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| Our wedding pictures are up on FlickR! |
Holidays are Awesome:
Yom Kippur
Everyone kept telling us that Yom Kippur in Jerusalem is unlike anything else you could imagine. And, frankly, I was skeptical. We've experience shabbat here and it is indeed a unique and special experience to have the entire city observing the day of rest. There's a peace and a serenity that you can't find anywhere else. And, frankly, I had a hard time believing that Yom Kippur would be a different feel in the city. Zero cars on the road is still zero cars on the road. Quiet is still quiet.
Boy, was I wrong.
First of all, a silly thing about Israel: Daylight savings here has little to nothing to do with the rotation of the Earth and the placement of the sun. Here, we "Fall Back" right before Yom Kippur. That way, the fast starts an hour earlier, but also ends earlier in the day. So instead of waiting until 7 or so to break the fast, we were done super early by my American standards. What this also means, clearly, is that the sun starts setting very very early in the day. After Kol Nidre services, it was only about 7:30. And when I thought it couldn't be quieter and there couldn't be less than zero cars on the road, I was sorely mistaken. Once services ended, it felt like the entire city poured onto the streets. Everyone we passed was wearing all white and people were walking in the middle of the street (on any other day even walking in the crosswalk is dangerous). We made out way to Emek Refaim and the street was packed with people. Everyone just going for a walk and stopping to chat with people the knew. Also, some people jokingly call Yom Kippur חג אופניים (Bicycle Holiday), because it is the only day where it is safe for kids to be riding their bikes in the street. So, they do.
The rest of Yom Kippur was also great. We were at HUC for services the whole day in Beit Shmuel which has an incredible view of the Old City. I was in the choir and read the Haftarah portion that I've been reading every year since 8th grade. Gavi was also honored with an aliyah (being honored by being asked to come up and say the blessing for reading Torah). All in all, a very meaningful day and an experience like no other.
Sukkot
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| Mmmmmm. Burgers in a Sukkah. |
For the first night of the holiday, we went and celebrated/stayed with Gavi's aunt, uncle, and cousins in Gush Etzion. We had a series of delicious meals in their sukkah and Doda Shelley took us on a short hike around the area where we walked on Derech Avot and visited a Second Temple period mikvah. And, in truly perfect timing, right before and during the first days of the holiday...it rained! Well, the timing slightly preempted the change in liturgy where we include the petition for rain, but that's rabbi nerd material.During the rest of Sukkot we were both on vacation, so it was time to travel! On the Wednesday of our break we took a day trip to Haifa with two of my classmates, Jeff and Nicole. It was a crazy whirlwind of a day. We started off with a very early morning and made out way to the train station and took the train from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and then transferred to a train to Haifa. Both parts of the journey were beautiful. The first leg because the train winds through the valleys connecting the Judean Hills to the "rolling hills" of the region called the Shfela, and then into the coastal region near Tel Aviv. Once we switched trains, the ride up to Haifa was all along the coast. Beautiful.
Once we got to Haifa, we took the Carmelit, Haifa's crazy, super-steep subway, to the top of the mountain that Haifa sits on. The views from there were also just stunning. Haifa is a gorgeous city that felt very comfortable and less pushy than most other places in Israel. We made our way along Yefe Nof street (which literally translates to "Beautiful View") to the Bahai gardens and went to the various overlooks that were open that day. We also visited the Bahai Temple in the middle of the gardens.
Throughout the day, and particularly as we were trying to navigate Haifa's streets to make our way to each overlook, we met a number of Haifa-people (sorry...demonym hunting will have to be saved for a time when I feel less frantic about writing the post). And everyone was nice. Further, no one spoke to us in English, something that is hard to find in Jerusalem, so we all got to practice our Hebrew a bit. People went out of their way to give us directions and help us save money on our various cab rides. Needless to say, we liked it there a lot.
