Friday Ellyn and I moved ourselves from Laura and Naomi's apartment. (I released I have not mentioned Naomi before. She is one of Laura's roommates who was also taking classes at the Conservative Yeshiva with us although she took different classes and was enough advanced in speaking Hebrew that she was in Ulpan Gimmel. She is enrolled in a master's program at Pardes and will be finished next year. We had a good time with her and enjoyed being with someone who knew the lay of the land.). We moved from the apartment into the Prima Royale Hotel on Mendele off Hayeshod. It was cool moving into an area close to the school and with which we were familiar with. Now we were the ones that knew the lay of the land.
After spending a long and hot day walking around Ben Yehuda and the Cardo we joined Norma Friedman and Mickie and Sherwin Kepes at the hotel. It was wonder to have them in Jerusalem with me, old friends that I have know since my early days in Fort Wayne. Mickie and Sherwin went to be with their daughters Laura and Leslie who are here on a UJA leadership mission while Norma, Ellyn and I went over to the converted railroad station for a singing Kabbalat Shabbat. Besides the music being wonderful and welcoming of Shabbat, I bumped into several of my fellow students from the Yeshiva as well as some faculty. It is wonderful to actually know people here.
After the music we ambled down to Kol Haneshama, the progressive synagogue not far from the railroad station and participated in a formal service. For the first time in more than 3 weeks I participated in a service that felt like I was actually praying and not just learning and understanding. What a way to end the time here. And it was wonderful to meet up with Reuven Greenvald from CBST who is here for work with the Jewish Agency for Israel.
But we were not finished yet with wonderful coincidences. Saturday morning we joined Laura and Leslie at the UJA program. A woman who was the program guide for their mission lead us through a session (can't come up with the right word) about prayer. About how does one actually pray verses reading the words. It was more complicated than that or maybe simpler. The actual activities of the morning are not important for this discussion. What is important is that the whole thing felt like icing on the cake, the cake being the classes and prayer experiences we had at the Yeshiva. In short, praying in the Jewish tradition means you have to know something about the tradition and the language (what we were doing at the Yeshiva) and then you have to develop some way to be present at the time of prayer (what we talked about at the Yeshiva but did not dwell on). During this Shabbat morning we spent some time actually being present or trying to be present to each other. And I met someone who knows someone from the Yeshiva. And someone who lives in Highland Park New Jersey right by high school. All I can say was---it was cool. How trite. How wonderful.
During the afternoon Ellyn and I took Mickie, Norma, and Sherwin to through the sook in the Old City to our favorite place by the Austrian Hospice, Basti's Restaurant. A final meal of lemonade and mint which I don't like but Ellyn loves and hummus that is excellent and pizza that is really good, believe it or not.
The Shabbat ended with dinner at my favorite Armenia Restaurant with Norma, all the Kepes;s and Ellyn followed by Havdalah with UJA and then coffee and dessert at the Kind David.
What a nice day..
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