Hazak hazak v'Nithazek

Summer Semester's over!  I can't believe how fast things are going!

This week is our week of freedom.  Some classmates chose to get out of Israel and explore Crete/Greece, Turkey, and Hungary, among other places.  I decided to stay here and enjoy it, and perhaps see some other sites.  I have a lot of plans this week: a trip to Haifa, a full day of Old City adventure, Yad Vashem, a Beer Festival, and maybe some sleep.  Be prepared for a few posts this week.

Here is a picture of my summer ulpan class.  Osnat was our amazing teacher.  We absolutely got the feeling that she loved us, and the feeling was mutual. At times it was tough love, but we learned how to accept her corrections.  Our class will continue together, but Osnat will not be teaching us.  We will miss her, but we can always chat on Facebook.

As a brief HUC point of procedure, in order to pass the Summer, one must get at least a 70% in Hebrew.  Do not fear, my friends.  I passed with flying colors!  I don't take my final for Torah Cantillation or Biblical History until I return from break, so I'm doing my best to study and do well.  Next semester, I will be taking more Hebrew, Biblical Grammar, Bible, Advanced Hebrew Texts, Liturgy, 2nd Temple Period History, and Israel Seminar.

For my friends at home, stay dry!

"Hazak hazak v'nithazek" is typically chanted after finishing a book of the Torah.  It means, "be strong, be strong, and let us strengthen each other," roughly.  We also said it when we got to the end of one of our workbooks in Hebrew class.   



You Can Always Go...Downtown!

Time for the next picture journey through Israel with Kenny!

The City Center (מרכז)

There are three roads that define this area (in my mind): Yaffo/Jaffa, King George, and Ben Yehuda.  Inevitably, every tourist who comes to Jerusalem will take some sort of walking tour of this area.  Nowadays, it is the center of the city, the downtown if you will.  For a long time, this WAS the city outside of the Old City.

Much of this area is part of Nahalat Shiva, the home of the first synagogue outside of the Old City.  Nahalat Shiva proper has lots of narrow, windy streets.  It's become very much a pedestrian neighborhood with a few cars on larger roads.  There are also lots of resaurants and bars.

Hummus Bar on Ben Sira.  This has the second best hummus I've ever had.  You'll have to wait until I talk about the Old City to tell you about the BEST hummus!

Really awesome cafe!  Wonderful atmostphere.
Yaffo Street is one of the major roads of historical Israel, especially pre-state Israel.  As its name suggests, one could take this road to Yaffo, the major port now part of Tel Aviv-Yaffo.  It used to be a very dirty, crowded, busy street that has undergone massive changes.  As part of former Jerusalem Mayor and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's plan, this road was closed to automobile traffic as construction on a light rail line began.  Crisis after crisis, people in and out of office, the train has FINALLY OPENED, several years after they said it would.  In fact, when I got here, I saw a few of the last test runs with the bubble wrap still on the seats.  Now it's available for use, and for free!  Granted, they haven't figure out the pay system yet for the transport.

Ceramic road name.

I can't tell you much about their coffee, but you need it!

The light rail!  With passengers!


At the busy corner of Yaffo and King George, there used to be a Sbarro Pizza place.  While there is no marker, surprising for a city that marks everything, tragedy befell the restaurant.  A suicide bombing during peak afternoon traffic occurred.  The Sbarro closed down and has since been replaced by various cafes and dress shops.

Oh.  I thought I had a picture of this.  Oops.  To be updated!


King George Road was named for George V for his contribution toward the Balfour Declaration.

Along this street is the Mashbir, a nice department store, and just outside the Mashbir the facade of the defunt girls' school, Talithakumi.

The Mashbir.  The black and red writing says "Mister Zol" or "Mister Cheap."  It's a nice supermarket in the area.

Ben Yehuda is where all the action is.  Lots of shopping, food, knick knacks, and live music.  Almost any time of the day you can find someone playing guitar, accordion, singing into a microphone, and even a lady harpist every evening.  Once a week on Saturday nights a Korean Christian Choir sings a wonderful set of songs.  If you go shopping, bargain. 

While I have yet to discover the best falafel place, sorry Sam, I have found the best shawarma place.  My home rabbi also highly recommends it!  Their fafalel is pretty good, I must admit.

You will see this sign all year round.  It's not that big a sale.  You can do better!

"Downtown" is a well-known song popularized by Petula Clark in 1965. 

