night life :)



So after running around a bit today to do some laundry at a friends (we still haven't received our washing machine although our landlord said it's on its way), buying a Sukkah (more on that soon) and getting to the gym, we are going to eat a big meal in anticipation of the fast.

On Tuesday, we are heading up north to the Galilee to volunteer in war reparation efforts. Then we'll be back Thursday night, just in time to prepare for Sukkot! We are thinking of you all and hoping that your fall seasons are off to a good start.