The Cholent: Yeshiva (“Gap Year”) Retrospective - 20 Years Later
Was Shabbat in the Old City of Jerusalem everything I remembered it to be?
My family is in the process of starting a tradition whereby we try to spend Shabbat Chanukah (or the one right after) in Jerusalem. Last year we spent it in Mamilla and attended the Great Synagogue and the Churva synagogue. It was a great opportunity to change the scenery a little bit a rejuvenate the soul after what can become a monotonous, rushed-because-we-are-busy-and-have-families spiritual experience that takes up most of the other time during the year. Jerusalem just has a different vibe that you can feel in the streets and in the people and that is always good for maintaining one’s perspective as they travel through life. This year we stayed within the walls of the Old City, where I lived for a year while studying in Yeshiva after high school, but where my wife had never even spent the night before.
Thursday night and Friday morning - Candle Lighting, was something wrong with the Earth’s gravitational pull?, and the hottest new trend
We collected the kids from school on Thursday afternoon and headed straight to Jerusalem. Surprisingly, the parking garage right outside of the Old City, was filled to capacity, so we had to search elsewhere for parking. We were familiar with another lot from where we stayed last year, so we went over there and grabbed one of the last spots. I put on the massive backpack that held all of our clothes and food for the weekend and started the trek into the Old City.
We got into our AirBNB with no issues at all, put our stuff down and headed down to the Kotel (Western Wall) to view the lighting of the Chanukiah there. I’m pretty sure they said they had one of the Chief Rabbis lighting it that night, but they didn’t speak or anything, so I couldn’t be sure. We danced a little, then headed back up to the Jewish quarter to get some food. For a moment I was getting concerned because we had not yet run into anyone unexpectedly, but then, as I was wrapping up my order at the bagel shop I heard my name called by parents of one of my friends from back in America. We had a nice chat and then the rest of the night passed uneventfully.
I began Friday morning by davening/praying at sunrise at the Kotel. I personally always find davening at the Kotel to be a challenging thing to do. It is very much like davening in a three-ring circus. There is so much going on and (especially when praying at sunrise) so many people praying at the same time that it can be hard to focus. Throw in a couple of people who may have some undiagnosed mental issues and then some weird flooding/leaking from somewhere and it gets even more crazy. In the end I kind of gave up and joined in with an Edot Hamizrach group and tried to hear the Torah reading over everyone else who was screaming, I mean praying. Afterwards, I went to the outdoor part of the Kotel and prayed for my friends and family and for the hostages. I went back to the AirBNB, but not before picking up some sufganiyot (donuts) for the family for breakfast.
One interesting trend I did notice more than any other time I was at the Kotel for Shacharit (and this is probably only because I don’t davening there very often and also because I haven’t really paid attention to it) is people wearing two pairs of tefillin at the same time. See there is an ancient disagreement about what order the portions of the Torah contained within the tefillin is supposed to be. There is a generally accepted opinion, but there are those who say that if that opinion is incorrect, then you haven’t fulfilled your obligation. Many of these people will switch their tefillin at some point in the davening, but there is a small (now growing?) portion of people who are deciding to wear both at the same time. Interestingly, this may actually be the most correct way of doing things but there are a few things (mostly cost) preventing it I think from becoming mainstream. It will be interesting to see where this goes in the next few decades as affluence and adherence to Halacha (Jewish law) increases.
Friday activity - Tower of David
For our Friday activity, we decided to walk right up the hill and tour the Tower of David museum. My 5-year-old was pretty stoked because I guess he sees it in the pictures they see of Jerusalem in class. He was telling his friends about it for weeks! Anyway, overnight, the weather had changed pretty drastically, with the temperatures cooling and the wind picking up quite a bit, so it was a chilly walk, but we made it. We came early, which is always a good idea, so we had the place mostly to ourselves for the first half of our tour.
The museum starts off with a historical overview of Jerusalem, discussing all the different religions and civilizations that ruled over the area for the past 5000 years. It is very heavy on multimedia, which is cool and can give a very modern feel to such an ancient city, so I’m a fan of that. But already in the first room, you can start to get the feel that the Tower of David is kind of a neglected step-child of the bigger, more-famous museums in the country. Approximately 50% of the artifacts on display are replicas, and what they do have that was real was kind of uninteresting and of poorer quality/of less importance than of other artifacts you would see elsewhere. The upside to this is that you can touch a lot of the stuff, so my son liked seeing the cylinder that announced that the Jews could return to Israel after their 70 year exile. Also, in general, I thought that there was a lot of open space, that if they had more to display they could easily add it without making the museum feel too cluttered.
The next part of the museum discussed the importance of Jerusalem to the main religions of the world. There were signs from “rabbis” all over the Jewish quarter warning Jews not to go to the museum for this reason, but I actually don’t think they did a terrible job, and also because as a Jew I can’t go in or to many of these places so being able to learn about them in this way I think is a good opportunity.