It's Fun To Stay At The...

It's Tuesday!  Time to continue my tour of Jerusalem, folks.

Mamilla: A Brief History

This area was once a no-man's land.  Now, it is home to hotels, a modern pedestrian mall, and a great artist village.  Mamilla is also home to the HUC!  Let's examine this amazing area.

Located just outside and to the west of the Old City, this neighborhood has had a very difficult history.  Despite it's proximity to the Old City, it was not one of the first established communities outside the famous Old City wall.  However, the area saw growth during the time of the British Mandate 1923-1948.  There are only a few remnants of the time: the French compound, the King David Hotel, and the Hospice of St Vincent de Paul. 

Entrance to the King David Hotel.

The Jerusalem International YMCA (pronounced eemka) began construction in the late 1920s.

Gorgeous view of the back of Hospice of St Vincent de Paul.

The French Compound with the consulate.  This is stunning in person.

Come 1948, Jerusalem was split in half, and Mamilla found itself right on the line on the side of Israel.  With it's proximity to the armistice line, Jordanian snipers could easily target anyone passing through this area.  As a result, many moved out from this region.  Only the poor and elderly lived there.  Many buildings and houses fell into terrible states of disrepair.  This is the period during which the HUC got its land.

After the war of 1967, Jerusalem unified, and Mamilla found itself right in the middle of great changes.  With Jewish tourism into the Old City increasing at exponential rates, there was need to change Mamilla into a destination outside the city.  Under the direction of architect Moshe Safdie, many dilapidated buildings were torn down, with exception of the hospice, and new ones were built.  Roads were enlargened to compensate for the increased traffic flow.  Even the great King David Hotel received an amazing upgrade.  Naturally, there have been money flow issues, especially in the last decade or two.  With the Intifada reducing some of the tourism, there were fewer funds for a swank mall.  However, a few years ago, this great project was finally completed.  Now, all they need to do is complete the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel across the street.

Entrance to the Artist's Colony, a result of the rebirth of Mamilla.



 Amazing view of the main artery of the artist's colony.

The Annual Summer Artist Festival is going on, and I will be attending sometime next week.  Look out for a post!

Entrance to the Mamilla Mall!

Indulge me for a moment.  Inside the Mamilla Mall are many great shops: a Naot store, the North Face, Fox, Renuar, Steimansky's, and the first Gap store in Israel.

I decided this fitting since they have been working on this for a long time.

An interesting little site I found across the street from the Mamilla Mall is:

Yeah, that's right.  Look at the graffiti on the marker in the second picture.  The Hebrew next to "Plaza" says "Really?" just like what it says next to "Mr. George W. Bush."  President Bush was a big supporter of Israel, that cannot be denied, but what this really shows is that anyone with money can name anything for anyone.  Maybe one day there will be a Cat Park or something in Israel named for me.

All you need to hear are the words, "It's fun to stay at the..." and you know it's "YMCA" by the Village People.  I'm sure many of you did the hand motions as soon as you read the lyric.  You are not alone :)

Change

Happy New Week all!
I still can't believe I only have 2 weeks left of the summer session/semester/camp.  It just keeps moving faster and faster. 

This will be another serious blog post, so feel free to skip it if you only like frivolous posts.  There are some fun, provocative pictures, so you might as well keep reading.

This summer has been a summer of protest.  When I arrived, there was a huge battle to reduce the price of cottage cheese.  There was, and is, a strike among the specialist doctors.  However, the current hot topic trending on the national Israel twitter, if you will, is the tent strikes.

Set up: things in Israel are expensive.  However, the price of living has gone up extraordinarily over the last few years.  There are many explanations: the influx of foreigners, the failure of a number of international economies, the gap between the rich and poor, and so forth.  So, who is getting left behind?  The university-aged youth of Israel.  Landlords will often set their rent rates high because they know the Americans, French, British, or whomever, will pay it.  As a result, they'd rather rent to the foreigners, so it's hard on the youth.  Naturally, you'd expect there to be new developments of apartments for these students.  Indeed, there are many developments in the cities but they are catering to the foreigners who only will be in Israel for Sukkot, Pesach, Shavuot, or just the summer.  There are many buildings that essentially are vacant all year except on the rare occcasion the Americans are in town.

