Shabbat in the Old City of Jerusalem

I have been wanting to get out of Tel Aviv for the last several weeks in order to explore other parts of this great country. The spontaneity of the Israelis is exciting but it cuts both ways. I have been invited to many Shabbat dinners at 7:30 PM on Friday nights. You can get set up on a blind date, talk to them for a few minutes, and have them agree to meet you in an hour. There is no, "let me check my schedule". Yet, you can have plans made days or a week in advance to go out of town or to do something one evening. While waiting for the person to meet you or while showering get get ready to go out, you find that the other person has decided not to participate. For those of us with limited support groups, this turns our weekends and evenings into reading or movie nights alone.
It is a national pastime of Israelis to set people up on dates (shudduch). After attending the Religious Zionist wedding a few weeks ago, a man at my table emailed me after thinking that he knew a woman that I should meet. He wrote that, however she might have already known me. She was Paula Levine that I had known since I was 15 years old in North Carolina through BBYO conventions. She and I had even dated a few times in 1991 in Atlanta . We were always friends. I had not seen her since 1992 when she moved away from Atlanta . She explained that she had become totally Frum (Ultra-Orthodox) and lives alone in the Old City of Jerusalem.

I was invited to Jerusalem by my friends Yohannes from Ethiopia and Alice from Lichtenstein, who run the African Refugee Development Center in Israel. They were having an Ethiopian party in their home in Jerusalem lat Friday night with food, drinks, and dancing. That was the main purpose of the trip: to see old friends with whom I had worked at the refugee shelters. Another Orthodox friend had recently called me to set me up with another woman in Jerusalem, Chana, who is also from the USA and had converted from Christianity to become Ultra-Orthodox. While talking with her, she explained to me that she has only three deal breakers: keeping kosher, observing Shabbat and all that that entails, and family purity. Family purity means no touching (even shaking hands) with men over the age of 9 besides your husband. That means that, if you are single, there is no pre-marital handshaking. Also, after marriage, the couple may not touch for the week after the wife's menstrual cycle or for one week afterward. One theory is that abstinence makes the sex with your ultimate partner that much more intense.

As I am adventurous, I decided to meet her. Fortunately, I told my future date that I was friends with Paula in the Old City. She told me that they knew each other and swapped dates from time to time: men with black hats, beards, peius, tsitsit, the works. I called Paula and told her that I was coming to Jerusalem, but that I would be returning to Tel Aviv during the night, thus, not observing Shabbat. She explained that she could easily find a bed for me to sleep in the Old City or anywhere in Jerusalem. She said it is a miztvah to welcome strangers into your home for Shabbat. I was hesitant and reminded her that, in my culture, we are not comfortable just staying with strangers and using them for a bed. After all, I was going to be busy every day. Somehow I got off of the phone before agreeing to stay overnight. Chana also told me she could easily find a place to sleep in Mea Shearim, the Hasidic quarter of Jerusalem. I didn't tell her that I am nervous just walking through that time-warp of a black and white ghostly neighborhood, much less having to sleep there.

Paula was having a group over to her apartment in the Old City for lunch on Shabbat and she wanted to see me. She called me again and told me that she had the perfect place for me to stay so that I could come to her lunch. She knew a couple in their 60's and the woman's 88 year-old father that had just made Aliyah from Los Angeles. They were wealthy and lived between the Old City and the site of the Ethiopian party. I took her up on it as it would be an adventure.

The plan worked out beautifully: I had the bus drop me off at the entrance to Jerusalem near Chana's apartment. She picked me up in her car at 3:30 and, after briefly dropping off my bag and getting a key to the home where I would sleep, we drove to her apartment for her to light Shabbat candles before sundown. We then walked an hour to Mea Shearim where she was having dinner with a Hasidic family. This spooky neighborhood where so many eccentric rituals and chants go on at all hours between the men only with the women covering their heads, elbows, and knees and, at best, peeking into the festivities through latticework. The men are all bearded and dressed in black similar to the 18th century polish aristocracy. They all walk the streets briskly like they must hurry to the next site of Torah study or be judged by their Creator. The crowded drabness and monochomatic color scheme further feels like either a voyage hundredsd of years back into history for or a Disney World ride. Yet, there is no eye contact or even nodding hello making you feel like you are invisible or a ghost, floating through a tense dream.

The conversation with Chana was intreaguing and refreshingly intellectual compared to the surface "have fun" culture of Tel Aviv. Chana explained how she came to Judaism from being the wife of a Mexican Minister. She used to be a successful reporter for the Washington Post among other peridicals and is now single in her late 30's. She said she was an ambitous career obsessed super-feminist. She is now anti-feminist and says she was wrong to try to compete in men's roles. She said that women have roles that are just as important if not more at the home, with the family, and with the community.

Somehow, I felt a familiarity with Chana, like I had met her before. She has also lived and travelled overseas in her life. It turns out that she spend a few weeks in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico at the same time that I was living there. This was back in 1990. I think we had known each other briefly then.

