In Taanit (30b) it says, “Those who mourn for Jerusalem will merit to see it in its joy.” This is derived from Isaiah 66:10, “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her; join in her jubilation, all you who mourn for her.”

Last night I walked with a group from The Yeshiva to Kotel HaMasorti for ma’ariv and Eicha.

I said at the beginning of this trip that I would talk more about The Kotel. I suppose I shall do so now.

I have been to The Kotel proper twice. Once on birthright, and once the first day I was here. This is my experience of The Kotel. I see people walk up to the wall. They put their hands on it. They put their foreheads against it. They stand there for a while with their eyes closed. They pray. They cry. They come away slowly, sometimes walking backwards so as not to turn their backs on it. They come away talking about how powerful and moving the experience was.

I go to the Kotel. I look at these people. I walk up to the wall. I put my hand against it. It feels smooth, almost like plastic, from the wear of millions of fingers touching it as I am. I put my forehead against it. It feels like stone. I stand with my eyes closed. I wonder what I’m doing, what I’m supposed to be doing. I think of Papa Karl who, seeing how people push and shove and jostle to kiss the Torah when it is brought around the shul, would mutter under his breath “That’s right… kiss the magic box.” I stand there and remember that I’m surrounded by women. I stand there and I feel a little bit angry. I stand there and I feel a little bit sad. I stand there and mostly, I feel very little. What I do not feel, is God.

When I was a little girl and we were in a very scary car accident (in which, Baruch HaShem no one was injured) as we sat on the side of the mountain next to the smashed up rented minivan waiting for help to come to help us climb back up to the road we’d fallen off, my mother asked me if I wanted to pray. I said no. Why would I want to pray? It seemed a complete non sequitur.

Last night was… I guess nice is the word. We sat at the southern corner of the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount known as Robinson’s Arch because of the archway that used to be there which was part of a staircase leading up to the Temple that was discovered by Edward Robinson. What is visible now of the arch is a bit of a protrusion where it met the wall. The majority of the space next to the wall itself is roped off, as the ground is uneven and there are large stones piled around which have not been moved since they fell in 70 C.E. when the second Temple was destroyed. We sat and Eicha was read, a few words were said, a few songs were sung, and we concluded with HaTikvah.

When it was over, my friend Eitan suggested that we walk over to the platform to the left of the space where it is possible to access the wall itself. I decided that I should try again, in this different environment. We walked over. I watched as Eitan walked up to the wall, put his hands against it, put his head against it, and stood there. I walked up to the wall, touched it, stood staring at it for a moment, and realized that I wasn’t seeing anything. I walked over to the railing which overlooked the pile of rubble and the place where those still lingering after davenning were milling about. I looked down the wall. I looked at the pile of stones. I looked at the people. And I started to cry.

This past year, I walked downtown to where the World Trade Center used to be. This was the first time I went there on the 11th of September.

I grew up not observing Tisha B’Av. I told this to my flatmate today. “It was the single most tragic even to befall Am Yisrael. I can’t imagine just ignoring it.” I could only shrug. I know all the reasons not to observe, not to mourn, not to want a literal third Temple. I understand the evolution of Judaism and the sense that prayer is a more advanced form of worship than animal sacrifice. I tend to make a point of calling the religion of the Temple era “proto-Judaism” because it is more correct from a historical, semantic and evolutionary standpoint.

But really… to put it in a rather crude way, that’s a lot of eggs to go into an omlette.

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve got this all figured out. And I’m okay with that. I said the other day that I was trying not to think too hard. This is not true. I’m thinking just as hard, but I’m observing anyway. I’m making a conscious decision to think only in certain directions and not to be put on the defensive by my own questions or by the questions of others. I decided that today I was going to mourn the destruction of The Temple and the fall of Jerusalem and the scattering of my people. And I did. And I think it was the right thing for me to do.