Daphne Leef, a Tel Avivi who found herself without an apartment, began the protest by setting up a tent on Rothschild Avenue in Tel Aviv, a major boulevard in a swank part of the city, and made the call to protest on Facebook.  Now, in every major city and town in Israel, there are tent cities made of protestors.  What has made this unique is that young and old, secular and religious, poor and wealthy, and student and employer have come together on this issue.  This unity has prompted many in the Knesset to threaten to quit the government if the issue is not solved.

This has not been without controversy.  It has been linked to the "Arab Spring" or the revolutionary wave that seems to be in the hearts of every one in the Middle East since the fall of Mubarak in Egypt,  Ben Ali in Tunisia, the civil war in Libya, and so forth.  The difference with this and those of some of the Arab nations is that Israel has the freedom of speech.  That being said, a protest of this scale certainly hasn't gone unnoticed.  The rightists believe this to be an attack on Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Likud party as a whole.  However, a number of polls show those who vote Likud support the protests. 

Every time I go down to the shopping district near my apartment for food, extra school supplies, and so forth, I can walk through the major tent city of Jerusalem at Zion Square.  Nearly every night, there are concerts.  Last week, they had an abbreviated Kabbalat Shabbat led by a number of Israel Reform rabbis.  I've asked a few of the protestors if I, as an American living here for the year, am part of the problem.  The general response is: not really.  Since I am living here for a full year and contributing to the society, it is OK.  While I am paying the jacked-up rent prices, my singular contribution is not causing the whole system to collapse.  In Jerusalem, I got a much more positive response than in Tel Aviv.

On Friday, I was in Tel Aviv with a few classmates just to get out of town for the day.  I saw some amazing things at the Artist's Shuk, walked through some shopping districts, sat in a cute cafe and generally had a good time.  At night, I walked through the massive tent city on Rothschild Avenue.  There were signs all over the place.  Some were political, others were not.  Judge for yourselves:

"This is another place they will not build attainable housing."

This was the sign in front of two musicians.

Subtitles: we want gay marriage.

As best as I could translate this, this is a statement of their sentiments.

Israel = love.
Israel=Honor to all who live


Feel free to ask me more questions about the tents.  At the same time, I'm curious as to what the US media has to say about it...unless they're more concerned about the London riots.

"Change" comes from A New Brain--a wonderful, underperformed musical.

Va pensiero

Short posting about Tisha B'Av!

This is one of the major holidays of the Jewish calendar.  Why haven't you heard much about it?  Easy answer: most people are on summer vacation--there's no religious school, regular day school, nothing.  I think I went to a session about it once when I was maybe 12, forgot it existed, and revisited it during my summer at Kutz.

The short version of the meaning of this holiday: all the bad things that ever happened occured on this day.  Specifically, we remember the loss of the First and Second Temples, however other things have since been attributed to this day.  Supposedly this was the day of the beginning of the expulsion from England, the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition, and, this one is definitely true, the beginning of World War I.  This is considered a major fast due to the loss of the temples.  Even when the Second Temple stood, this marked a day of mourning for the loss of the First Temple.  I won't get into the various theologies of fasting and wishing to see the new Temple rebuilt.

Tisha B'Av, literally the 9th of the month of Av, is commemorated by reading special parts of the Torah and Haftorah as well as the entire Book of Lamentations or Eicha.  A special, mournful trope is used to read Eicha.  Also unusual about Tisha B'Av, one does not lay tefillin for the morning service but DOES for the afternoon service.  There are also a number of special customs or minhagim associated with the holiday.  One does not wear leather as it is a sign of luxury or comfort.  Typically one does not sit on chairs but rather lies in ash or sits on the floor. 

My Tisha B'Av experience had three major parts: the evening, the morning, and the afternoon.  In the evening, we joined other Progressive temples in a concert of dirges of Ladino, Yiddish, and Hebrew origins on the themes of sadness, mourning, and loss.  The concert was at Emmaus Nicopolis www.emmaus-nicopolis.org, a Catholic setting about a half hour outside of Jerusalem. The music was led by Orit Perlman whose musicality and sonority was truly powerful and moving.  I was amazed by her ability to switch between musical styles: Sephardi, Mizrachi, Yemenite, modern Israeli, Ashkenazi, etc. 

