View of Jerusalem from The Tayyelet (Promenade)
No matter how many times I visit Israel, I never quite get over the fact that people wish each other a "Shabbat Shalom," - from the waitress at brunch, to the flower-seller on Ben Yehuda. Another noticeable difference in this city on Shabbat is the change in noise level. Jerusalem is not a quiet city. The construction alone, especially in my part of town, is noise enough, but add to that the sounds of traffic and every day life, and you've got yourself a good helping of ra'ash - noise. I noticed yesterday afternoon, while taking a break from Shabbat cleaning out on my mirpeset (porch), how quiet my usually noisy neighborhood was. I could hear birds chirping, and children playing - noises that are constantly drowned out by the drilling and construction at the Y.M.C.A. across the street from my apartment. It is this "peace and quiet" that I have come to associate with the coming of Shabbat in Jerusalem - a day of rest and rejuvination. (The street-cats however don't really care about Shabbat, they are noisy every day of the week). There is also a unique bustle of activity that happens on Friday afternoons - the Shabbat preparations. The throngs of people in the open air market, Shuk Mahane Yehuda, and on the pedestrian street of Ben Yehuda increase exponentially on Friday mornings. Everybody is hustling to buy their food, flowers, reading materials, etc... for the next day (b/c not much is open in Jerusalem on Shabbat) and also to prepare for the day of rest itself. Walking to services Friday evening, you can smell aroma of cooking-smells wafting from apartment windows, and feel the shift in energy as the city begins to quiet down for its weekly 25 hours of rest.
I spent a wonderful Erev Shabbat with my friends at Shirah Chadasha, an egalitarian minyan (prayer group), followed by dinner with a few of my classmates at their apartment in Abu Tor (a neighborhood close to the Green Line,). After dinner we heard fireworks - a not un-common sound in Jerusalem, coming from across the Green Line. Red, White and Green Fireworks to be exact (the colors of the Palestinian flag). We all assumed that these Palestinians, just one town over from my friends' luxury apartment in Abu Tor, were celebrating the return of 255 Palestinian Prisoners released by Israel just the day before. The sound of the fireworks was amplified by the lack of noise anywhere else - and was a reminder that, while we enjoy the quiet of Jerusalem on Shabbat, we are far from being at peace.
The Separation Fence/Wall running along the Green Line
Being a student here, constantly running from one thing to the next, it is easy to forget the "situation" here in Jerusalem (and by "situation" I mean the entire Arab-Israeli conflict). Just like anywhere else in the world, one can become so embroiled in the every day things (studies, errands, time with friends) that it is easy to ignore what is happening in the world outside of one's bubble of existence. Don't get me wrong, tensions do run high in this city, but the tensions are many an varied, especially from my vantage point as an American-Reform-Jewish-Woman. There is tension between Jew and Muslim, Israeli and Arab, Men and Women, "Religious" and "Secular" - and then trying to figure out where exactly Progressive Judaism fits within that spectrum... there's never really a dull moment on the streets of Jerusalem, but it is easy to become accustomed to these tensions, and weave them into my every-day existence in a way that I never needed to at home. And yet, despite these tensions, I love Jerusalem, and the home-away-from-home that it is becoming.
A quick note on what I've been doing when I'm not contemplating the sounds of Shabbat and Palestinian Revelry:
I have just finished my first week of Ulpan! I made it through week one... which is promising. Studying Hebrew, and ONLY Hebrew for 5 hours-a-day, 4 days a week is challenging, and somewhat infantilizing. It's easy to forget, after hours 4 of basic language skill development, that I am a) an adult with, b) a B.A. It is good to have the immersion in the language, but I'm not going to lie, it get's a little frustrating when you're trying to tell the teacher what you did yesterday, and cannot remember the word for "shopping". Luckily, the powers-that-be of the HUC Year in Israel program have anticipated just this sort of malaise, and have created a class called "Jerusalem Days" - where one day out of the week we take field trips around the city and study Jewish texts related to the places we visit.
This week was our first Jerusalem Day - and boy was it a doozie! We began the morning at 7:30 am (lifnot haboker - an Israeli expression meaning literally "before the morning" used to describe the early early hours of the morning), and were on the go until 4pm. We started off with morning t'fillah - prayer - up on the Tayyelet, overlooking the city of Jerusalem, both new and old, and then continued onto the City of David and Hezekiah's Tunnel, "where it all began". Walking through Hezekiah's Tunnel was an insane and amazing experience. It was dug out of the stony hillside of Jerusalem in the 8th Century B.C.E. to bring water from outside of the city into a reservoir within the walls to save the city from falling in a siege. There is still water running through the tunnel, which made for a wet and slippery adventure into the earth beneath Jerusalem. The tunnel went from being small and very claustrophobic at points, to tall and awe-inspiring at other times. And the water-adventure aspect made it feel a little bit like Splash Mountain, only on foot... and without the happy singing Disney characters. But other than that, it was really just like Splash Mountain.
City of David 3-D Introductory Film = Photo-op (Classmates Marc, Tami and Brian)
The City of David is, itself, an interesting place as it is both a National Park and a Jewish settlement. I'm not quite sure how that works, but it does, apparently. My Jerusalem Days group is also, quite a good time. I've already began to form my social network here, and for better or for worse, the majority of my friends here are in my Jerusalem Days group, and our teacher is hilarious. His name is Moshe, and he is an uber energetic man, who just exudes a passion for Israel, Jerusalem, and the history of this place. I find his enthusiasm to be contagious, and even at 3:00pm when he shlepped us through the Old City, I was still interested in what he had to say (although I may not have retained it all...)
Until next time!
Enjoying the new sushi joint in town, Sushi Rechavia, with Nicole, Jen and Tami
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