Following these rooms was probably the highlight of the visit, and that is the view that one can see from one of the smaller towers at the site (visitors can not go into what is actually called the “Tower of David”). It is a spectacular view that allows one to see sites they otherwise couldn’t see from ground level in the Jewish quarter. You can see other parts of Jerusalem as well. It was overall breathtaking and combined with the rest of the museum made the admission fee a good value.
From there we visited a few more rooms and then did an arts and crafts activity and then headed back to the Jewish quarter and our place for lunch and to get ready for Shabbat.
Shabbat - Back to Yeshiva
If I had to give last year’s Jerusalem trip a theme it would have been, “sit back and let people do the davening for you”. The Great Synagogue is a show, and the Churva is a beautiful shul and also one where there is time to concentrate on the prayers. This year, it turned into an impromptu opportunity to revisit my time in yeshiva twenty years ago.
For readers of the blog who are not familiar with the practice, it is very common for American Jewish (mostly Orthodox) day school students to spend a year learning Torah in Israel for a year following high school, typically right after graduating. There are dozens of programs catering to this need. By the time I went in 2003 it was already basically a given that I would go, but this “fact” was relatively new, as it started really trending in the mid to late 90s. It then experienced a large boom in the late 2000s as different groups and organizations tried to cash in on many different monetary sources that were available to support such endeavors as well as a long period of extended (relative) peace in the region. Now I believe things have mostly stabilized again but this isn’t really the point of this post. Moving on.
The yeshiva I went to was (and still is) located in the Old City, so with my family staying there I thought it would be a good time to go and see the old stomping grounds for the first time in 20 years (I haven’t had a reason to go back in the 5 years I have lived here) and bring my son along to see a place in the history of his dad. They also fix the issue I have with davening at the Kotel itself, since they pray on their roof overlooking the Kotel (and pretty much Har Habayit itself) so you can feel like you are praying there with none of the “circus” involved. Win-win! I slightly embarrassed myself because I couldn’t remember how to get to my yeshiva, but in my defense, I hadn’t gone there in 20 years!
I would say that the biggest difference I noticed when davening Kabbalah Shabbat with my Alma Yeshiva (is that a thing?) is that there was a not-small number of women and young ladies attending as well. If there was one woman/girl in the Beit Midrash my year I certainly didn’t know about it, and there certainly wasn’t an opportunity to socialize with them. Here, while mingling was not super-prominent, it was definitely possible and did happen on occasion. It was weird.
Also, it seemed very unorganized and spontaneous. No one really seemed to be in charge. There was lots of talking prior to the services beginning, which I don’t ever remember happening while I was learning there, but this could also just be a lot of revisionist history involving a lot of whitewashing of my past.
The students though were generally friendly, with some of them introducing themselves to us. Once davening got going, there were also engaged for the most part, but that’s not to say there weren’t side discussions taking place here and there. It also turned very cold and windy towards the end. Following davening I took my son on a tour of the building and to go say hello to the Rosh Yeshiva, who is now 20 years older than he was when I went there. It wasn’t clear if he remembered me, though it also seemed as though he has a vision problem so he may not have been able to know who I was clearly. It was still nice to see him and he was proud that I had made Aliyah and that I have four children, Baruch Hashem.
We went home and ate dinner, and, following that, my son and I headed out again to a different yeshiva that was hosting Rav Hershel Schachter for Shabbat (it seems that one of his grandchildren lives in the Old City) to hear him speak. He gave a dear Torah at the meal and then spoke for an hour about Chanukah and why it is still observed today following the meal. I was really proud that my son stayed awake and mostly understood what he was speaking about. It is a special experience for him because on some level they will be speaking about Rav Schachter in the way they speak about The Rav nowadays and now my son will be able to tell his children that he heard him speak (something I can’t say about me and the Rav as one, I was younger than my son was when the Rav passed away - and Hashem should bless Rav Schachter with many more years of health, and also because The Rav was already ailing by the time I was born). So that was super cool.
We then went to bed, only to be woken up a few hours later by a Houthi missile that triggered the sirens. We had no place to run to, and also I’m not fully aware of what the safe rooms accomplish so I stayed in bed and went back to sleep.
In the morning we davened again at the yeshiva with Rav Schachter. It was a bit drawn out, but again, that’s what I need and want out of this Shabbat. So I didn’t complain. The rest of Shabbat passed uneventfully, though we did stop by a family that lives in the Old City who we had met on Friday for my two little kids to have a play date. We spoke with them about what it is like to live there. It is certainly a different way of life.
An interesting note about the two yeshivas we davened in and that is that there is an alternative timeline where I would have ended up attending the one where Rav Schachter was teaching. With 20 years of perspective I do think this would have been the better choice, but it wasn’t an option at the time. I still have no regrets about what did end up happening, as everything happens for a reason. But it was good to be able to more actively play out that scenario and think about what would have been. This is not something that is always easily done, so again I am thankful for the opportunity and other things that happened till now to make it possible (mostly my daughter being friends with the person who runs the program today).
Now, back to the grind. Until next year, Jerusalem!