Sukkot is a long holiday and a lot of stuff happens in general because it's a week of freedom from the regular schedule.

Yigal called me the Tuesday before, saying he was in Jerusalem for the night and so I went out to Ben Yehuda Street with himl. We walked around for a while and over some fresh bagels (the only ones I've seen in Israel that resemble real bagels) he invited me to his moshav for Sukkot. He lives on Sde Yaakov, which is halfway between Afula and Haifa and halfway between Nazeret and the shore (go find your own maps; it's really hard to find good ones online). I'll skip the part about the busride not because it was uneventful but because there are more interesting discussions.

Yigal lives there when he's not off on a trip with a youth group, which he does quite often because he really loves teenage groups, it seems. For parts of the Chag, his grandfather and his new wife, his parents, his brother, his other brother with his wife, and his sister were there. The dynamic at the dinner table was always very...well, dynamic. Pepe's telling stories from before he moved from Morocco in Hebrew and French; no one else knows French besides Yigal's dad (who is the rabbi for all of the Izra'el valley), but the younger brother gives everyone else laughs as he tries on a ridiculous Frencch accent with the three or four words he (almost) knows. The house has several old collections. The Rabbi has collected chanukiyot forever ("since before we were married"); there are now "at least four hundred; that's where I lost count," says Yigal. Also since forever, or at least since secocnd grade, Yigal has had a collection of erasers. So when I had to clean up my room before leaving Chicago, it was ostendibly because I can't live there forever and maintain my "shrine" (guess whose words). But he's 26, I think, and has already done several tours of Miluim and still gets to keep his tchotchkes around.

We slept in the sukkah for both nights, though there's some sort of loophole that permits a sukkah to be built in the added-on room of a house if the room has a retractable roof. So though we slept in the sukkah it wasn't really outside. We did quite a bit of walking around the moshav, though, and meeting with all these other BA kids who are like Yigal's younger brothers, it seems.

On the second day (Chol here) we drove to a nearby pool that's newly discovered. It's not yet on the maps and the people who we saw there could trace their knowledge of the place only a few word-of-mouth generations to friends-of-friends from the area. It appepars to have been an ancient mikveh because it's certainly not natural; it's a rectangular prism. The unusual thing is that it's so much bigger than most of the old mikvehs, and it's also cementish, not made out of rough stones. So maybe it's not, I'm not sure. We did some Israeli-style tea over the little bunsen burner and went for a dive in this pool along with two bikers who'd come from Ra'anana starting at 7 am and were planning on making it to Tveriah by the early afternoon. Crazy.

The rest of the chag was full of non-class, just some general fun days. Third day we woke up early to go to the Kotel for Birkat HaKohanim, which is a huge deal on the Regalim.

Fourth day we drive to Nachsholim, between Netanya and Haifa, to dive for Hilazon. About a dozen years ago it was found, using the Talmud and a few other sources, that this variety of snail is the one from which techelet, the blue dye of the tallis, was made. Theroy says that it became a lost custom because if the snail was hard to get by diving from the Israel shore, it was harder to get while in exile in Babylonia. So for a while some people used it but it died out. So it wasn't really "diving" what we did, but there were snorkels and I found two living Hilazon snails with which I photographed and then which I chucked back into the Sea.

On to Neot Kedumim, which is supposed to be a biblical garden of sorts. During Sukkot they set up many different types of sukkot and then take Mishnah quotes to demonstrate which are kosher and which aren't (tall ones, double-decker ones, treehouse ones, triangular and circular ones, ones on the back of a camel, ones with a cow for a side, etc.). We also herded sheep and goats, ten of us and ten of them. So if that was hard I can't imagine how to lead 100 with one person. I think the trick is to have your best friend be a sheep and have that sheep be the one that all the others like to follow. So it's sort of an inductive process.

Fifth day we started at a place to pick poor people produce (pecks of unpickeled peppers). That was only fun when we came across a group of first-grade-age kids, mostly because we know they're below our level of Hebrew and so any grammar mistake will be fine. But the rest of the group was having its fun by throwing peppers at itself. [Sorry, that's just a really awkward sentence when I avoid the British "rest"/"their" constructions.] And honestly, that's a really prickish thing to do in this field near Rehovot which has the sole purpose of feeding the poor. In Rishon later that day, we had a sort of Color Wars thing (camp style, not Akiba style) with different cooperation-needed activities, then later just playing around in the park area. Naturally our Green team won. In the end, the Sukkot Wine Festival in Rishon L'Zion. I walked around with Justin for a bit at what we thought was the main stage with the great Greek-ish Israeli band playing, and when we went to hunt down a few others and gave up ("What do you mean, 'you're by the water near someone wearing pink.'? There's water everywhere!") we wandered into the greater street festival, which was just incredible. There was a dancing troupe on a stage, and next door was another group (of nuns) on a balcony, with the two musics overlapping and interfering. Moving (shoving) dowin Rothschild Street, we finaly got to the end where an Israeli pirate was trying to get kids around him to dance and instead grabbed both of us and a woman and starting marching us in circles, hoping the kids would catch on. But they only finally ascended the table when the pirate's sidekick Mrs. Pirate was given a bottle of wine by someone in the crowd and proceeded to drink while the kids were dancing. It sounds strange? Yes, it was strange. Then we had to come back, so we figured to wave to Spiderman for a seccond and then wander through the Israeli dancing section for one song. Significant bets that most of the rest of the Jerusalem section didn't make it as far as we did because they stopped to buy bottles of wine first. A few people in particular. I had my half-glass of red and sip of white.

