Around in circles to the right

Saturday, May 9, 2009

I guess even cats deserve a shabbos meal. All year long we've been seeing Jerusalem's cats skulking, jumping, creeping under cars, climbing up and falling out of--trees, even hearing them go at it during mating season...but now I've seen everything. Someone put a big plate of cholent out on the sidewalk near the garbage dumpster on our street for them. It went ignored all day until I was walking home from the Great Synagogue, and saw a cat making kiddush and indulging. It was hysterical, and a little gross looking. But I suppose that even cats deserve to eat something special.

I have heard that there is a group that meets before Shabbat on Friday afternoons at Liberty Bell Park to do Israeli dancing. On Tuesday evening, as we were leaving the school after our conference call with the New York campus and spent an hour finding out all about our curriculum and schedule for next year, I thought about how little time there is left, and what are the things that I had intended to do but didn't. Ah, I can't believe we haven't been dancing!  So there is this group that meets every Friday when it's summertime...so once again, I dragged Phillip and the kids, and figured that if they didn't want to dance, we were still at the park that they love and there was plenty to play on and  room to scooter and run around. 

I jumped in, choosing my favorite 'regulars' to follow and try to read their body language and anticipate which steps were coming next. For a folk dance with a small vocabulary of steps, it is fairly tricky. Every song seems to have a different choreography, to the right, sometimes you skip a beat, double a step, skip, reverse direction, turn, or not turn, but just go backwards. Congratulations to me for not stepping on anyone's toes, and to the women who wear those crazy plaid and checkered tights and make it so easy to watch their legs and follow along. Clearly they've been doing this for years. It was so much fun, and when I ran back on the grass to get Phillip I pointed back to the hundreds of people dancing, thinking it's funny because it doesn't really look that much fun, but it IS! 

Constantly moving, but simple steps, not very high off the ground, old people, young people, everyone can do it. By the time we left I felt like I had spent time on a kibbutz, oh so very communal in nature. But my right thigh was tired, and realized these crazy people don't ever reverse the general direction of the circle. It goes around in circles to the right. Only the right. So I'm a bit uneven right now, but it was so much fun. And it was so relaxed that Ben and Coby could just weave in and out of the circle to find me and jump on me while I skipped along.

I finally made Mayan happy by doing Kabbalat Shabbat with Coby's class at the Gan. After I dropped off Coby I skipped across the street to Yemim Moshe, a beautiful artsy community built on the hill opposite the old city--underneath the King David Hotel, before Sultan's Pool. I had my guitar with me, but it was too early to get into the library to prepare for our Practicum on Sunday. I brought my creaky old bones to a spot at the top of Yemim Moshe and stretched out doing some yoga facing the view of the Old City Walls, and practiced guitar for an hour. (Lag B'Omer celebrations for the schools are on Sunday evening, and I have to be ready to sing songs that I have never heard of and will not know in time) So sprawled out near a gazebo, thinking how original I am...I was not so original, and was the side show for 2 tourist groups that came nearby. Noone spoke to me, but I think I was in a few pictures of "wow, look at that girl playing guitar in Jerusalem!"

I went by myself to the Kabbalat Shabbat at the Great Synagogue. I was surprised to learn that it is a new synagogue, built in 1982, and when you look at the entrance, you see how it was modeled after THE temple--as in the holy of holies. The guard calls me out right away as an American and asks me to turn my cell phone off, and I explained to her I have children at home who may need me, but it is on silent. She didn't care about my reasons... I sat up in the women's gallery and listened to the new cantor that they are trying out, Naphtali Hershik has just retired, he had been there since the beginning, and their choir who is there every Shabbat and Chag. I mean it was beautiful, he had a gorgeous, trained, tenor voice. I loved watching the conductor bring the choir back together when their 'ooohhs' were going awray. I don't know, I left around 8pm, when they began Maariv, feeling a little sad. That was a quickie Kabbalat Shabbat, but it left me sort of empty. The choir was nice, but I don't really feel there is a place for the congregation in there. I think to pray there, you already need to have it all together and know what you are doing, because they don't wait for you to 'pray', they keep going. It made me really think about what the kahal thinks when a choir is singing their special pieces, and what is the balance between congregational music and special music for the choir or cantor. So tonight, where was there room for us? But if it is all us, then where is the opportunity for stretching us and challenging us with a more intricate piece?

I have to finish working through this one before I tackle interfaith marriages. Phillip felt that watching the Israeli dancing was kabbalat shabbat-like for him, much more so than something so formal as the Great Synagogue. I told him he was a kibbutz-nik, since during all the waves of Aliyot, that was their religion, and was what united them. But that actually was what satisfied them in a spiritual way as well, so perhaps my husband, the Israeli communist has a bit of the kibbutznik in him after all.