'Tis the Season

No, not that season, silly. The High Holidays are quickly approaching, and Saturday evening marked the beginning of the Selichot period. Selichot are special prayers of forgiveness that are recited daily during the week leading up to Rosh Hashanah, as sort of a "warm-up" for the marathon days of prayer that await us. 

Since I had never been to Selichot services before, I decided to join some of my classmates at the Great Synagogue, which, by virtue of its name, is essentially Jerusalem's flagship Orthodox congregation. In anticipation of the fact that services there are conducted entirely in Hebrew, I borrowed a Selichot pamphlet with English translations from the Conservative synagogue. Apparently the Conservative version of this service is much shorter than that of Orthodox congregations -- I wound up getting completely lost after about 10 pages. 

Despite the fact that I barely understood a word, however, I was completely and totally mesmerized by the gorgeous music of both the cantor and choir. Now, most of the time I feel that synagogue choirs add an excessive "performance" element to the service that can sometimes discourage congregants from participating fully themselves. But at the Great Synagogue, the choir actually comes forth out of the congregation. They all sit in the first few rows, they all face the ark, and they all wear Tallitot. They presented beautiful harmonies, and I hummed along softly from my place high up in the women's section in the balcony. But, thankfully, I didn't feel as though I was missing anything by being behind this "mechitza" -- ie, up in the balcony. It was no different than sitting in the balcony for a Broadway show -- if anything, it gave us a birds-eye view of all of the action going on below us. 

The music enabled me to find a truly meaningful connection to Jewish tradition and history, which is not something that I typically experience in prayer. Too often I find myself either struggling to translate the Hebrew or else skimming quickly through English translations that, as I've recently discovered, do not always actually reflect what is being said in the Hebrew text! It's easy for me lose sight of the true meaning of prayer, and I find it frustrating that it sometimes becomes a chore, as opposed to a spiritual experience. I'm hoping that this year in Israel will help gain the skills I need to delve in to prayer more deeply. But during Selichot, I felt as though I had nothing to worry about -- for me, the evening was about using beautiful music as a backdrop for reflecting on the past year. That's the kind of effect I can only hope to have on my congregation as a cantor. 

It's ironic that one of my most positive prayer experiences thus far in Jerusalem came while davening at an Orthodox congregation. And as my classmates slowly trickled off to bed (did I mention that the service started at 10:30pm?), I tried my hardest to stay awake as long as possible -- I just couldn't get enough of the music! I started to crash at around midnight, and the very thought of the fact that I needed to wake up at 7am for Ulpan was enough to convince me to call it quits. However, I did manage to record bits of the service on my ipod, and am excited to add it to my ever-increasing collection of Jewish music. 

On the Muslim side of things, we are also currently in the midst of Ramadan.  This afternoon my classmate Russ and I went on a walk along the ramparts of the Old City walls, which brought us into the heart of the Muslim Quarter. But since we were high up above the streets, we were able to safely see parts of the city that would normally be off-limits to us. It was fascinating to watch the Muslim shopkeepers set up their wares so that the Muslims could purchase food during their evening respite from the fast. 

   

  

The irony, however, was that we were greeted with a huge gust of wind just as we entered the Muslim section -- so big, in fact, that it blew the kippah right off of Russ' head! It landed in a courtyard between two houses, and neither of us had any clue how to go about retrieving it -- not to mention the fact that we didn't want to find out what would happen to two Jews wandering through the Muslim Quarter! So we bid farewell to Russ' kippah, and I snapped a picture to make sure that its memory will endure. 

Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention last night's terror attack that took place here in Jerusalem. For those of you who didn't hear, a Palestinian drove his BMW into a crowd of Israeli soldiers who were on their way to pay a pre-High Holiday visit to the Western Wall. Thankfully, no one was hurt too seriously, except for the driver, who was shot to death by one of the soldiers. That's not to say that it wasn't incredibly scary. At around 11pm -- in a fruitless attempt to go to bed early -- Leslie came into my room and asked me if I had heard gunshots. I hadn't, and at first I didn't think anything of it. But then we heard lots of sirens, at which point both of us frantically kept on refreshing our computers and calling everyone we knew in Jerusalem to see if they had any information. We could tell from the sirens that something really bad had happened -- we knew it wasn't your average car accident. When we finally managed to piece together what had happened, we called our parents to tell them that we were safe, watched the coverage on tv for a bit, and attempted to at least get some sleep, despite the knowledge that something unthinkable had just happened a mere 10 minute walk from our apartment. 

With that in mind, I wish you all a Shana Tovah with the hopes that we won't have to deal with any similar incidents in the coming year. Also, please forgive me if I have wronged you at all over the course of the past year -- what better place to publicly absolve myself from sin than a blog! :)