To Inspire (l'o-rar) לעורר
To say that I feel at home in Israel is an understatement. It is hard for me to explain how it feels to come back to a country where, at most, I have lived for 6 months, and yet I feel completely comfortable in my surroundings. It was very easy for me to jump right in once I got settled in my apartment.
I am currently living at 6 Mapu (you can GoogleMap it if you want to know exactly where it is) and am living with a friend of mine from camp, and also another rabbinical student. The apartment has character to say the least. It was probably built in the late 50s or early 60s and definitely has not been redone since then. However, since we are on the 6th floor we get a great view of Jerusalem, and at approximately 11:30am on Sundays we get serenaded by the church bells from the YMCA of Jerusalem.
This past week I have spent a great deal of time getting to know my future classmates. While HUC has not given us an official list, it seems to be the consensus that there are currently 37 students studying in Israel for the year. This includes all rabbinic, cantorial and education students. This includes a few members of the class who are studying at the Leo Baeck Institute in Europe. I spent my first Shabbat at the apartment of one of my classmates. I have to say that it has been very nice to get to know everyone in small increments. This way I am able to get to know each person on a more personal level, and hopefully by the end of next week I will have gotten to know all of my classmates better. On Saturday a number of us went to services at HUC, followed by lunch at the YMCA (or pronounced yim-ca). The services were led by some of the faculty at HUC and it was great to see what services will be like throughout the year. These are services that are not only for HUC students, but for members of the community, as well as visiting tour groups. There were a number of synagogue and youth trips that were spending Shabbat in Jerusalem and decided to join us for services. It was interesting to see what services are like here, because they are very different from what I am used to and what I expected. There were many different melodies that were used throughout the service. It is still not quite clear to me as to whether these are the melodies that are traditionally used in the services in Israel, or whether the faculty chose to use a conglomeration of melodies that they thought that most people would recognize.
One of the most inspiring parts of my week in Israel happened on Sunday morning. For those of you that did not know, Rosh Chodesh Tamuz. Once a month, a group called Women of the Wall gathers to pray at the Kotel (Western Wall). What makes this group so different is that the women, and men, who attend this pray out loud, which is not allowed for women. Since the Kotel is considered to be a sanctuary by Orthodox standards, there is a mechitza (a division between where the men and women pray) and the women are expected to pray silently or very quietly, while the men are allowed to pray and sing as loudly as the please. The goal of this group is to eventually make it legal for women to wear talitot, read from the Torah, and pray out loud at the Kotel. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about this experience, as I have always had mixed reactions at the Kotel. I have never felt that "spark" that people describe while praying at the Kotel. However, this past Sunday was different. I am not sure whether it was because I was wearing my talit and praying from a siddur (prayer book) that I was more comfortable with, or whether it was because, for the first time ever, I was able to pray out loud, and was surrounded by people who were also doing the same thing. It is an indescribable feeling that I experienced that day, but I hope that it is something that is replicated every month when I return to attend the Women of the Wall services. We were only able to do the first part of the service at the Kotel because it is illegal for women to read from the Torah. Instead, we are forced to leave the area and go to Robinson's arch to read from the Torah. Just before leaving the Kotel the women began singing "O'zi V'zimrat Yah" which is from a passage traditionally chanted on Rosh Chodesh. We continued singing this until we reached Robinson's Arch. Here is a little taste of what it was like at Women of the Wall...
(the words that are being sung are "O'zi v'zimrat yah va'yihi li lishuah- God is my strength and my song, and has become my salvation.)
I think that having attended my first Women of the Wall service with both men and women from HUC made it much more of a special and unique experience. We were able to share this experience, and also talk about what it meant to each of us to experience this for the first time.
Since most of my classmates have now arrived, we all joined together for a 4th of July celebration on Monday. While it did not include fireworks, we did have a pot luck BBQ which turned out to be a lot of fun. I met more of my classmates and we had a great time just hanging out and getting to know each other. The rest of this week has just been spent exploring Jerusalem and getting to know my neighborhood. Today I went on a walking photo tour of the old city of Jerusalem, and will post those pictures soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment