Friday, Shabbos, & Sunday

Friday morning:

At around 7:30 we met the other family members who are here for the Bat Mitzvah in the hotel dining room for breakfast (again). We tend to sit around all morning; we keep saying to each other, “Why are we always the last ones out of wherever we are?” Maybe it’s just because there are so many of us, but also because we are always talking!

After breakfast, eight of us went to the Menachem Begin Center, which is a new museum that’s only a 5-minute walk from the hotel. We had an audio tour (in English) and it was interesting but about 90% of the museum consisted of going into different rooms and watching short videos about some period in Begin’s life, and although we were hearing the narration in English, the speakers still played the sound in Hebrew at the same time so it was sort of hard to hear. Also since we have been staying up till at least 1 AM every night and getting up at 7 or earlier, I was tired and nodded off a couple of times during the videos. But overall the museum was interesting. They have one room re-created as the Begins’ living room, with the actual furniture from their apartment, and you’re allowed to sit on it. (Kind of cool, to sit on Begin’s sofa!)

After the museum we went back to the hotel and got ready for Shabbos. Then we went to a shul in Yemin Moshe about a 15-minute walk from here. It was small and beautiful in the uniquely Jerusalem style, a fairly new (or newly renovated) building, so that there were no broken stones or worn-looking seats, but still retained the style of a very old shul. The davening was just slightly different in a couple of places; and actually that’s one of the things I like about traveling--going to a different place and seeing how they do things.

After we got back from shul, we had dinner. The hotel had set up one long, long table for us in the dining room, and we were loud and probably drowned out other peoples’ conversations at their own tables, but we tried to be considerate and only one other group seemed to be annoyed. And after dinner---I bet you can guess what we did—sat and talked until midnight.

Shabbos day:

The Bat Mitzvah (of Norman’s sisters’ granddaughter) was in a shul about a 20-minute walk from the hotel. It was a beautiful sunny, cool morning; the weather had been gorgeous here, which is great for us tourists but a worry for the country, since there is already a water shortage, so I wouldn’t mind if it rained. The Bat Mitzvah was lovely, with many family members participating, and a lunch afterwards. Later we walked back to the hotel and spent the afternoon talking and taking up at least half the hotel lobby (the other half has been taken up all week by several Christian tour groups, some of whose members are wearing Kipot and tzitzit—they told us, when we asked, that they “follow Torah,” but they don’t appear to be Shomer Shabbat, so I don’t know much about it. They are extremely supportive of Israel, though, even if their political views are more right-wing than mine.

After Shabbos we made Havdalah in the hotel without setting off any of the smoke detectors or sprinklers! And then 26 of us went out for pizza. (The Bat Mitzvah girl’s entire meal consisted of 2 chocolate milkshakes.) Midway through the meal Norman told me to look under the table. I did, and saw that one of the cousins had brought her dog—it’s a Maltese, and tiny, and it was poking its head out of her bag. The waitress didn’t notice until one of the kids did and was a little too loud about it, but the cousin who owned the dog just winked at her and the waitress just smiled and didn’t tell anyone.)


Sunday morning:

I woke up at 6:15 and opened my eyes to the brilliant red sun just climbing over the horizon, and jumped out of bed and grabbed my camera and took several pictures. It always amazes me how rapidly the sun rises and sets during those few minutes when it’s near the horizon—you can get a real sense of the earth turning at those times; while during the rest of the day it just doesn’t appear to move so quickly. Although that may be because we don’t usually start at the sun in the middle of the day, and there’s no nearby horizon against which to judge its movement.

We got up and sat in the dining room again until they kicked us out at 10:30 and then different groups of us sat in the lobby or went for walks or other excursions. There is a large patio next to the hotel, where you can see all over southeastern Jerusalem—mostly the Arab village of Abu Tor, which is more or less right below the hotel (we are on a hill) and which I could walk to in 5 minutes; close enough to see people walking and be able to determine their gender and approximate age. And farther up past Abu Tor is the separation barrier, which is probably a couple of miles away, and from this distance looks like a gracefully curving ribbon. But I know it doesn’t look like that up close, and people here have told us about the very mixed effects this wall has had on the country—both a blessing and a curse.

This afternoon we walked to a nearby park (Independence Park, I think) and 2 little Arab kids peed in the fountain and then stripped down to their underwear and went swimming. (Personally, I would have done it the other way…)

Later, we went out for falafel. When I went to pay, I discovered that my wallet was not in my purse. My first reaction was that I’d been pickpocketed, but I mentally retraced my steps since leaving the hotel, and I was almost positive that my wallet must have fallen out of my purse while it was in the safe in our room. And sure enough, that’s where it was, in the safe. So, a few nervous moments, but everything turned out OK in the end.