On Tuesday, ITF had a 9:00 meeting with the MASA representatives. Afterwards, all of the ITF participants visited the shuk together, where we knew that we would need to pick up supplies. With Rosh Hashannah and Shabbat back-to-back this year, all Jewish businesses will be closed from Wednesday afternoon until Sunday morning, affecting everyone, regardless of their levels of observance. I know, by the way, that I've been writing about the shuk very frequently, but it's always an experience to visit it, and I always feel as if I learn something new there. For instance, the other day, I learned that the way to say in advance that I can't make change, and have no coins of smaller denomination, is to state "ein li kesef katan," literally "I have no small money." I also learned that vendors will accept dollarim in place of shekalim at a 3:1 exchange rate, somewhat worse than the 7:2 ratio which you can find at one of the money-changers right around the block. Also, one thing that I still can't quite understand is the high price of dairy products; the cheapest milk I can find still costs nearly ₪10 for a liter and a half, which is fairly expensive. And because of the lack of a massive soybean glut as in the U.S., there is no cheap soy alternative. What is the cause? Is it that I'm just used to living in a country used to lots of dairy, or that milk is costly to produce in a desert country? I have no idea. I'm preoccupied with milk because, as a vegetarian without a usable kitchen (for the moment), it's one of the most readily-available sources of protein in my diet.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Oranim participants of Ramla had a picnic. My housemates and I were a little bit late, because my roommate Ben and I had been having a somewhat important conversation that I thought it would not be a good idea to break off. I met many of the other 5-month Oranim participants (their program ends in December), after which Ben and I had a bit of an adventure on Herzl avenue, and we returned to our apartment after sundown. I went on a run in the park, half-expecting to meet one of the other ITF participants, but I ended up running alone.
Wednesday morning, I awoke with a terrible dream that I was still lingering in the United States, and had never made it to Israel, but instead was fighting with all of my friends, and was thoroughly wretched. Luckily, this was not the case, and in the morning, after failing once again to buy postcards (I haven't yet found a place where postcards are sold in this town; this is why none of you have received any from me, as of yet), I found myself, despite my the previous days' preparations, trekking back to the commercial district of town to pick up a gift for my Rosh Hashannah host family. I ended up buying a jar of honey for ₪15, and, because I had already made the walk to the shuk, picked up some tomatoes and figs while I was at it. The afternoon passed somewhat slowly; Noach had left for Jerusalem, and my roommate Ben had left to visit his family, who live elsewhere in Israel. There was some last-minute miscommunication between Rose and our host family and me, and I missed a pickup notice. I got dressed to go to a synagogue, but the realized that I didn't know meeting times, etc., and decided instead to recite arvit in the apartment after I had lighted candles. Unfortunately, that's when I realized that my travel siddur does not include any of the High Holiday amidot, although it includes some rather superfluous material in the Rosh Hashannah section. So, the very first prayer-time of what was then technically the new year, I had to improvise.
I left after nightfall for the address that Carmel had sent me. It was in the far north of Ramla, not very far from our apartment. As I turned onto the side street, that I thought was where my host family lived, I heard my name called from behind me -- Rose had spotted me. She and the mother of my host family had been passing, on the sidewalk, of the main street. Rose was incredibly glad to see me -- because of the miscommunication, she had worried that I might not come at all, and that she would be left alone, without another American. To be honest, I was quite glad that they had seen me; although I have more confidence than I once did, I still might feel somewhat embarrassed knocking on what might or might not be the correct door, and asking whether I had arrived at the right house. When asked where I had been, I said that I had waited until after arvit to come, and made vague references to the Sepharadi synagogue that I had visited on Friday night.
There were about a dozen members of the host family, depending upon how you count. 1) Galit and 2) Micha'el were the mother and father, respectively. The rest of the family consisted of 3) Micha'el's father Eliezer (born in Morocco); 4) Micha'el's mother (born in Iraq); 5) Micha'el's paternal aunt (also from Morocco); 6) Galit's mother; 7) Micha'el's sister, 8) her husband, and 9) their infant daughter; and Galit and Micha'el's 10) teenaged daughter), 11) preteen son Tamir, 12) 10-year old daughter, and 13) younger son Shiloh. In addition to the two Americans, that makes 15 people! Most of the kids were running around a lot, though, and weren't able to sit still. Like most other Jewish Israelis, the family was Sepharadic (I'm still not certain where Galit's side of the family is from), and everyone seemed to speak Hebrew with a slightly different accent. Saba Eliezer, the white-haired patriarch of the family, has an apparently French accent, although he seemed reticent to speak in any language other than Hebrew.