Here’s something that’s been troubling me a little bit lately…

I am here to work on practice. On practical Judaism skills, as it were. I’m here to gain fluency where I am missing it. I’m here to get myself accustomed to practices and halachot that came as pre-rejected in my family when I came into this world. I do not fault anyone for the situation I find myself in with regards to my Jewish education and/or practice… I think that the way I grew up in Judaism was more or less the way it had to be and I am where I am and it will all be good.

Here’s the thing… I’ve recently had people start to try to challenge me and my practice on philosophical and theological grounds. Not in a hostile manner, mind you… innocently and in a well-meaning fashion, engaging in the sorts of conversation that I am usually eager to take part in. I find myself now, however, asking to be excused from such discussions. I don’t want to have my inconsistencies pointed out to me right now. Right now I’m trying things on, testing things out, learning and taking on practice as I find it. For once in my life, I’m trying to not think too hard.

This goes against everything that anyone including myself knows about me. I am always the first to challenge myself and to insist on knowing why I am doing something before I do it. Theology is my thing. I’ve been working the theology and philosophy angle of my religion my whole life. Why now am I making a conscious effort to turn down (not off) that part of my brain? Will my friends and teachers think less of me for this? The new people I’m meeting?

I get the sense that a lot of these folks are accustomed to people who never bother to think through their practice and just do either what they’ve been taught or what they feel like doing. I have stock answers ready for why I do certain unusual things (like wearing tzitziot) but I’m not ready to talk about why I’m making an effort to observe the three weeks and the nine days leading up to Tisha B’Av, a day commemorating the destruction of a Temple I was raised not to mourn for. I’ve been thinking hard about this stuff for as long as I’ve been able to think. Right now is the time to learn how to do Judaism rather than just thinking about Judaism.

I’ve moved in with a fellow who is formerly Chareidi, still largely Orthopractic, as we say, strongly egalitarian minded and who teaches here at The Yeshiva. He has Orthodox smicha (meaning he is an Orthodox ordained rabbi) and he is a wonderful resource and living with him makes it very easy for me to learn and take on observances that I would not be able to otherwise. I talked to him last night about this and he thinks that it is not a bad thing at all, that he thinks that it is important to have the traditional groundwork before you go smashing the system and breaking the rules. While he agrees with the documentary hypothesis and believes in biblical criticism, he would not want to teach it to his kids without first teaching them Tanakh in the traditional manner.

I talked this morning with my friend Josh who is a Conservative rabbi. He also thinks that I’m doing an ok thing in terms of my exploration of practice… though his initial response was “You realize that your “not thinking too hard” is probably more self-reflective than what most folks do when they’re trying to think about what they’re doing”

That made me smile.

Whoo… first week of classes over. Dear Lord I’m surprised I even remember my name after this week!

The day before yesterday was, as most of you probably are aware, the 4th of July, A.K.A. U.S. Independence Day. Being in Israel I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Well, it turned out to be quite an interesting and eventful day.

First point of interest… I got a package! And not at the apartment where I’m staying, oh no… I got a package at The Yeshiva! After tefillah I was hunting for coffee for the old beit midrash and Rabbi Lebeau intercepted me. “Oh, did you get your package?” he asked.

“Package? I got a package?”

“Yes, you got a package! Hang on…”

He disappeared briefly into a room and emerged with… that’s right… a package. And it was from none other than Ms. Jen Taylor Friedman, A.K.A. Hatam Soferet. The package was an “Instant Yeshiva Bochur Kit.”

Yes, that is a miniature Vilna Shas. You might even think it was made for a… a…

Oh come on, you know the answer.

Anyway, THANKS SO MUCH JEN! You made my day, like, for realz.

In ulpan, our instructor told us about a CD shop on Rechov Shammai off Ben Yehuda. Rebecca (one of my classmates) and I decided to go find it.

And find it we did. On the way back, two interesting things happened. One, we ran into Cantor Simon. This was the third time I had run into him on the street since he gave a presentation at the Fuchsberg Center on the great chazzanim on the golden age. I decided that this time I had to take a picture.

