A Journey Through Rabbinical School...One Challah at a Time: Clouds, Jewish Guilt and Bourekas...oh my!

Cloud (a-nav) עָנָן
Tour (ti-yoor) תִּיּוּר
Burekas (bur-ay-kus) בּוּרֶקָס

It has been pointed out to me that I have been slacking in my blog posts, and that I have not posted for almost two weeks. I guess I can only blame this on the fact that time flies when you are having fun. At this point, I have been in Israel for almost exactly 6 weeks, which is incredibly hard to believe. We have really gotten into the swing of our summer classes, and also experiencing Israel. One of the most exciting thing that has happened in the past two days is that I have seen my first clouds in Israel since I got here! Now usually, this is nothing to get excited about, and in the US, clouds are incredibly overrated. But in Israel, in August no less, clouds are something to be coveted and enjoyed. I woke up both today and yesterday morning and when I looked outside could not figure out why it looked so different. It finally took me staring up into the sky for a good few minutes to realize that the sky was covered in clouds. In fact, I could not see one inch of blue sky. Now, I am sure that if you ask me again in a few months, I am going to be wishing for crystal clear blue skies and the nice "warm" temperatures, but right now, I will take all of the cloud coverage that I can get! I think that one of the most exciting parts about this who experience of clouds in August is that yesterday when we went outside on our way to services, it actually rained for a few minutes. Here, rain in August is like getting snow in the winter. It is pretty rare, but does happen every once in a while.

Clouds outside of my apartment!

This past week, on August 9, the observance day of Tisha B'av (the 9th of the month of Av) was observed. This is a חג (holiday) that mourns the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, as well as a plethora of other incidents that are said to have occurred on the 9th day of Av which include things such as the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. It is also the only holiday that is a full fast day besides Yom Kippur. This means that it is a fast of 25 hours and not just a half day fast from sun up to sun down. Outside of Israel, and generally, outside of more religious groups of Jews, this is a holiday that is not observed very frequently. In part, the lack of knowledge of this holiday stems from the fact that it falls in late July or early August, which means that there is not regular religious school at this time. Often times, the only kids who know about this holiday in the Reform movement are ones who are attending summer camps that observe this holiday in some capacity. Another part of this holiday that makes it a struggle for the Reform movement is that it people who are observing this holiday are mourning the destruction of the first two temples and also praying for the building of a third temple and the coming of a messiah. Reform Judaism does not necessarily believe in the coming of a messiah as a person, but rather it addresses the possibility of a messianic age to come, in which people will in part be able to peacefully coexist. To this end, we had some interesting experiences for the 9th of Av. On the night of Tisha B'av, it is often customary to attend the Kotel to hear the reading of Eicha (the scroll of Lamentations, which describes the destruction occurring). However, we were given the opportunity to experience a different sort of ceremony. We went to the Emmaus-Nicropolis. Currently, there is a monestary that resides at Emmaus, but prior to the existence of this monestary, there was a church that was twice destroyed by different groups of people. Emmaus is also where Jesus appeared to two of his followers after his resurrection. We had a ceremony there with a few of the Progressive/Reform congregations from the area, as well as some of the nuns who live at the monestary. We heard the beautiful and haunting chanting of Eicha (Lamentations) as well as many songs that were sung in Hebrew, Ladino and Yiddish. On the day of Tisha B'av we were given the opportunity to attend different study sessions at Pardes. I attended a session with a man named Marc Rosenberg where we discussed, in great detail, the kina (dirge) "Going Out of Egypt, Going Out of Jerusalem." This kina was an incredibly interesting juxtaposition of the exodus from Egypt, when God is said to have led the Jews out of Egypt, and the exodus from Jerusalem, when the Jews were twice exiled from Jerusalem. As part of this we discussed how often times Jews themselves will blame themselves for the exile from Egypt, and Marc Rosenberg commented that it was the origins of Jewish Guilt. With regards to the destruction of the Second Temple, it is often said that the reason that the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem was because of שנאת חינם (baseless hatred). He then commented that the diversity of today's world is not that much different from the diversity of the world then, in terms of the different types of people that were living and fighting over Jerusalem. It is interesting to thing about this in terms of the conflict in the Middle East, and whether baseless hatred has any part to play in this ongoing conflict.

So now on to something more uplifting. This past week Rebecca and I hosted our first Shabbat dinner! We were really excited to have some of our classmates come over to share Shabbat with us. We had an amazing time with everyone here and it was a great potluck meal! Here are some pictures from our Shabbat, as well as pictorial tour of my apartment.

A view of my bedroom from the door

The balcony that is attached to both my bedroom and Rebecca's bedroom

A view of my bedroom and the dining room from one of the balconies

Our beautiful bathroom, complete with a star shower curtain

Our kitchen straight out of the 1950s (notice the pattern on the tile)

The living room, complete with a TV that only gets the Jordanian news (note the beautiful pattern on the couch)

The other balcony attached to the living room

Another view of our living room

The dining room complete with Shabbat guests!

Yesterday, Rebecca and I ventured into the world of bourekas making. I was inspired by one of our wonderful interns, Daniel Bar-Nahum, who made delicious chicken bourekas with leek sauce as part of our Shabbat meal there. I have never made bourekas before and have never really worked with phyllo dough before, so it was definitely an experiment, but they turned out super tasty. The chicken filling that we made was just chicken sauteed with onions and lots of tasty spices (including curry, cinnamon and tumeric) but really the filling could be made out of everything. In Israel, there are many things that they have not really figured out how to standardize, however, boureka shape is one that everybody knows: Triangles = cheese, rectangles = potato, spirals = pizza, etc. When I told my Hebrew teacher, Zohara, yesterday that we were going to try and make bourekas she was so excited for us, and offered that if we needed any help that we should call her and she would be happy to help us over the phone. While we didn't end up calling her, I did show her pictures today and she was very impressed. I have a feeling that we are going to be making these a lot for different Shabbas meals that we will be attending in the future! Check out some pics of our delicious meal...

Our yummy chicken filling

Yes, the top one does say עברית (Hebrew) since our Hebrew teacher offered to help us. The other says R and J for our initials, although as some friends kindly pointed out, it could also stand for Reform Judaism. You can decide for yourself which you like better.