Yom Kippur

Immediately beforehand, when I still had no plans, I called Flo to see if it would be OK to stop by her house in the afternoon. But I didn't tell her that a) I'd be going to her shul or that b) I'd be bringing a friend. I won't say which, if either, of these I knew at the time. The hostel brought in a cantor to lead services here all day, starting with Kol Nidrei at 4:50 (actually Minchah, but close enough). In Israeli, you see, they move the clocks back an hour on the 3-AM-Sunday after Shabbat Shuvah, that being the Saturday before Yom Kippur. After getting the OK from Flo, I decided to stay in at the hostel for Maariv and not to try to go to the synagogue up Givat Masua (close-by, but which kind of Sephardic?).

It wasn't that pleasant, either. His voice was annoying and, more importantly, he used extra (Sephardi, I assume) words and, even more importantly, his melody was only mostly the same as the regular one. If they talk all the time about the "cycle" of the year, I want my holidays especially to remind me of the previous ones. Usually there's no rushed hostel meal at 3 PM before the holiday; usually there's a room with an echo and lots of space; usually there's no talking during the service; usually there's a walk in the cool October breeze.

After the service and a short dvar torah (why, I asked in the course of the discussion, do Aaron's sons die in the beginning of Shemini and then three weeks later the reading begins with "God spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron") there was some intense backgammoning until I announced my bedtime. "You're going to bed at 9:30?" Well, yes, I guess I am. That's one advantage to wearing a non-functioning watch. Oh, by the way, I kicked butt. And played Geography with two future Brandeisians: a soccer-team/ceramics-class connection and a Legacy Keshet connection.

Becca and I woke up at 7 and left at quarter after to walk to Shirah Chadashah (on Emek Refaim). It took us about 80 minutes, which looking back at it now seems like a crazy thing to have done on Yom Kippur in the desert. But aside for one mulish mistake and another Jerusalem-street mistake I navigated just fine and I think we took a few shortcuts. The bicyclists were out in force. Biking in Jerusalem has got to be incredibly fun--in one direction. We met the other direction first, though, and they looked ready to fall off. I explained about the cars driving on the roads in Israel on Yom Kippur: only ambulances and police cars, etc. drive. But how do the drivers get to work? Easy. Just take red tape and tape yourself a red Magen David on the sides of your car. It's the make-your-own-ambulance way.

There were two regular cars.

They looked very out of place.

Shul was very nice, as expected. No nice kiddush, though, in the middle. I sat next to a guy from Nativ. There were a few other YC-ers who'd had the foresight to get a hostel room closer by. (But they didn't get a nice walk across a deserted city.) Michael Oren said that he was talking to Danny on the phone and cut his finger worse than he'd ever done before and had to go to the hospital before shul.

After a few hours' sleep and confusion over whether we'd changed out clocks back an hour, Becca and I walked to the Kotel where we planned to meet a few dozen other people. Some stayed in the Old City and some were planning to walk across right before Minchah. The first minyan I went to, which was one of the closest to the entrance, was unintelligible, and even the assurances of the 18-year-old Haredi that for Neilah the Sha"tz would slow down couldn't convince me to stick around. As I've observed before, the left- and wall-sides of the plaza are Black Hats and the back is for Sephardim and Kippah Srugah gets the rest. So ver by the mechitzah was my type of minyan where I re-met the Nativ guy and got some more songs in before the end of the end.

State-sponsored kiddush of dryish muffins and really really good green (kiwi mango something? Becca, what was it?) juice ended the fast but not quite in the style...so we walked back to Emek for a shawarma. And then because we hadn't walked enough (mine spread out, his in two hours in the afternoon), Elan and I walked back to the hostel.

Shanah Tovah (cont'd)

When we left off I had fallen asleep on Friday night, the first night of Rosh Hashanah.

I decided lying on the mattress that I didn't really want to wander around too far and so I'd just stick with Shirah Chadashah for Shacharit as well. We walked over there after I had the 1.5-height Milky Flo got especially for me: two chocolates under a cream (they also sell 1-and-2). The guy at the back of shul gave me a little note with the name of the person whose seat I was to sit in (obviously because he wasn't there). The tunes were all the familiar ones except for a slight variation on U'Netaneh Tokef/ונתנה תקף and a very happy short tune for parts of Kaddish. Flo had the seventh aliyah* and likened learning a new tune for those blessings to trying to sing the ABCs to a tune other than the totally universal one. Which is impossible because it's totalyl universal. But even universal tunes change on the day of the birth of the universe.

