Mea Shearim and Yom Kippur - by Michal

Last week Jonathan and I foraged out to Mea Shearim, the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. What an experience! It’s a whole different world. First, there are signs at the entrances to the neighborhoods, asking women not to dress immodestly, and not to have groups pass through. All the women are wearing wigs or scarves on their heads, with not a scrap of skin showing. All the clothes are dark colored. The men are in all black with hats and peyos (sidelocks). And the kids – there are children, and children’s toy and clothing stores, everywhere. This is the neighborhood where the average age is 13, and it’s one of the poorest areas in the country, as the men don’t work but study Talmud and Torah all day. The women work, and the families are mostly supported by taxpayer’s money. Their children study in yeshivas, and don’t go into the army, either. (Don’t get my Israeli secular father started on what he thinks of all this.)

The street and shops were fascinating – never in my life have I seen so many stores with Jewish ritual objects. You want a shofar, an etrog, a lulav, tefillin, a tallit, kippot? They’ve got it all. I didn’t see one bookstore with regular books, only religious books and myriad publications of the holy texts. The majority of the signs were in Yiddish, not Hebrew – in their view, Hebrew is the holy tongue, the language of the Torah, and shouldn’t be profaned by being spoken regularly. Whenever I heard someone speak, it was in Yiddish – only the kids spoke Hebrew. This surprised me, until I remembered that this is also the population that opposed the War of Independence in 1948, since only the Messiah could bring about the land of Israel, not regular people. They think that change is bad, and that the past will always be better than the present. What’s most shocking is that this neighborhood is smack dab in the middle of Jerusalem. It’s about a 20 minute walk to the shuk, the vegetable market – but it’s completely isolated. I wore a long straight skirt that brushed the top of my shoes, and a long-sleeved turtleneck shirt, and Jonathan jeans and a long-sleeved shirt – and we still stuck out like sore thumbs.

Here’s a teaser picture.

The rest are located here:

http://community.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=554516613&key=MCWzPc

Jonathan and I are going to go back over Sukkot, when every apartment will have a sukkah on the balcony. In a way the neighborhood scared me to death because I so obviously didn’t belong – but in another way, it gave me a feeling of pride, that these Jews managed to survive pogroms, the Holocaust, and all other anti-Semitism, and still keep "tradition." To me this way of practice is dead Judaism, completely irrelevant to life. But to them, it’s the only way they know to hold onto the Judaism of old. So a question for you all: how much should a religion be relevant to the present, and how much should it maintain the past? Reform Judaism changed its liturgy to be gender-neutral, Vatican II gave up pure Latin. But how much can be changed before the religion becomes filtered, and unrecognizable to its roots? To an ultra-Orthodox person I’m not Jewish, because I don’t follow halacha, Jewish law. I don’t believe that it matters, because I think Judaism consists of ethical precepts and moral truths. But am I still Jewish? What makes a religion a religion – morality, ritual, dress codes, language, a land? Living in Jerusalem makes me wonder.

Speaking of religion, I have to admit, I don’t feel like HUC is doing a very good job of helping me be contemplative during the High Holidays. I had one test and two essays due last week! I understand we’re both a seminary and a grad school, but I’d still like to learn more about the meaning of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, rather than just sticking to our regular curriculum. I did learn one very interesting thing though – the Torah portion at Rosh Hashanah is always the Akedah, the part in Genesis where Abraham almost sacrifices Isaac. Apparently it’s because this section of the Bible is supposedly God at God’s most merciful. This doesn’t make much sense to me, seeing as it was God who set Abraham up with this predicament in the first place… but no matter. There’s been quite a lot of writing done on this subject, so my Bible teacher says, and I look forward to looking it up when I have more time.

Also, did you know (I didn’t) that the reason there are so many dots and dashes as Hebrew vowels is that at one time, our ancestors could hear and distinguish way more sounds than we do now? So the kamatz and patach (little dash and little t-shape) that are now both pronounced as “ah” used to be different. We just don’t know what they were. We also talked all about the dageshes, the dots in the letters and why they were there, how they mattered, if and when they changed the sound of the letter, etc. It’s all very interesting – but then again, the one class I regret not taking at Whittier is Linguistics, so it may just be interesting to me and no one else. So instead of boring you all here with it, just call or email me if you want to know more! :)

The service that I’m leading is coming up right after Sukkot, and I’m getting excited for it. I had a meeting with my co-service leader and cantor today, and we got lots of kinks ironed out. I still have to learn so much Hebrew, though! I realize I have all the Shabbat chants and prayers down backwards and forwards, but all the stuff you only do on weekday mornings? Yeah. No clue. Urg.

Let’s see, what else? Our cat is insane, but Jonathan’s already written about that. Basically, we’re wondering if his personality is changing due to hormones – he’s six months old and not fixed yet. We have his last round of vaccinations on Tuesday, and then we’ll get him snipped. Hopefully his aggressiveness will disappear... hopefully. Most vets here don’t spay or neuter at all, and the one we go to only likes to do it at one year old – we’ll have to convince her to do it early. The Israeli mindset in this is completely different than the American – it’s these little things that remind me I’m in a foreign country.

Some things are the same wherever I go though – like Yom Kippur services starting around 5pm. I have to go get ready for Kol Nidrei, the evening YK service. We’re going to Har El, a reform temple here without a mechitza (aka no screen separating the men and the women). Anything but going to HUC again!

So, I wish an easy fast to everyone who’s Jewish and/or fasting – and either way, G’mar Chatima Tovah - May you be inscribed in the Book of Life.