The Jerusalem "Miss List"

[Random fun fact I just discovered: the Brussels airport has Greek Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic chapels, a mosque, a synagogue (complete with an ark and a full set of Talmud Bavli!), and a Humanist counselor. :-)]

Every time I leave a place, I come up with a list of the things I’ll miss, and the things I won’t. I start doing it subconsciously as I’m mentally preparing to leave, and then once I realize I’m doing it I sit down and consciously add to the list. To end my blog, I thought I’d share the list for Jerusalem that I’ve come up with over the past couple weeks:

What I will miss
• The falafel—where else can I grab a yummy and sort-of healthy lunch for only 10 shekels (<$3)?
• The prayer options—approximately 12 synagogues/minyanim within a 15 minute walk
• Being in a place where even the security guard at the bank is saying psalms/learning the Torah portion (I couldn’t tell which) on a Friday morning
• The sense of כלל ישראל(community of the Jewish people); the feeling that complete strangers genuinely care about my well being
• Having so such easy access to so much Jewish knowledge
• The tomatoes, and the peppers, and the hummus
• The mangos, passionfruit and plums in the summer; the pomellos in the winter
• Speaking Hebrew
• My hevrutas (study partners)/hevruta learning in general
• The view from the Tayelet (a park by my home)

What I won’t miss
• The cats—the ones that jump out of dumpsters as I walk by, and especially the wailing and yowling ones who are fighting/mating at night
• The lack of diversity—I rarely interact with non-Jews
• Doing sponga (mopping, Israeli-style, with a squeegee and rags)— it’s so labor intensive!
• The friction between haredim and datim and hilonim
• Being instantly labeled by what I wear (I try not to wear hats and skirts on the same day lest I appear modern Orthodox and married)
• The bureaucracy and inefficiency— “Hello, welcome to our 24 hour service; we are now closed” (true story), how bills don’t come regularly and everything takes forever
• Living in a (self-)segregated city; separate bus lines, separate neighborhoods
• Waiting in line at the grocery store

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I've now just posted these last two posts (written in the Ben Gurion and Brussels airports) from the Jet Blue terminal in JFK, where I'm waiting for my flight to Syracuse in another 2 hours. It's really hard to believe I'm in New York. But on the other hand, I look around at the people in the airport, and I know instantly that I'm not in Israel (it's some combination of diversity, style of dress, and lack of Hebrew that does it, I think). Hello, USA.