Shabbat Adventures

Today we decided to take a break from Yakar and try out one of the other three dozen shuls in the two block radius around our apartment. We'd heard good things about a minyan named Shir Hadash, so this morning I left early to make it to their 8:30 start. As usual, I missed the necessary alleyway turn-off and had to take a ridiculous detour to find the address, which, once found, turned out to be the second floor of a school situtated behind some sort of aviary (they had at least one peacock and one quail, in addition to standard turkeys and ducks roaming the yard, and random bunnies!). My leaving early payed off and I got there just as shul started. Well, I think it payed off; Rina, who got there just before Torah reading, feels that kind of thinking is just silly. We expected the shul to have the singing and energy of Yakar but without the closed eyes, swaying, and clapping, but Rina thought that the entire endeavour seemed a little forced, as though the participants knew the sound they wanted but didn't quite know how to get there. Jon liked it. Another drawback, as far as we are concerned, is that the shul is completely Anglo, with Artscroll being the standard siddur, all speeches/announcements in English only, and more than one person in a suit. On the plus side, the gym made duchening very comfortable, as we got to stand on exercize mats, and there was a Bat Mitzvah, and along with it came a great kiddush.

After shul we came home to finish preparing our contribution to the pot-luck picnic lunch we would be attending. It (the lunch, not the salad) was a gathering of Pardes students (Rina's school year begins tomorrow at 8:30, the earliest she has had to wake up in two weeks). I was a little disappointed that it was going to be dairy, but it turned out that the attendees were good enough cooks to make it worthwhile anyway. Oh, and good company as well. Everyone brought food, blankets, and benchers, and we had an enjoyable few hours in the park meeting, eating, and singing. Not too much singing, and the sabbath prevented bongos, but enough to be pleasant. I also ran into a co-worker from camp whom I haven't seen in eight years, which was fun of course. Oh, and Ilana's friend Peter.

The one disappointment from this weekend came from a book I took out of the library on Thursday. Before hearing Eli Amir speak my class had been asked to read an excerpt from his book, which I did and enjoyed. After his presentation I thought it would be a good idea to read the entire work, so I took it out of the library. I muscled though the first five or so pages, but was confused as to why they were so much harder than the excerpt we had read for class. I took out my photocopied pages and looked at the title: "Tarnegol Caparot - In Easy Language". With those five words any confidence in Hebrew that I'd built up was dashed. I have not been reading at the level of a grade-school Israeli, I have been reading at the level of a remedial grade-school Israeli. Wonderful.