Following kiddush over wine, Rosh Hashannah dinners traditionally kicks off with a series of simanim (lit."symbols," but in this case, symbolic foods) eaten to predict a fortuitous and prosperous new year. Most people are familiar with apples and honey (tapuchim v'dvash), meant to symbolize a sweet new year. My Mother usually bakes a round loaf of challah, cooked with raisins, cinnamon, and honey, likewise to symbolize a sweet new year. At my host family this year, however, we ate apples and honey, white beets (selek, which sounds like l'histalku, the verb "to remove," so that our obstacles will be removed), the seeds of a pomegranate (rimon, so that our year will be as full of miztvot as a pomegranate is full of seeds), dates (tamarim, which sounds like "l'hitalmu," the verb "to consume," so that our obstacles will be consumed), and the head (rosh) of a fish, so that we will be at the head of our affairs, rather than at the tail.
The entire family, by the way, was speaking Hebrew. I know very little, as does Rose, but we did our best to communicate. A few of the members spoke some English; Galit and Micha'el were both quite good. Galit needs to speak English for her job at the Police Station, but Micha'el was relying purely on his high school education for his English skills, which was very impressive, given his proficiency. Rose and I did our best to describe ourselves and our histories. I explained that I had studied history in college, and that I had just graduated. This was very surprising to the family, because in Israel, men and women my age are at the beginning of their college careers, having just finished their mandatory time serving in the IDF. I mentioned my time in Paris, and Micha'el's aunt was particularly interested in this. She had visited many European countries, including France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic. I was asked about antisemitism in Europe in my own experience (I never witnessed it with my own eyes, but I know that it's there). There was tons, and tons of food. Unfortunately, the individual whom I had asked to remind our hosts that Rose and I were vegetarians did not follow through, probably through timidity. This resulted in my having my first bites of meat in over eight years, because I made a reasoned calculation, and decided that it was better for me not to offend my hosts than to abstain from meat. So I ate fish, and poultry, and red meat. The fish and poultry wasn't bad, but, to be honest, I just don't like red meat. Don't get me wrong, the Moroccan cuisine was excellent, but my three new grandmothers were all watching me closely to make certain that I served myself from every successive dish on the table. And I did, sometimes twice, in such instances that one of the grandmothers was looking away when I served myself the first time, and handed me the schnitzel again, thinking that I still hadn't eaten any. Oh, well. Also, an unspoken assumption in this family was that if you're drinking water, it must be because you are sad, and too shy to ask for anything better. So, even though I have been trying to steer away from juice and soda recently, I drank a lot more that I usually do, because the food was quite salty (but, I repeat myself, good). Rose and I stayed until nearly midnight; along with the parents, we walked halfway to Rose's apartment, but then our host parents promised to escort her the rest of the way, and so I turned around, and walked back to my apartment on Yoseftal. There were many people out on the streets, also walking back from the festival, and many lighted houses from which the sounds of voices singing songs in Hebrew drifted onto the street. As I've mentioned before, despite Ramla's well-earned reputation as a somewhat poor city, the streets are very safe at night, at least for men. When I returned, I was the only one in the apartment, Ben still being with his host family for dinner.