We strolled through the streets of Jerusalem as the sun sank and the Jerusalem stone buildings were illuminated to a glowing orange. You could occasionally see the green neon wrapped around the minnerettes bobbing out of the mosques down below in the valley of East Jerusalem. As we walked, cars on the roads dwindled to the occasional Arab taxi driver. Those disappeared as we approached Mea Shearim. As we strolled into the spooky monochromatic village, she invited me (again) to eat the Shabbat meal with the family she was visiting. I reitterated that I had promised my friends that I would not eat for two days before the Ethiopian feast. I did agree to step inside of the home she was visiting and say hello. The apartment was small with a long cloth covered card table taking up most of the living space. Who knows how many children lived there - perhaps more than half a dozen. The long and narrow room seemed even more foreboding with the hundreds of black leather-bound religeous and prayer books peering down and watching from all of the walls. The man of the house, with his long black beard, entered and sat at the head of the table to silently continue praying. He clearly had just come back from the Synagogue, perhaps one of the men with a brisk pace. The heavy set (assume pregnant) wife was in the tiny kitchen with a head scarf and there were several yeshiva students waiting around for instructions to sit, pray, or eat.

After excusing myself, I walked another 45 minutes along the exterior walls of the Old City, past Jaffa Gate, to the home where I was staying. I met Doris and her 88 year-old father Philip. They had just moved from Santa Monica a couple of weeks prior and told me I was their first non-family guest. Doris is personable and very chatty. She makes sure you know that she has a beautiful expensive home "on the water" in Santa Monica. She also wants to tell the stories of the art pieces of her home, her expensive buildout of the place, and her general financial successes. They have shipped one of two 40' containers of their stuff from the USA. The house is full and they have boxes piled floor to cieling in the garage. Her father, Phillip, was kind, sharp, modest, and warm. He retired from owning restaurants and he is happy to be in Israel. Doris' husband was in the USA and I didn't get to meet him. As I was leaving for the Ethiopian party, I invited the two of them. Doris accepted and we caught a ride to the party with my friend.

It was such a joy to see the young leaders with whom I had worked so closely with the refeugees. I realized I deeply missed doing something so fulfilling. There was wonderful food, beer, and, eventually dancing to Ethiopian and Israeli music until alte in the night. Doris lasted about an hour after telling everyone about her home "right on the water" in Santa Monica and took a cab home. Ethiopian former refugees (Christian) and mostly 20-something Israeli volunteers danced for a few hours.

The next day we were to walk the 1 1/2 mile to the Old City. Phillip, at 88 years old, had a leg cramp in the night so we took a cab. Doris made me promise that I would not reveal that we didn't walk on Shabbat and she mentioned our "walk to the Old City" (wink, wink) a few times at the meal. She knew the way through the winding streets to Paula's apartment in the Jewish Quarter near the Mt. of Olives. When we climbed the stairs to the top floor, we came into a magnificent mideavil room that was, technically, a studio plus a nice kitchen. The room had a timeless spectacular view from the enormous window overlooking the valley of East Jerusalem. The home in Mea Shearim had nothing on her in the way of religeous books and Jewish items used for rituals. Photos of Rabbi Schneerson and paintings of other assumed famous rabbi's adourned the walls. Various volumes of prayer books and judaica were abundant. She did manage to find a hidden album with photos of the two of us together in 1992.

There was another Ultra-Orthodox man who was once a famous Mexican non-Jewish actor along with his wife. There were several other single women and men. Women were very conservatively dressed and the men in black pants and white shirts. I sat next to a man about my age who was also single and from the USA. He had come from listening to a special rabbi speaking on the week's Torah portion. It was interesting to see how shabbat observance had become so central and cherished to the lives of all at the table. David would giggle every time a new course was served. He was so excited and grateful for the abundance of food. Each course fo a new kind of food received a blessing. He threw out a few dvar Torah stories that he had heard the rabbi say. Paula would scatter "Baruch HaShem"'s (roughly, "Blessed is his name") into most sentances and often talk about the omnipresence and generocity of G-d, the creator of all.

The meal was interrupted several times by children from Paula's neighbors bringing in leftover food for us to try. They were a large Ultra-Orthodox Brazilian family and, apparently, it is common to give neighbors samples of your cooking during Shabbat. Paula put together plates of sweet potato kugel for her neighbor's little girl to take back next door. It was a timeless event with no elecricity being spent, a view that could have been seen two hundred years ago, in an ancient walled city. This is their life.

Jerusalem has a heaviness about it. It is tense with it's Ultra-Orthadox, secular, media, Christians, and Muslims. There is an abundance of spirituality, intellect, and generocity. It is the holiest site to the Jews, one of the holiest to Christians, and the 3rd holiest to Muslims. It is one city, not execptionally large with the Palestinian Territories to the east, north, and south and Israel proper to the west. It sits at 2550 feet above sea level and is a 1 hour drive to the Mediterranean. To the east, immediately after Jerusalem, it is a steep downward drop to the lowest place on earth, the Dead Sea at 1,300 ft below the level of the Mediterranean. It snows in Jerusalem and is is only a short journey to the very dry and hot Negev Desert to the south. Of course, the stone where Abraham offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice, is the same stone where the Temple was build and was later the stone from which Muhammed flew to heavan on his horse. It is hilly, clear, and bright. It's heavy and some say, sad. This was a dip into the deeply spiritual Orthadox Jewish sector. What is next?

Randy