Ok, back to the day. After the gardens we had a parsley-filled lunch and then went to the Naval History and Clandestine Immigration museum. We looked at lots of boat-y things and went on board a ship that illegally brought Jewish refugees to Israel during time of the British Mandate. After that set of museums, we visited Elijah's Cave, where the prophet is said to have hid out before his...encounter with the prophets of Baal. At this point we had made our way back to the bottom of the mountain, so, clearly it was time to go back up. And the only logical option was the Haifa cable car (the רכבל--rakebel, a play on the word for train mixed with "cable"). We were put in a little pod that didn't close all the way and definitely didn't freak me out because I'm totally not afraid of heights...BUT! We got to take this terrifying little cable car up while the sun was setting. So I distracted myself from fears of plummeting out of the un-closed door by looking at an incredible sunset. We concluded the day by eating at a tasty grill restaurant and then took the bus back home to Jerusalem and were in bed by 11:30. Not a bad 18 hours if you ask me.
With a few days left on our break, we took the opportunity to go to the Tel Aviv and spent shabbat with dear friends of Jason who were recently married. We had a lovely dinner, got to spend time on the beach, and had some much needed relaxation before reentering the craziness of our post-holiday school schedule.
Simchat Torah
The next, and final, holiday of the season: Simchat Torah. For this holiday, we joined a number of other HUC students and went to visit Kibbutz Gezer, a kibbutz with a Reform rabbi, Miri Gold, who has been at the center of the debate in Israel about respecting the legitimacy of non-orthodox rabbis in Israel. We spent the night singing and dancing with the Torah with classmates, high school students on year-in-Israel programs, and with kibbutz members.
For the next day of the holiday, we went to Nava Tehilah, the Renewal minyan we visited for the second day of Rosh HaShanah. There was a lot of dancing and singing with sincere joy and energy. One of the cooler parts was that they unrolled the whole Torah so they could read the beginning and the end. Gavi and never seen the whole Torah open like that before and it was really nice to get to share that with her.
And, with that, we finally reaching the ever-elusive "אחרי החגים" ("after the holidays") portion of the year. When life gets back to normal, which, in reality, is nothing like normal at all.
School is Busy (also...life sucks without Gavi)
In case you weren't aware, grad school (and rabbinical school in particular) is busy. I am currently taking a host of classes: Hebrew, Literature, Second Temple History, Liturgy, Introduction to Rabbinic Texts, Modern Zionism, Biblical Grammar, a full day devoted to our Israel Seminar and a special seminar for rabbinic students. And that is all in addition to a number of other opportunities, programs, lessons, and, of course, time to see and explore Jerusalem and Israel.
And it's awesome.
My Hebrew has improved tremendously. My classes are interesting and engaging. I have some truly brilliant and fascinating professors. Discussions from class often spill over into great conversations over lunch which have to be put on hold until dinner, which end up going until we realize that it's 11pm and we have a Hebrew essay, a liturgy translation, and a few chapters of history to read. Pretty much, each day I feel more and more convinced that my classmates are going to change the face of American Jewry, revitalize our Movement, and are going to be great scholars and leaders. Hopefully they'll let me stand next to them once in a while when they're busy fixing the world. We have also found ways to relax and have fun as a class-cohort. On Shabbat afternoons, there is a group of people who participate in Shabbat Sha-sport and play basketball at the park. After a few weeks my lungs have started working like lungs and only half of my muscles feel like jelly! Last week we also had a special Havdallah service for the men of our class. We had a really excellent conversation about what it means to us to be a man and the vision we have for ourselves as we continue on in our careers and lives.
While school has been busy, exciting, and hectic, it has been particularly challenging during the last few weeks. On October 14 Gavi had went back to the States for a few weeks. She took care of a few important America-based errands and spent time with friends in NY and DC, family in Rochester and Westchester, and attended the wedding of a dear from Brandeis on October 28th. While she's been gone I have learned (and my classmates have confirmed) that I function rather poorly without her. To be more specific, I am not particularly good at telling myself to go to sleep, eating meals that are made of food that is not pretzels and hummus, or building a schedule for homework that is not procrastination-y. Also, life is lonely when your wife is across an ocean. It's a good thing that she's currently on a plane coming back. Yay!
Alright...new plan! I'm splitting this up into two posts so that it's broken up into more manageable pieces. Check the next post for info on some interesting things about Jerusalem and delicious things that were consumed during the past month!
(There's still some photo-hunting to do, so check back later to see more photos from our October adventures)
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