Actually, that was addressed: is it the birth of the universe? Or just the creation of man? Was the world created on 1 Tishrei or 25 Elul with the sixth day being 1 Tishrei? This was the dvar torah but I was too far back, there were too many loud kids and opening doors, and projecting to a ninety-degree angled audience was too hard for me to catch what she was saying about it. Maybe if it were in English it would have been OK but I've found that unless I can see the lips of the person I'm trying to listen to I have a really hard time comprehending. I still managed to talk to Yigal for a good five minutes Thursday night (speaking of the present week) on the phone, which made me happy.

*She had the seventh aliyah after the first six--which were immediately preceded by a Kiddush! Who ever heard of doing Kiddush in the middle of Shacharit? But there's two smart things about it. A lot of people don't eat before shul, so this is a way of getting around the problem by starting shul and then providing some food. More importantly (?) it provides a built-in bathroom break during Musaf. Specifically, during the repetition. Naturally I didn't avail myself of this, um, golden opportunity, but the thought is nice. Another few smart things Israeli shuls have that I've never seen anywhere in the States (though I'm no professional shul-hopper):

• Modim d'Rabanan printed up in big letters at the front of the room so you don't have to flip flip flip through the book when you're supposed to say this because you can just look up
• Siddurim that are more like Chumashim; that is, they have all the Torah readings in the first few hundred pages of the book and then Shabbat services in the last hundred so there's no need to carry around two books

I left shul walking towards where I thought Rafi's house was because I remembered passing his street when I took a bus down what I thought was Emek Refaim. But apparently it wasn't because I couldn't find that street and since parallel streets intersect here with alarming regularity but perpendicular streets are likely to never touch, I figured I'd ask someone before I went too far. I asked in Hebrew. The two women answered in English with what looked like a little snicker. I let on nothing (besides the accent) and thanked them in Hebrew. Psh. I found Rafi's; I had been walking the right direction but I needed to switch to the next main street. One wishes the city planners of Israeli towns had learned the Pythagorean Theorem before they starting paving horse paths.

He had called me before Chag to say that he wasn't going to be there and I told him that it was OK, I'd be fine eating with his parents or brothers if they were home from school/army. Cheryl and Josef came up the stairs a fwe minutes later and we had a short lunch and a long nap--as in long enough that I wouldn't have time to walk to Kol HaN'shama for Maariv and then to walk all the way to where we woere having dinner. I told the Klein-Katzes that I might show up to shul but that I didn't want to drive over with them. It just wouldn't seem right. I finally found the place after realizing that when a street on the map stops and then starts again (with a different name) it's probably because there's a hill separating the two places. I realized that after looking down the hill at the continuation of the street, which I couldn't get to because there was a hill separating the two places. Not only that, but my map showed "Hatekufah" coming off the right side of Shimoni, which it very clearly does not. I got to dinner on time but then they didn't answer the door until 5 minutes later because there was a lot of noise in the apartment.

The hosts were a British convert and her husband, a very emphatic guy from...somewhere, USA. I ate with the Klein-Katzes, or at least Yavin because Matan was off somewhere and also a second guest-family. He's a reform rabbi; she said, "Klionsky...Klionsky...where have I heard that name before?" I brought out the pomegranate I'd picked off a tree before Shabbat the week before (with the permission of the nice woman who owned the tree) and cut one for the first time ever because Naomi's monopolized it ever since Dad showed her. It wasn't ruby-red inside, but apparently there are two types of the fruit and we only ever get one in the States. When Yavin and I got up to start walking back were, the stories came out.

"Do you have relatives in Bingha--"

"Yes!"

So Cara Saposnik knows David Borsykowsky (that's Sarah's second Geography hit, mind you) from...somewhere, I don't remember the details. And, of course, we went over hometowns next. She knows the family of the guy who lives in Room 224 (and I'm in Room 223) from Madison--Eli, the guy I mentioned in the previous post. And as if two connections weren't enough, she also knows Julius Solomon from somewhere else.

It was a long walk back. If my maps had scales I might try to measure the total distance I walked on this no-work holiday. It was quite a ways.

*

When I got up, only Sally was awake and she directed me to the closest shul (I was just going to wander until I found one, so her tip was good): "turn left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right and then you're standing in the building. Make the first turn you can each time." It took me to רחוב אביגיל/Rechov Avigayil/Abigail Street ("wife of David the King", reads the little line under the street name), which is about twenty feet long and consists of exactly one, very short building. I can't remember the name; I'll have to ask the K-Ks. It's a Sephardi shul (a contradiction in terms, maybe), and by that I don't mean that they add a few words to Kaddish and say Barchu before Aleinu. I mean hardcore Sephardi, as in Morocco and chanting and 14-notes-in-a-scale and not pronouncing some letters auctioning off aliyahs before reading Torah ("pa'amaim 'hai"). Try saying that. Not chai. Not hai. But b'emet, mamash, 'hai. "..elohei Abraham, elohei Yitz'hak, elohei Ya'akob".

I didn't like it. There's nothing wrong with that style of davening, but it just wasn't pleasing, and especially on Rosh Hashanah, to be with unfamiliar tunes. The first day was a lot better. But I went back there for Minchah and Maariv after walking back to Shirah Chadashah only to find they had no afternoon services.

In between, I ate with the Klein-Katzes and Michelle and Marc from camp were there, too.