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It's been a heck of a week! Last Friday, Udi, our Israeli intern, took me and four friends/classmates, Lindsay, Daniel, Alli, Lisa, on a hike to the ma'ayanot (springs) just outside Jerusalem. So much fun! I hadn't been hiking since I've been here, and frankly it's been a little bit too hot to do a big hike, so this was refreshing. It was the perfect summer hike. Some of it was exposed, but there were a fair number of shady parts. The best part about the hike was that we got to stop at a couple of springs. The first one was honestly kind of sketchy. It had a lot of algae and bugs, and some people do not know how to pick up after themselves. So, I didn't stay in for very long. But it was fun because we got to chill, and Udi made us tea out of zatar and mint that he picked from the trail. Apparently, making tea while hiking is an Israeli thing. Apparently, so is making coffee, as I learned when Udi made us some when we stopped at the picnic benches by the second spring. The final spring we came to was a hidden treasure. It was nice and clean. I stayed in that one for much longer. It was also considerably colder than the first spring, but while I am usually not much of a cold water person, on a hot day like this, that was a good thing. So refreshing!

Oh, and did I mention that the hike had amazing views?

It was overall a wonderful day. In the evening, I unfortunately ended up going to Temple Sha'arei Mitbach (Gates of Kitchen) for services. Silly rice for taking so long to cook! But my dish came out nicely. I am digging this Shabbat potluck almost every week thing. I love cooking, and I love tasting other people's cooking. I don't know that I would have the patience to cook an entire meal for twenty people with the amount of counter and oven space that I currently have in my kitchen. But cooking one dish for a potluck or a meal for a few people I can do. Based on apartment prices in NYC, I'm resigned to the fact that I will have a small kitchen for the next five years.

Anyway, Saturday night began Tisha B'av. Tisha B'av is a day in which we commemorate basically everything bad that ever happened to the Jews, all of which supposedly happened on this date.  The big one is the destruction of the First Temple in 586BCE and the Second Temple in 70CE. It is a fast day. I do fast, though not because I mourn the destruction of the temples, without which Judaism arguably would not exist in its current form. I fast because according to tradition, the Second Temple was destroyed because of internal hatred between Jews, and I see so much of that paralleled today that I worry that we are going to end up being thrown into some sort of figurative exile if something isn't done. We began with a program at HUC and then split up into four separate services for the reading of Eicha (Lamentations): the Kotel, Nava Tehilah (Jewish renewal), Kol Haneshama (Reform), and the Sephardic Beit K'nesset. I chose the Sephardic Beit K'nesset because I wanted a traditional experience that was not the Kotel (as I have mentioned before, I do not really like what has become of the Kotel).

The Sephardic Beit K'nesset was a really interesting, and I'm told a very Israeli, experience. It is one of the oldest synagogues in Jerusalem. Unlike the congregations back home which focus on bringing in new members and recruiting from the outside, some congregations in Jerusalem apparently are made up of a bunch of member families, descended from a long line of founding members. I'm not sure if this is just a Sephardic/Mizrachi thing or if it extends to other kinds of congregations, but regardless, such is the Sephardic Beit K'nesset. It was a really interesting prayer service. The women had the option of sitting either on the balcony or in a side room. Most of the non-HUC women sat in the side room, and those HUC students who also sat in the side room had some interesting conversations with them. I chose to sit on the balcony because I decided that it was easier to see what was going on. The service was interesting. They don't really have specific clergy people who lead the service. They have sort of a lay hazzan (cantor), and other than that people just all pray together, or they go around in a circle. The men were sitting in some sort of a circular formation near the ark. There was a little boy there who was singing along with them. Apparently, that is how kids learn the nusach.

The service was a bit hard to follow. I didn't recognize either the text or the nusach, which is quite different from Ashkenazi (Eastern European, like my antecedents), so I didn't quite understand what was going on all the time. I was able to follow a lot of the reading of Eicha. It made me feel mournful just listening to it. I regret to admit that this was the first time I ever heard a reading of Eicha, but I am told that the Sephardic Eicha trope is also very different from the Ashkenazic. Honestly, I was trying to pick out some sort of pattern but couldn't. This may be because there were quarter tones, which do not exist at all in Western music, i.e. my ears are not used to it. Like the service, there were some parts where the lay hazzan was chanting, and some parts where all of the men were chanting together.

The synagogue itself was pretty interesting too. Unlike Ashkenazi synagogues, Sephardic synagogues have the bimah in the middle. Though, they didn't actually make use of the bimah, since they were sitting on the floor, which I am assuming is because Tisha B'av is a mourning day. I also had the fortune of sitting next to Cantor Tamar, who explained some of the artwork. For instance there are pictures around the synagogue of the various names of G-d, all surrounded by related artwork and descriptive words. There is also a plaque that listed all of the founding members, and Cantor Tamar's family name is on there. What's really interesting is that in Jewish tradition, when you're naming someone in Hebrew in any religious context, you're also supposed to give their parents' names. In Ashkenazic tradition, you always give your father's name first, so I am שרה בת אברהם וקרן. Or if you want transliteration, Sara bat Avraham v' Keren. In Sephardic tradition, the mother's name always comes first, and that was evident on this plaque. Cool, yes?

After the service, a few of us, decided to go to the Kotel. No, I didn't change my mind about the Kotel; I just thought it would be interesting since so many people go. We only stayed for about fifteen minutes. I first took a look at what was happening on the women's side, then decided to venture into the women's side, but quickly retreated due to the masses of people. I then took a peak at the men's side to see what was going on over there. On both sides, people were sitting on the ground, which is a traditional mourning practice, since you are not supposed to be comfortable while mourning. The main difference between the men's side and the women's side is that the men were reading Eicha aloud while the women were reading it silently. And people were full-out mourning. Like, weeping. It's not something I've really seen before.

But I don't want to leave all of you on a mournful note, so here are a few happy things that have happened in the past few days. On Monday, I went to the Jerusalem wine festival. I managed to have the different wines explained to me entirely in Hebrew. I even had a lovely conversation with one of the pourers about the different kinds of grapes that grow in Israel. Yes, in Hebrew. w00t. There were so many tasty wines, and I found out that I can buy many of them in the wine shop next to the shuk. Fancy dinner, anyone? Speaking of food, my friend Abby took me to this place called HaSabichia. All they make is sabich (hummus, eggplant, egg, and other stuff in a pita), and it was the best sabich I have ever tasted. I will be going back. If we want to continue with the food topic, we went to this dairy buffet on Tuesday night at this art gallery called Ticho House. There was live jazz music, and I could eat everything at the buffet. We had an ulpan "concert" on Wednesday where each class sang a different Israeli song. Our class sang a song called "Halleluyah" that won the 1979 Eurovision song competition in Jerusalem. Quite the cheesy song, and we had fun with it. The other classes were also amazing. I had a very happy moment today while doing some pre-Shabbat shopping. I was visiting my favorite spice/rice/other bulk stuff place in the shuk, and one of the guys who worked there was telling me that in addition to working in the shuk, he is also a hazzan. Then I overheard a women saying that she spoke Spanish. So, I started talking to her, and it turns out that she was born in Chile, which is one of my favorite countries. In fact, she lived in Providencia, which was the neighborhood right next to mine (Las Condes) when I was there! I love the social aspect of the shuk. Sam and I also managed to find vegetarian Indian food for dinner, which is nice because while I love Israeli food, I have been missing other kinds of food. Must be the Angelino in me. There, is that happy enough for you? I hope so, because I am off for now!