The journey to Kesher Hadash so far, has come with numerous adjustments. There's the Hebrew, for one. The other big adjustment is living as a full-time student and not taking any part-time work. As a member of the over-achieving "Lean In" generation, prioritizing personal and creative growth over income is extremely difficult for me, but it feels good to give this gift to myself (with thanks to the generous support of the Jim Joseph Foundation).
My status as a full-time student also means that for the first time in about four years, I have a regularly scheduled two-day weekend. During most of my time in New York, my two jobs have meant taking days off whenever I could--lately some combination of Tuesday/Friday or Thursday/Saturday. While not having regular weekends sometimes made it hard to make plans or do things like take classes or get involved with a synagogue, I also enjoyed having days off to break up the monotony of my work week. The other big upside to having downtime in the middle of the week is I got to enjoy empty grocery stores and open library hours while everyone else was at work.
But now I am here, with two days off in a row every week that I don't have to negotiate for fear my hours might get cut. One lovely benefit to this has been that every Friday evening since the beginning of January, I have observed some kind of Shabbat minyan. Those have ranged from the soaring melodies at Shira Hadasha (even though the whole gender separation thing kind of ticked me off) to the energizing drumming in Kol Haneshama's monthly Rosh Chodesh renewal service. This past weekend at our group shabbaton by the Dead Sea, one of my classmates led us in a beautiful activity that had us at one point identifying different meaningful Hebrew words from one of the prayers and chanting them at different pitches all at once. I experienced the kind of spiritual transcendence I've only received in glimpses during kirtans at the Bhakti Center in New York.
With my soul filled up with warmth on Friday, I can then look forward to taking Saturday to catch up on the rest of my life.
Except it's Jerusalem. And nearly everything is closed.
When I was living in Germany Colony, I was absolutely dumbfounded walking down the main drag of Emek Refaim. While 24 hours earlier the street had been bustling and lined with people sitting at sidewalk cafes, now every shop and cafe (with the exception of McDonald's) was completely closed. I felt like I was one of the last survivors of a post-apocalyptic Ray Bradbury short story or zombie film.
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| A family walks over the dormant light-rail line on a typical Jerusalem Saturday |
