Based on the week’s teachings, I was not feeling super-duper-excited
to celebrate Rosh Hashana. Sure, the idea of apples and honey and matzah ball
soup is always thrilling, but there’s a lot more philosophy to grapple with
that comes with that. I was struggling with having the attention to prayer and
the point of the holiday. Over the few days of classes, I had more enjoyed the
intellectual aspect of the learning, even distracted during the meditation and
spirituality lessons because I was too focused on the literary and
philosophical analysis of the texts. I went to Pardes’ learners’ service for
the first day, looking for a change of pace and hoping to derive more meaning
from the day even if I wouldn’t be in a traditional 300-page liturgical
service. While I did not find the meaning I was seeking, I found some really
good babka, and a girl named Livia gave me a nice hug, and described how she
was at a troubling, lost time in her life, so I felt really grateful and
peaceful. I leafed through some more pages of a book about Jewish Law’s
applications but the author failed to include a foreword about why following
Jewish Law is compelling to so many people, so I was bored by the book quickly,
not seeing a point to so much specification and discussion. I returned home
with a book on the rationale and applications of the Jewish Renewal movement,
thinking this highly spiritual movement would be a refreshing change.
I invited Alisa over for lunch, and made up a mini-shmorgasbord
of turkey sandwiches on challah rolls, couscous and borekas, in an effort to
incorporate as many carbohydrate forms to one meal as possible. Alisa, a former
financial analyst a year ahead of me, is in the month-long study program with
me before she goes to a social entrepreneurial fellowship for six months in the
north of Israel. I remember we talked about finding meaningful work and
transportation mishaps and wigs, and we had a grand old time.
I had lounged about for a significant amount of time and
then realized I had to hurry and get ready for my dinner – an hour walk away.
This walk, up trendy Derech Beit Lechem through Baka, across the quiet Rakevet
park, toward the Paamon gardens. As I was walking up Keren HaYesod, I decided
to take a tiny extra hike through the gardens, enchanted by cactuses bigger
than me and shiny sculptures, with fountain plazas where children played and
parents prayed. I remembered leading services with someone who had never led
before, back in 2008 on my Pilgrimage trip, my first Shabbat in Jerusalem. I
had forgotten where the spot was, or that the service had happened but places
come flocking back to memory quickly. I saw the golden glow of the Old City
walls reflecting the afternoon sun, the same as it had 5 years and a few weeks
earlier.
I continued up (you’re ALWAYS walking up when you’re in
Jerusalem. Even when you’re going downhill, it’s only to go back up.) and
pit-stopped in the Fuchsberg Center for Conservative Judaism, looking for a
little more familiarity and comfort (and a bathroom). I ended up finding that
in the arms of Maya Dolgin, who was there with her brother and these two other
guys. I knew three out of the four, and it was really nice to see some familiar
faces after half of my long, hot walk. I met the last of the four, a guy from
Chicago, so I felt like I kind of knew him already. I continued my walk in the
best spirits I’d been in all day, excited to find my friend Mitzi at our 7 p.m.
meeting point.
Mitzi had invited me to one of her Rabbi’s houses, a mentor
of hers who runs the Nishmat seminary’s year-long post-high school program. I
know a handful of girls who have studied there and they are all kind, smart,
well-rounded, open-minded people – Nishmat must be an amazing place. The rabbi
lives in Nachlaot, Jerusalem’s most quintessentially Jerusalem neighborhood:
windy paths, nameless streets, hanging gardens and so many pregnant religious
women with beautiful scarves. Mitzi and I went to evening services at Kol Rina,
a Carlebach-singing style service in a bomb shelter. Three Israeli women
wearing a combination of leopard print and plastic platform stripper heels made
me appreciate the diversity of Jewish people in Israel and the holiday that
could bring such shoes into a synagogue. Still, I disagree with their fashion
choices but I can focus on giving them an A for bringing out what they
considered to be their best styles.
Dinner was held in a square room with a basic vaulted gothic
ceiling. This architecture had the effect that on one side of the room, you
could perfectly hear the conversation at the other end of our 27-person table.
Acoustics can be crazy. While not freaked out by hearing each far-away word
about making aliyah from a girl from Oregon wearing clogs with socks, I enjoyed
all twenty different symbolic foods, each blessed with a special play on words
wishing us an enemy-free year of health and success. I was overwhelmed by the
seven children singing songs, particularly the young boy next to me who kept
wishing me a fruitful life of many children. This blessing comes with a
tradition of eating a fish head, which he delighted greatly in. By the soup
course, the boy was conked out on the couch. I was slurping up matzah balls and
listening to a young yeshivish couple who had met at the table a few years
earlier when independently exploring religion ask a hippy-dippy also observant
older couple why they were choosing to home-school their son. It takes all
kinds to make the world go round. By the main course, I was already stuffed
from the abundance of new fruits, symbolic vegetables, huge matzah balls and
sizeable chunks of the two enormous 2-kilo challahs smothered in honey.
We all went around introducing ourselves and saying our
favorite thing about the Holidays in Jerusalem. I explained that I had come to
Israel, with just excitement thinking I would find clear validation for every
part of my identity and chosen path. Two weeks in, I have experienced more
mental duress and emotional confusion than I have felt in the last eight months
of nomadship. This place and it’s people force you into a constant state of
questioning, but from that comes the potential for a remarkable path of
self-discovery, evolution and betterment. And for that, I am extremely
grateful. It’s better to grow and change than simply validate what you already
think you know. Next thing I knew, I was explaining to a girl on the couch why
I wasn’t planning to become more religiously observant or stay in Israel to
study (I have three specific reasons, feel free to ask). Then, I talked with an
Asian woman about her forearm tattoo of a Scottish mythical creature. The night
ended with some good gooey chocolate cookies and the rabbi’s wife sending me
and Mitzi off with water bottles for our long walks home. It was again, close
to one a.m.
On my walk home, I was lonely, so I befriended some seminary
girls, a flock of them from Passaic, New Jersey, who were a little confused by
what and who I was. I’m sometimes confused about it too, but I’m not sure
they’d really met any practicing Jews who hadn’t been to day school growing up.
Most of my walk was silent, dark and alone – but not as
lonely. I think the break from chatting and noise and people and food was much
needed. I ran into my friend Sara from Pardes right outside my apartment, and I
couldn’t wait to divulge all of the crazy characters who had punctuated my
evening.
And it hit me that the holiday weekend was only halfway
through.
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