The next interesting this was that we came across a group of folks sitting on the midrachov playing Apples to Apples. Just sitting there. In the middle of the road.

We followed the sign’s instructions.

This guy knows two of my friends. I’m telling you, Jewish geography is scary.

The guy with the parasol, Dovid, told us that there was going to be a barbecue in Independence Park across from the consulate and that we should come. So after we took our leave of the A – A group we got some food (cause we were hungry and couldn’t either of us wait for 8 o’ clock barbecuage) and headed over at a leisurely pace to supersol to pick up a 6 of Heineken. By the time we got to the park Dovid was already there with a couple of other folks from the A – A group and some others setting up disposable grills.

Ok, so I had a hot dog. I bit into it. And… it was… well… it was…

The hot dog was fluffy. I ate a fluffy hot dog. I tried to get a picture of it but I couldn’t get it to come out right in the dark. I mean, it was like a sponge.

It was tasty, don’t get me wrong. I think it was a chicken dog. But… dude… fluffy hot dog.

Dovid and I talked most of the night. Turns out we like a lot of the same music and we stood and recited the Penguin Sketch from Monty Python together. Someone else. I found someone else who recites the penguin sketch word for word. No one was listening or watching us, it was purely for our own amusement. After a bit we got into a friendly argument about whether or not it was problematic for women to wear tzitziot while niddah. He said it was problematic and I said that it wasn’t… and neither of us could back up our claims, so we just left it. (I have subsequently asked one of my ravs and am satisfied with his answer and with my ability to make the point better in the future.) At some point we could hear fireworks but we couldn’t see them. Someone broke into The Star Spangled Banner. When everyone finished with “And the home of the brave” I launched into the other two stanzas.

I got strange looks.

It was a lot of fun. I still smell like smoke.

And yes, I am proud to be an American. I will never apologize for that.

Yes, I am still here. No, I have not died. Yes, I have been keeping very busy. Also, right now I am quite wiped out because today is a fast day and I didn’t sleep too well last night. I do, however have something written in a notebook that I’ve been planning to post here for some time.

A couple of things I was not prepared to think about:

Just about everyone here is Jewish. That was one of the things that first really attracted me to Israel… when I was on birthright 5 years ago I was very aware that, even as a person coming from Brooklyn NY, the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, this was my first majority experience. This is the only place you can go where you can make a default assumption that, barring such factors as convent/monestary garb or certain other signals, anyone you meet is likely to be Jewish. The interesting thing is that what this means is that just about everyone is Jewish. That means doctors and lawyers and professors and pharmacists as well as shopkeepers and security guards, construction workers, sanitation workers and beggars. We in the US are not particularly accustomed to thinking of Jews as laborers, low-wage workers, etc.

In North America we have become very accustomed to the image of the modern Jew in a position of prestige or at least of relatively high income. Israel provides a different perspective. It is true that low wage workers do come from the territories (I have not seen this in play but I am aware of the fact) as well as from places like Latin America and East Asia, but it is still a radical departure from the American perspective to see any Jew in any of these positions at all.

It reminded me of a film I watched in my Israeli History class at Brooklyn College. The film starred Topol of Fiddler on the Roof fame- I don’t remember the name of the film- and was about Olim (Jewish immigrants to Israel)… more specifically about Mizrachi Olim as depicted by Topol’s character and his family- not a flattering picture- in, I believe, the early days of The State, lining up for work. Each man was asked his profession. Each man gave a different answer: attorney, surgeon, etc. and each was given a spade and told that their job was now to plant trees. Outraged hilarity ensued.

When you have a country, its population must build that country, its infrastructure, etc. When the population is Jewish, it means that Jews do everything. It seems really obvious, but it still elicits some cognitive dissonance.

Other things I’ve noticed: tzitziot are a turn-on. So are female soldiers. This city is filled with hot women. Also dirty Chassidim. I mean that literally.