Mucho Mooching on Shavuot and The Last Shabbat

I didn't plan on it, with finals and packing rushing up, but Thursday night and Friday was a special holiday, and while in the States it's one of the most boring since there's nothing special that you do on it. Here the circumstances change.

Shavuot marks the fiftieth day after the second day of Passover, and the time where the Israelites get their Torah. Customs usually include studying all night. So for the second Thursday in a row, Jerusalem was awake into the dawn. I did the usual 4km walk from the dorms to Town, eventually arriving at the Conservative Yeshiva, a place where I'd stayed on numerous occasions. This time, though, I couldn't figure out where to go. I ended up eating a fine dinner of cheese barekas, potatoes and watermelon with a bunch of high school students, before finding the lighter dinner I was supposed to be at. So already with two meals under my belt in under an hour, I was glad I came along.

The sessions themselves didn't appeal really. I caught only about every tenth word that the teachers said, as they discussed Ruth and the meanings of the characters names, as well as Abraham the iconoclast. However, there was always a break for more food in between sessions! Eventually I joined my friends on a short walk to another center, the Avi Chai Center, where more lectures were going on in Hebrew and English, but there I absolutely passed out, so  I missed the class on science and religion. On the way back to the Conservative Yeshiva I learned the only piece of information of the night, that there's an interpretation that since the Israelites received the Torah on Mt. Sanai, and nobody's really sure where it is, it therefore belongs to everybody, and everyone can therefore accept it. I responded saying that first of all, others do accept it, even if not in the same way we do, and second, events relevant to Jewish history have happened in many places, but none of them are marked except for those in Israel (ie Purim, Sanai, Moses).

We returned in time to chill out for a few minutes, eat some food, and take off with the entire community of Jerusalem. At approximately four o'clock, the streets filled up with people, as we walked to the Old City. As I threw on my tallit to stay warm, it was an odd feeling seeing everybody walk the same path through the shuk to the Kotel, in the darkest hours of night. The Kotel was mobbed, everywhere. I stayed at one minyan about 20 feet from the wall, and then moved back, to the very very back of the entire plaza, and heard the Ten Commandments. Finally, I left the crowd for the Southern Wall Excavations, where the Western Wall meets the Southern Wall, and the Conservative (Masorti) egalitarian service was privately proceeding. You can see what this place looked like on Christmas Eve, Ramadan, and Hannukah in 2000...



Today, however, it was like walking in on a peace protest. People were sitting everywhere-on the floor from around the Roman Period, on the tall stone structures that once supported the archways up to the Temple,and everybody had different colored tallitot, contrasting the stark black and white at the Plaza.I heard Ruth, the Ten Commandments again, and then went back to the Kotel for possibly the greatest thing Chabad has ever done for me: Free breakfast.

After a delicious muffin, I was in a pickle. I could either walk all the way back to the apartment, even though I was overexhausted and had pulled a muscle speed walking the night before, or I could try and locate an apartment my friends had rented out for two days. It was another half hour walk away. I decided to just get moving to the outer wall of the city and then make up my mind, but before I did so I was lucky to find Sarah, who was walking right back to the apartment. She said it would be fine to come over, which made my leg feel so much better, and made the trek, with me eventually collapsing on a huge leather couch. It was easily the most fantastic and memorable Shavuot ever!

But then, after I walked back to the apartment, I realized I had no place for dinner. All day Thursday, while most people were getting food and making plans the next two days, I was working on papers. When I entered the apartment complex, I found Dayna reading outside, and she offered to see if there would be room at the house she was going to for dinner tonight, at a place she had never been to (so even though I felt bad for intruding, she was also a new face).

and of course, this plan worked out too,

A twenty minute walk later, I had met a guy from Philly who made aliyah after high school, having never been to Israel, served in the army as a sniper, roomed with friends of mine from high school, and now carried a gun everywhere he went. He and a bunch of grad students and Rothberg students arrived at the home of a wonderful young American orthodox couple, and for the rest of the evening, we discussed ridiculous children's games, Shavuot, Persian heritage (the guy was Persian), tap water, and the ongoing miracles of Israel's existence. It was a pretty simple and serene conclusion to my Shabbatot in the Holy Land.