Thursday, Jerusalem

I am starting to be delirious at the end of each day. BUT the day always starts with amazing breakfasts here--I only wish that I had more of an appetite in the morning. It's really too bad--you could easily eat your three meals at the breakfast buffet. For instance, you could have your regular choice of breakfast items: cereal, fruit, eggs, omelets, pancakes, yogurt, toast....OR you could have a good old Ashkenazi Shabbat kiddish situation- all kinds of nasty smoked and pickled herring and other fish...OR you could move on to an Israeli lunchtime sort of thing--Israeli salad, cheeses...and it seems to go on and on. I generally begin with the cappuccino, and that takes about ten minutes until the caffeine begins to hit my bloodstream, and then I can move on to food. One of my favorites is shakshuka--I guess it's like huevos rancheros. It's scrambled eggs with a salsa sort of thing and some cheese. It's VERY good.
Today began for mom and me with a trip to the Hebrew University campus at Mount Scopus, where we met the woman who deals usually with the Canadian Friends of Hebrew University (the American liaison is on vacation), and she gave us a tour of the beautiful campus. Many years ago, my father deicded to establish an annual scholarship for a Sephardic student in the sciences. We then met Esther Djian, who is the current recipient, and she was so lovely and impressive. She is working on a Masters degree in Virology, and is of Moroccan origin. She was born in Paris and made aliyyah 6 years ago, met her husband in her ulpan class (he is also French, and his parents are from Algiers), and has an adorable one year old daughter. It was so great to meet her. We also saw three plaques with my parents' names listed on them, and I felt very proud of them and the gift of tzedakah they have made.
Then we were off to the Shrine of the Book, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept. I was there when I was 9, but I was definitely totally uninterested. This visit was fascinating, but unfortunately, somewhat short. Outside there was a model of the Old City in the Second Temple Period which was really interesting--I always love seeing what they think the Temple Mount looked like, and imagining the priests and the Levites running around up there and performing their duties.
But I digress--so essentially, during the Second Temple Period, just before it was destroyed in 70 AD, for about 180 years, this sect called the Essenes moved out to Qumaran, near the Dead Sea, and practiced a really hard-core, highly ascetic version of Judaism, documenting much of it. They lived in caves, all their energies went to worship and study, they worked on a unique genre of hyms of praise (Hodayot), exegetical texts (pesharim), read Torah, and focused onm prophetic texts, especially the Book of Isaiah. They went to the mikveh twice every day (and ps, no one lived past the age of 40, because they were all sharing the same tapeworm, which they probably picked up and passed to one another during this ritual "purification"--isn't that gross and fascinating?). It reminded me of Zen Buddhism, as compared with some of the less intense branches.
From there we went to the Old City, and I walked until my knees hurt (I was also wearing the wrong shoes). It was SO HOT, and mid-day I went to the shuk and bought a darbuka (drum) which wasn't really all that light to be carrying around with me the rest of the day...but we need some Friday night drumming at TBI! We went through the Armenian and Jewish Quarters, and not all the way to the kotel, the Western wall (we'll be there tomorrow), but got a beautiful view from above. I LOVE looking at that huge, gorgeous golden dome of the Al-Aksa mosque rising above the kotel. We went underground to the archeology museum to see Roman ruins that were excavated in 1967, and learned about how the various conquerors kept building on top of existing structures--it's quite fascuinating. There was a lot of history today, and too many dates to keep in my head, and some good discussion on the early Christians.
From there I studied some music, and that was basically the day. There was a concert tonight, but I couldn't put anything more into my consciousness.
Tomorrow I have the honor of leading ma'ariv, the evening service, at the Southern Wall. I am a little nervuos about it, and excited also. Hazzan Aaron Bensousan, from Toronto, leads the first part of the service, kabbalat Shabbat. He is Moroccan, and a very interesting musician--we'll have some great melodies from him leading up to my half of the service. I'm the only woman so far who has actually gotten to lead services. Hmmm.