My last official day at the yeshiva came and went, without being convinced to stay indefinitely. It was a more or less typical day:
840am. breakfast of puffed rice cereal, with milk poured from a bag, and my classmates musing about the proper blessing for puffed rice, is it mezonos, shehakol, or maybe adamah? a doozy. an orange and a couple slices of toast and i'm done.
9am. i don't usually go to this class but turns out the rabbi is nice and i'm meeting with him later in the day so i don't want to disappoint him too much. the class is on brachas (blessings), and i am having trouble paying attention. awareness and thankfulness for the food on your plate is a beautiful thing, but i'd prefer to focus on the amazing complexity of the orange or the amount of work put into harvesting the wheat to make the bread, instead of the technicalities of god's blessings.
10am. out the door, around this time i usually go exploring for a couple of hours, often probing the arab sections of jerusalem. i have now officially been through all seven functional gates of the old city: zion, dung, jaffa, new, damascus, herod's, and lion's gates.
11am. coffee in east jerusalem. i insist to myself that i practice arabic, however briefly, and buying coffee allows me to do that, while also getting me inside so i can warm up and read a book hidden from the frigid winter of jerusalem. arabic coffee is crazy dense, thick, slightly sweet. it came with a cute piece of chocolate too, and for only 6 shekels a much better deal than elsewhere. i finished reading 'bobby fischer teaches chess', 'cosmicomics', and 'permission to believe', and now im reading a linguistic history of hebrew by noam chomsky's dad, plus learning about the germanic barbarians ransacking the roman empire in 'a history of europe: vol. 1'. The hebrew language book is EPIC. i think i should go to graduate school in lingustics.
12pm. taking a different route home, as is my custom, and i stumble upon the coptic patriarchate, complete with a bishop sitting in a folding chair at the entrance. the domes and spires are quite a sight, and the simple little chapel with pre-perspective christian art is striking, but the gem is the huge cistern they found a while back in the basement. you ahve to descend a stone tunnel-stairwell 4 feet in diameter to reach the cistern, which is partially filled, and the instruction is to sing a little bit to hear a "musical surprise". the echo is unreal. i was alone down there, so i spent a good fifteen minutes singing to myself. the notes resonated so long that i could make chords with my voice.
1pm. lunch, and its a mad rush as usual. hot dogs and cole slaw and such, and to drink, the same as every day, which is the option of two different sugar drinks, one red and one yellow.
2pm. in the beis hamidrash, i recently decided i prefer reading myself rather than feeling overburdened by a rabbi telling me what's right. it took about a half-hour to get through the first three days of creation, and i still don't know what actually happened. i am intermittently reading the linguistics book and assorted stories from the Torah, mostly creation, the giving of the Torah at mount sinai, and the story of shmuel, my namesake.
3pm. the first of two one-on-one meetings with a rabbi, and im scared i am going to get beat into submission and convinced to stay at the yeshiva. but rabbi hurwitz has the warmest smile i think i've ever seen, and he chooses to support my endeavors and talk up the great potential of the jewish people before inviting me for shabbos and wishing me on my way. however, rabbi hurwitz admits he is the good cop to my 5pm appointment rabbi berger's bad cop.
5pm. rabbi berger decides to pick his battles, and the one he chooses is jewish marriage. a good conversation, and i escape emotionally intact.
730pm. dinner time, and i forget that right afterwards maariv (evening prayer) starts in the beis hamidrash. my hebrew lesson with my friend david is interrupted, and we are forced to hide in the back stairwell playing cards while the observant supplicate the lord.
9pm. downtown, to meet the brothers tomer and yonatan, and tomer's girlfriend orly. this is actually my first real taste of the kleepah since getting to israel; i haven't been out on the town once. we just have a couple drinks and talk about yeshivas and orthodoxy and where i can work/volunteer for a month or two in israel. it was really comforting.
12am. to bed, thinking about how amazing it is to be lying in the bottom bunk on this sorry excuse for a mattress, in the old city of jerusalem, and soon to take these philosophical challenges on the road to my next destination, wherever it is.
there are other stories, about wandering jerusalem forest and shabbos with a luminary jew, and 3-hour violin/guitar jam sessions. another time. i think, though i won't be sure until i get to the bus station in an hour's time, that i am going to tel aviv.
