Have you ever...
Sung Shabbat songs in a old, empty cistern with incredible acoustics?
Ridden on a crowded bus full of charedim, with yeshiva bachors drinking vodka and singing niggunim the whole way?
Been somewhere where there were separate sidewalks for men, women, and cohanim?
Ridden on a segregated bus (women in the back)?
These are some of the highlights of my weekend in Tzfat. Unfortunately my camera and my computer are currently in an fight and not speaking to one another, so I can't upload pictures--hopefully I'll be able to put them up another time. This post is full of Jew-jargon, so I'm putting a glossary at the bottom.
On Thursday night, I went with about 20 other Pardes students to a program at
Livnot, in Tzfat (Safed in English). On Friday afternoon, we saw a parade with an ancient Torah in honor of the holiday of Lag B'Omer (more on that later.) A crowd of people surrounded the Torah and slowly danced it down the street, with musicians and a car blaring music. People would go up to the Torah and tie scarves onto it--I have no idea why--and so the Torah was completely covered in scarves.
Friday night, I was looking forward to
Kabbalat Shabbat in Tzfat, the city in which the Kabbalat Shabbat service was written, but I was disappointed. We were staying in the Old City, which was overflowing with
charedim (especially
hasidim) who had come for Lag B'Omer. I've never seen so many
streimels in my life. A few of us went to an outdoor Kabbalat Shabbat service happening in the square. It was exciting to be praying communally with the largest group of Jews I've ever prayed with...except that on the women's side, not a lot of praying was happening. Most women were talking, I couldn't hear the shaliach tzibur (prayer leader), and it was getting too dark to see my siddur (prayer book). So, after Kabbalat Shabbat, I gave up, wandered around in a futile attempt to find a synagogue that didn't have people spilling out into the streets, and finally went back to Livnot to finish praying on my own.
Saturday I synagogue-hopped. I went to
shacharit at the Berav ("Carlebach") shul, and then met up with a couple of girls to walk to the Hungarian shul in a different part of the city where we were meeting our lunch host family, where I prayed
musaf. Our lunch was nice and our hosts were very sweet. They had a fun family custom of eating ice cream and dessert first, then completely switching over the table to serve the meat meal. (Having dairy after meat isn't kosher, but dairy before meat as fine as long as its not the same meal.) That afternoon I went to
mincha at a famous
Sephardi synagogue, which was beautiful.
Saturday afternoon I went for a walk with several friends to the Tzfat forest and around the city. We visited the citadel, which had a great view. There was a grate in the ground, and the sounds of men singing in the cistern below were rising up from it. We went down into the cistern, and sang, too. The accoustics were amazing (it reminded me of singing in the dome of St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal and into the well in San Gimignano, Italy with the Ithaca Children's Choir). On our way out of the cistern, there was a whole group of teenage boys in long black coat-robes and short pants with white tights (kneesocks?) who asked if there were any other women inside before they entered--many ultra-orthodox men follow
kol isha, the prohibition against hearing women (other than their wives) singing.
Saturday night was Lag B'Omer. Literally, it means the 33rd (the letters ל"ג, lag, stand for the number 33) day of the Omer, which is a count of 50 days between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot (the "Festival of Weeks" in English). The 33rd day of the Omer is celebrated for two reasons--according to the Talmud, it is the day a divine plague that had been killing Rabbi Akiva's students stopped, and it is also observed as the anniversary of the RaShBI's death (RaShBI is an acronym for Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai). The RaShBi is buried on Mt Meron, and thousands of Charadim visit his grave on Lag B'Omer. It is also customary to light bonfires--as the story goes, the RaShBI was hiding from the Romans in a cave, learning Torah by a bonfire. In order to keep his location hidden from the Romans, local kids lit fires in all of the caves, so the Romans couldn't tell which cave was the RaShBI's.
I went to Mt. Meron. Even the bus ride there was crazy--it was packed with people, and a group of American yeshiva guys were passing around shots of vodka and singing songs the whole way. Some pretty non-traditional nigguns (melodies), too: one that sounded like a Russian drinking song, one to the tune of the French national anthem, and my favorite, to the tune of "She'll be comin' round the mountain,"--"We'll be goin' to the
Beis HaMigdash when
Mashiach comes!"
Mt. Meron itself felt like a giant music festival, except where everyone was Charedi. According to news sources, there were 300,000 people there between the end of Shabbat and 3am, and a total 500,000 by the end of Lag B'Omer the next day. And yes, there were separate sidewalks for men, women, and
Cohanim (to avoid the gravesite). There were giant bleachers set up of men watching the bonfire--entire rows of men dancing arm-in-arm on bleachers. I didn't go into the grave itself (too crowded for me), but a friend who was on the men's side said he had to cross his arms out in front of his chest so as to be able to breathe.
That night, back at Livnot, I could see the whole top of the mountain from a distance, all lit up by bonfires.
The next day, I had planned to take the bus from Tzfat to Jerusalem, but there weren't any buses; the roads were closed to everything but Meron traffic. Instead I had to go back to Meron (in jeans this time), where I took a Haredi bus to Jerusalem. The bus was a segregated bus, with men in front and women in back. I ended up sitting on the border of the men's and women's sections, and it turned out that the last person who needed a seat was a man and the only seat open was next to me. To my surprise, (instead of rearranging the men's section to put a kid next to me,) he took the seat. To my even greater surprise, he started a conversation with me. He was an American yeshiva student about my age; we talked about how I like learning gemarra (in very Orthodox circles, women don't study it), what I think of Obama's health care plan, and Obama himself (Yehuda liked him better than Bush, but wouldn't elaborate). Halfway to Jerusalem, the bus stopped in an open field-turned-rest stop that was filled with busloads of Charedim--an ordinary rest stop would not have been capable of supporting all of the Meron-bound traffic.
All-in-all, quite a surreal experience. After my 3.5 hour bus ride, it took a couple hours to adjust back to non-charedi Jerusalem life.
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Glossary:
Kabbalat Shabbat: a special service on Friday night to welcome Shabbat, before the regular evening service
charedim: Ultra-Orthodox Jews
hassidim: one part of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism, with many sects
streimel: a type of fur hat some Haredim wear (see the wickepedia link here)
shacharit: the morning prayer service
mussaf: an additional service for Shabbat after the morning service
mincha: afternoon service
Sephardi: branch of Judaism from primarily Spanish and Arabic speaking countries; as opposed to Ashkenazim (like me and most American Jews), whose families came from Eastern Europe.
Beis (or Beit) haMigdash: the Temple, as in the Temple in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount; in this case referring to the 3rd Temple which will supposedly be rebuilt when the Messiah comes.
Mashiach: the Messiah
Cohanim: Jewish priests, descendants of Aaron, Moses's brother in the Bible. They still have some special functions in the Jewish community today, and are supposed to avoid dead bodies/graves.