I got up late the next morning, at nearly 7:40 am. Unfortunately, the Sepharadi synagogue that the men of my host family were attending began holiday Shacharit at 7:00 am sharp, and I didn't know exactly where the building was. I leapt out of bed, rattled through my birchot hashachar, grabbed my tallit, and rushed off to Vilna street, where I found the synagogue by following the man wearing a kippah and tzitzit. The name of the synagogue, I noted as I snuck in, was "אוהב שלום ורודף שלום" ("Ohev Shalom v'Rodef Shalom, lit. "love peace and pursue peace"), a line which I recognized from one of my favorite passages of the first chapter of Pirkei Avot. I arrived late in pesukei d'zimra, recognized this, and duly caught up by Yishtabach. I sat in the back row, a little bit behind Saba Eliezer, Micha'el, and Tamir, but they ushered me forward to sit with them. There were around fifty men inside the sanctuary, which was around the size of the first floor of my house in Ithaca. I did my best to keep up in the machzor, which, unfortunately, had some passages only in unpunctuated Rashi script. I stumbled a little bit over the Sepharadi nusach, and after the amidah, Micha'el, perhaps sensing my awkwardness, asked me if I would prefer to go to a nearby Ashkenazi synagogue. I told him that I really wanted to stay and experience a Sepharadic Rosh Hashannah service. Saba is a kohen (I don't know why this doesn't make his son and grandson kohanim, too, though; this requires investigation), and after birchat hakohanim, he walked back to our seats, and, placing his hands on our heads, made a b'rachah over Temir, Micha'el, and me. Right before the Torah service, the aliyot and other honors are auctioned off, the chazan acting as the auctioneer. I had never in my life before seen this practice. Some of the honors went for several hundred shekalim, and I think that even the least honor sold for around ₪50. This synagogue has around six to eight sifrei Torah in its ark, all of them encased in solid casings with metallic exteriors, rather than the soft fitted wrappings common in the United States, or the strips of fine cloth that I remember seeing in the European Sepharadic synagogues that I visited. These cases are quite large, and the scrolls are read without being removed. Surprisingly, I was given the fourth aliyah (I don't quite know how this happened, because, as far as I could tell, neither I nor my family won the auction on the aliyah), and, because I had just arrived from a distant country, made a special prayer, a gomel, after reading. There was also a lady who had arrived from France. It was at this point that I saw the women's gallery, which was behind the backs of the farthest men; they were on the opposite side of a wall with several fully-curtained windows, so that neither side could see the other. Apparently, they could hear the men's section, though. I made the mistake of allowing my tzitzit to drag on the floor when I had my aliyah, which caused some murmuring, and a man rising to fix the position of my (admittedly very long) tallit so that the tzitzit were off the ground. Throughout all of these services, by the way, I found that, even though I was unknown by almost everyone, I felt more immediately welcome than I did than any other such synagogue at which I'd suddenly appeared. This is very typically Israeli. During the reading, I read along through the Torah and Haftorah portions in Hebrew (no other choice), and understood so-so. This happens to be my favorite Haftorah of the year, by the way. The shofar was blown, and was also blown periodically throughout musaf. As I expected, I finished musaf well after everyone else. Just before the very end, there was an auction for the honor of opening the ark for the birchat haparnassah, the blessing of prosperity/livelihood. The cost of this was -- no joke -- ₪1100, which is around $300. After the final piyyut was finished, several of the young children took the shofarim, and began to blow, causing their elders to smile as they filed out of the synagogue.
By the time we ended, it was nearly noon, and we walked back to my host family's house for our midday meal, our first food of the day. When we walked in, my new safta'ot all kissed me on the cheeks, just like the French do, and I really realized that I was beginning to be part of the family. We expected Rose to come, but she did not, unfortunately, and there was some measure of concern, among everyone, about where she had gone. Micha'el briefly went to look for her, but came back unsuccessfully. During lunch, I asked about the auction of aliyot (it's common in Israel as a way to fundraise), and we also spoke a lot about names. I did my best to explain the story behind my own family name, Davis. David was the given name of my paternal great-grandfather, and when my grandfather changed his name from Lipkowitz in order to make it sound more American, he chose something that would sound like ben-David. It was also at this point that I began to realize how much Micha'el's parents remind me of my own paternal grandparents, from the Ashkenazic side of my family. Saba is very much in charge and patriarchal, and Savta is sweet, and slightly passive. Saba really enjoyed his arak (same word in Hebrew), and the bottle has pictures of some Sepharadic chacham, and a special prayer of enjoyment printed on the label; so Israel. I've been noticing, by the way, that Israelis consistently refer to the country they live in as Ha'aretz. Eretz is the generic name for any land or country (in Modern Hebrew, the United States is Ha'artzot Habrit, literally "the Lands of the Covenant"), but when it has the definite article attached, it becomes the Land, which can only refer to one place in the world. Again, at lunch, there were piles of meat, and the chicken, stuffed with a sweet, crunchy filling, was excellent, pardon me for saying so. Although I am not remotely considering at all reneging on my vegetarianism across the board, I think that I might need to eat meat when I am around my host family in the future, to conceal the fact that I violated my ordinary habits in favor of showing them the honor that I think that they deserve to receive (remember, they're doing this all for free, because it's a mitzvah). After helping them study a little bit of English, I returned to my apartment. I fell asleep with my book open, something that is becoming frequent in this hot, hot country, in the middle of the day. Ben and I spoke, as we frequently do. He had enjoyed his host family the night before.
