Saturday in Town

Continuing our last-minute rush to partake of the many different synagogues in Jerusalem, today we walked in the City Center to attend the Italian Synagogue. We visited the site once before, but during the week and as a museum, so today's experience was quite different. There were many visitors and tourists there with us, but the service was clearly authentic, or at least very different from our own backgrounds, as were the tunes. Jon spoke to one of the Kohanim, who told him that while he himself was not Italian, he had learned his tunes from an elderly Italian who had since passed away but had recorded his melody for Birkat Kohanim so that the Florence tradition would be kept alive here in Jerusalem. Much of the service was Sephardic in nature, but with a variety of interesting twists that made the walk to and from the shul well worth it.

After Shabbat we went back into town for the fresh crepe Jon has been craving since first seeing them last August. It was as delicious as he'd hoped. We then walked to a large open area in the old train station, where dozens of vendors representing the nation's publishers had set up booths. The event was part of the week long Shavua Ha'Sefer celebration, where books of all types, from religious to children's and fiction, are sold at ridiculously cheap prices. It's a shame all of our savings will be wiped out when we have to ship all of our purchases back to North America.

We closed out the day with a stop at Shnitzi's, a fast food place that specializes in shnitzel. Jon, feeding yet another craving, ordered the House Special, which is chicken breast covered in Bissli crumbs. The sandwich came with a variety of toppings and sauces, and was satisfactorily delicious and a good final meat meal before the delicious dairy of Shavuot.