Although I was in Israel during Rosh Hashanah two years ago with Alexander Muss High School in Israel, I only got the secular Israeli experience of going to the beach, so I decided to make the trip up to the capital for the New Year. I got on a bus with two friends from my section on Wednesday afternoon, erev Rosh Hashanah, and after spending about 30 minutes trying to find the bus from the central bus station in Jerusalem to Beit Ar-El (the Young Judaea hostel where we would be staying) we arrived and were greeted by the small portion of section one kids who were staying on campus for the holiday. I settled in to my friend Alex Lyon’s room and after a couple hours of relaxing, my friend Joe Step picked me up to spend the first night with his family in Katamon, a nearby neighborhood of Jerusalem. We walked 45 minutes to the house where we met his cousins, and quickly went off to pray in the family’s synagogue, located in a school gym – the flower pots in the basketball hoops were a nice touch. After services, we returned to the house for a delicious meal during which I tasted cow tongue for the first time. It was delicious!
The next morning, Joe came back to the hostel and woke Alex and me up at 9 to go to shul. We had decided that instead of sitting through one service, we would go shul hopping to see many different synagogues and services. We started at Shira Chadasha, a shul close to campus that had been recommended to us, and it was nice, but the overwhelming presence of Americans gave it a strange, unauthentic feel. Over the next 4 or 5 hours we walked all the way through Jerusalem stopping at 9 different services. Many congregations were very welcoming, including one beautiful Sephardic synagogue on the top floor of a bank (this was one of our favorites). Our most interesting stop had to be when we stepped into a shul in Me’ah She’arim, the most religious neighborhood in Israel where tour groups are forbidden to enter and woman dressed immodestly will literally have rocks thrown at them. From the moment we stepped foot into the surprisingly dirty neighborhood, people began to stare, and even more so when we walked into the service dressed in our khaki pants and colored button down shirts (as opposed to the residents who dress strictly in black and white). The adults seemed to stare out of hatred and disgust while many kids seemed to have a sort of curiosity as they rarely see people not exactly like themselves. It was neat to peak in on this lifestyle, but I wouldn’t be too quick to return anytime soon. Other highlights of the day included walking through a gorgeously decorated Ethiopian church and hearing a professional shofar blower at another stop.
After our tour we took a quick nap before playing basketball and getting ready for dinner. Joe was going back to his family, so Alex and I decided to find a host family in the Old City. We knew of a free hostel near the Kotel that would set people up with Shabbat and holiday dinners, so we hiked to the Wall with our fingers crossed, and luckily found the man we were looking for who assigned us to Rabbi Danziger. We walked with the Rabbi to his house a few minutes away and met his family of 6 (who made aliyah 4 years ago and have been having guests for every Shabbat and holiday since) and the other 15 guests whom he had welcomed into his house for dinner. Dinner was incredible and the company was great; the food was endless and delectable, and the zmirot that we sang throughout the meal made the experience truly amazing. I sat next to a very interesting guy. His name is Yedidyah, and he is from Borough Park, NY (which he boasted is the largest religious population in the Diaspora). Yedidyah is in Israel for a couple weeks studying, and doesn’t have a real plan. He seemed to feel out of place at home since he was 26 and not yet married, and he came here to study. I started talking to him and told him what I was doing in Israel, but he couldn’t comprehend what I was telling him. He kept asking “So what Yeshiva are you studying at?”, and I kept trying to tell him that I was not at a Yeshiva, rather I was on a Young Judaea program backed by Hadassah, the largest Women’s Zionist Organization…but none of this made any sense to him. Yedidyah essentially had no concept of anything other than the strictly orthodox world in which he had grown up. He didn’t know what a summer camp was, and he certainly couldn’t understand why I was spending a whole year doing anything other than studying Jewish texts. He was interested in what I had to say, and I was very intrigued by his life, but at times he also seemed a little condescending. This definitely did not bring down the mood of the night however, and when Alex and I left hours later, I really felt like this was one of the most amazing religious experiences I had ever had. After dinner, we walked over to meet his Alex’s camp friend at a Yeshiva right next to the Kotel and the three of us sat on the roof overlooking the dome of the rock for about an hour talking about the temple and the temple mount.
The next day we slept late and played basketball for several hours before briefly visiting the Kotel once more and heading out to a final host family for Shabbat dinner. There were 6 of us from year Course crammed into this small apartment along with two parents and 5 kids between the ages of 4 and 13…it was a little hectic. Dinner was nice, and it was extremely generous of the family to invite all of us into their house, but it didn’t quite compare to the previous night.
Since Rosh Hashanah ran right into Shabbat, and busses in Israel don’t run on Shabbat or holidays, I was planning on returning to Arad Saturday night. That plan quickly changed when I realized it would be a lot more fun to go out and party in Jerusalem on Saturday night and skip work on Sunday. I went out with about 15 friends, and we headed to Ben Yehuda and Crack Square (Yes, that’s actually the name). After an argument with the bus driver when he threatened to call the police because I tried to sneak on, we made it to downtown Jerusalem; I hadn’t realized that there was more to the area than American tourists milling in the middle of the well-known Ben Yehuda St., but just off of the main street there’s a real night life with bars and clubs. We hung out and I ran into a bunch of friends from home, and then we headed back to go to sleep. I woke up early the next morning to catch buses back to Arad, but this was an awesome Rosh Hashanah weekend.
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