I returned to the synagogue for minchah at 6:30 pm. Again, I sat by Micha'el, Tamir, and Saba Eliezer. There was no Torah reading, and after aleinu, we performed Tashlich, the tradition of symbolically casting away scraps of bread into a body of water. There are no rivers or other bodies of water in Ramla (this might be the first time since I lived in Kew that I've made any sort of home in such a waterless town), so we threw bread into a bucket full of water instead. The Sepharadim have a very long script, which I believe was in Aramaic, associated with Tashlich, very different from the comparatively simple ritual that I know from home in Ithaca. Afterwards, we began the holiday of Rosh Hashannah all over again with arvit. Then back to my host house for another dinner, like that of the night before. Really, I'm beginning to feel myself growing fatter, something that made everyone smile. I tried my absolute best to speak exclusively in Hebrew to everyone, and everyone did their best to encourage me. After some careful consideration, I managed to put together, in Hebrew, the story Bruno once told me about Neil Wasserman, his ancestor. When he immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe, the boat waited for a terribly long time at Ellis Island, and many of the poorer passengers had nothing to drink. When it was finally time to disembark, the immigration officer asked Bruno's ancestor what his name was. Thinking that the officer was asking him what he wanted, he pointed at the water in the harbor. Thus, the immigration officer wrote down "Wasserman" as his name. Good story, isn't it? I left that night around eleven, with a load of Moroccan cake in tow, to share with my housemates, as well as an open-ended invitation to them all to come for lunch or dinner. After staying up and talking a little bit, just before I went to bed at around midnight, Ben went on a run.
The next morning was a repetition of the morning before, with a few changes. I of course did not receive another aliyah, but Saba blessed me again, and I finished musaf late again. Oh, well. I made the mistake of accidentally, grabbing a kabbalistic machzor from the shelf, which had all sorts of directions about what my intentions should be when reciting the prayers. Today, the honors went for slightly lower prices, the most expensive one going for ₪560.
Tamir and I stopped by my apartment to see if Ben was awake, and wanted to join us. He was still fairly asleep, but promised to join us later, for Shabbat dinner that evening. So Tamir and I walked on, and had an opportunity to talk together as well as we could. He asked me about military service in the U.S., and also whether I thought President Obama was likely to attack Iran. I did my best to answer him with my limited Hebrew skills (by the way, no, I do not think that Obama will attack Iran; a certain fluffy-haired Wolf is free to disagree with me). I had my last holiday meal with my host family, again, speaking as much Hebrew as possible. I received an invitation to the Yom Kippur break-fast in a week from Savta, and I enthusiastically accepted with all of the broken Hebrew that I could muster. I also took Galit aside, telling her that I was hoping to perhaps help her children with their English in the coming year, perhaps coming once or twice a week to their house to practice speaking for an hour or so. I really, really hope that she takes me up on the offer; after all, I'm here in order to educate, and I really want nothing but more opportunities to improve my teaching ability, and to pay back Galit and the rest of the family.
I walked back to my apartment, succeeding, again, on falling asleep on the couch with my Benny Morris book on my abdomen. If I had been at home in Ithaca, I would have been in idle tickling position, but, luckily for me, my housemate Ben is not a tickle-opportunist. We talked for a few hours after I roused myself from my food-coma, and studied a little bit of Hebrew from my textbook for the Ulpan class that I'll eventually receive. I dressed for 6:30 pm Minchah, the last prayer service of Rosh Hashannah. I was on time, and listened to another devar Torah in Hebrew that I could not understand; even though the religious vocabulary is the one with which I have the greatest familiarity, and the lecturing-style is typically very easy for me to understand in a foreign language (at least, it was when I was learning French). Anyway, Rosh Hashannah segued directly into Shabbat, and I got to enjoy the traditional Sepharadic Kabbalat Shabbat, which is so beautiful. When they recited Shir Hashirim, I tried to understand, and, almost miraculously, my favorite line in the entire poem (מַה יָּפִית וּמַה נָּעַמְתְּ אַהֲבָה בַּתַּעֲנוּגִים זֹאת קוֹמָתֵךְ דָּמְתָה לְתָמָר) leapt out at me. It got me to be more than a little bit nostalgic; I can be that way, around certain songs and poems, missing certain people very acutely. Of course, I try to avoid the lure of nostalgia, but the whole song evokes so many memories from the past two years of my life, and that line itself might be more cathartic than any other I've ever read (or transcribed).
After arvit, Tamir and I fetched Ben from our apartment, and we all walked back to my host family's apartment. Ben got on tremendously well with the entire family; his Hebrew is so much better than mine! One of the topics that we really got into was action films -- we even got into comic books a little bit. We stayed up much later than we had before, and Ben and I weren't back in our apartment until after midnight.
On Saturday morning, I was up around 7:30 am, hoping to visit an Ashkenazi synagogue that Micha'el had encouraged me to attend. Unfortunately, I got turned around in the network of small streets in the neighborhood that I had never visited before. It was getting late, already past 8:00 am, and I was worried that if I was too picky about which synagogue to attend, I would miss barchu. So I followed the first Jewish man who looked synagogue-bound that I spotted, and tailed him, until I entered a synagogue with a sanctuary only around the size of my living room (tiny). I think that when I entered, everyone immediately recognized me as not being part of the regular congregants; a somewhat sternfaced man handed me a tallit (it was Shabbat, so I couldn't carry my own to the synagogue), but, hey, I just made it in time for barchu, by a margin of under five minutes. It's incredible how these things work out. I made certain that my tzitzit were well off the ground, fearing a repeat of Thursday's embarrassment. In truth, even though I was drawing attention, it wasn't at all negative. Again, when I was ushered up for the fifth aliyah, everyone realized why I had come in late, because my accent gave me away so obviously as a recent comer to Israel. The reader started laughing uproariously, almost uncontrollably, throughout my reading, and continued throughout the haftorah, and I wonder whether it was my Hebrew pronunciation that made him laugh so hard. After services ended, several congregants welcomed me, pleasantly surprised that I had as passable Hebrew as I did; the man who had handed me the Tallit told me that he had relatives in New York, in Manhattan. Avraham, the brother-in-law of Micha'el and Galit, coincidentally walked in, and was surprised to see me, and the two of us walked out together (it was about 10:30 am by this time). I told him that I needed to stop by my apartment to rouse Ben, and bring him to lunch. I did; it took us awhile, though, but I didn't want Ben to get lost on the way, this being only his second time over to Galit's. When we arrived, kiddush had already been made, so I made it again, Sepharadi-style. It made me think back for a moment to all of those Lunch-and-Learns that Sarah Greenberg and I ran last year (and which would not have been possible without Rachel Silverman and Rabbi Brian), and how I was always the guy who made Kiddushah Rabbah. This meal, Saba, having finished the arak, had a bottle of scotch out on the table. Ben had some scotch, and, as in the case of the meat (which, yes, I continued to eat throughout this period), I felt obligated to have some, even though I do not think that there is any taste in this world that I find quite as disagreeable to my taste buds as that of scotch. I told the only scotch story I knew, that about Rav Ami (to whom I referred as החכם שבעירי, "the Rabbi who is in my city," not thinking it worth the effort to explain the notion of JLIC Rabbinic couples). Last year, before Pesach, he needed to finish his Scotch, so he got the students to drink the rest -- and we drank it all! Well, amusing enough for a non-English-speaking audience.
Ben and I left in early afternoon, returning to our apartment. I read more, studied Hebrew, and the two of us spoke at length, too. I wish I could order all of our conversations, because most of them are quite interesting, and touch on a variety of subjects. I think that universal humanitarianism was one of our topics, but I can't be certain. I recited Shabbat minchah, and, after tza'it hakochavim, weekday arvit, I returned to my host family one last time for havdallah; unfortunately, I was late. But I made it myself, thanked them all, and wished them all a good week and a tzom kal.
לכולם! גמר חתימה טובה
~JD