For the morning, we attended sessions at the Pardes Institute, a great learning facility in the heart of Talpiyot, Jerusalem.  I attended a session led by HUC's own Dean Rabbi Naamah Kelman discussing poetry of Yehuda Amichai.  While his beauty poetry was not specifically about Tisha B'Av, we made connections to themes of the day as well as to get an understanding about Jerusalem and post-1967 Jerusalem sentiments.  In particular, we focused our attentions on his great masterpiece, Open Close Open or פתוח סגור פתוח.  This opus is often called the secular Israeli's siddur with its various odes to Jerusalem and feeling the heart and spirit of the land and people.  At the same time, the language is powerful and sometimes painful. 

In the afternoon, I went to the Kotel--after all, this holiday is about the destruction of the Temples, so I might as well take a look at what remains.  When I went there, the crowd must have just about subsided for the afternoon.  There were only a few groups of men praying.  What amazed me about this particular day was that all the men were quiet.  Usually there is shouting, loud singing, and so forth. It was a very quiet day for the Kotel.  I'm sure it would have been otherwise if I were there the night before or later in the day.  Still, this helped me to find my way and keep me on the path to finding meaning and purpose to my fast.

"Va pensiero" is perhaps one of the most famous chorus songs of all of opera.  This comes from Verdi's opera Nabucco, which depicts the Jews in Babylonia after the destruction of the First Temple.  Apparently this song is based on Psalm 137, or "By the waters of Babylon..."

There She Stands in All Her Beauty...

As promised, albeit a little late, I will be introducing to my blog a weekly feature, "Kenny's Travels in Jerusalem" highlighting a specific neighborhood of this great big city.  As my warm up, today I will be talking about the campus of the HUC.

 

The Israeli campus of the HUC was founded in the 1963 with the support of then-Hebrew Union College President Nelson Glueck.  This was challenging as it was.  Since the Orthodox communities of Israel generally don't support the Reform communities, it was a challenge to get any portion of land at all in Jerusalem--especially before the June 1967/Six Day War when Jerusalem was divided into Jordanian and Israeli territories.  When the HUC was finally granted land, it was in Mamilla, No Man's Land: right on the border.  They called it "No Man's Land" because of the Jordanian snipers who would daily shoot at anything in sight.  The initial architects of the HUC campus took this into account.  The following picture is a wall of windows small enough for air to pass but also too small for bullets to pass.  This was a protective measure.

After the Six Day War, with Jerusalem united, the campus of the HUC was safe, and suddenly the center of an explosion of fashionability and posh.  Just as the HUC expanded its campus with classrooms, a library, a hostel, and beautiful grounds, the area of Mamilla grew too.  I'll talk more about this next week when I discuss Mamilla.  Anyway, this growth of the HUC began as an attempt to bring Israel to the table as part of the curricula for rabbis, cantors, and educators.  In the 1970's, the first set of North American HUC students spent a year studying Hebrew and the introductory elements of their program.  Except for a few wars and conflicts, this program has continued successfully for over 40 years. 

The famous architect of the newest parts of the campus, Moshe Safdie, is one of Jerusalem's great architects whose name is synonymous with the growth of Jerusalem-post the Six Day and Yom Kippur War (1973).  He is responsible for the physical resurrection of Mamilla as a whole, which is pretty incredible.  Again, more will come in the following week.

Here's a quick tour of the HUC: 

The stairs leading to the main building.  The other entrance to the synagogue is the gate on the left.

The beautiful Feinstein grounds behind the main building.





The Moadon.  You can buy a nice sandwich for reasonable prices, study with classmates, or just relax.  It's the cool "lounge" for the students.

    
Outside the Moadon.  Another great hangout place during the day.

The Academic Courtyard, featuring "the pool."  Classrooms are on both sides.  The left side is where the wireless internet from downstairs is still slightly strong enough to reach the rooms.  The end of the right side is the Music Room, aka my home base for most of the year.

Welcome Lobby to the Beit Shmuel, a nice hostel for NFTY students, guests, and friends of the HUC.  This is open to the public.



Persian Garden.  It's simply beautiful and a great meditative spot.

The Abramov Library, featuring a nice selection of book and online resources, a computer lab, public internet access, and beautiful study places.  I'm still figuring out which little nook in the library will be my own, but I have a few favorite spots.

The Ceremonial Courtyard.  This space is where many important HUC events occur, such as dedication ceremonies, the Israeli Rabbinical Ordination in November, and other such things.  Occasionally and controversially this space is rented out for private affairs.  There have been weddings, Bnei Mitzvah parties, and concerts.



The Parking Lot exit gate.  Thank you for joining me on the brief tour of my campus.  Should you plan to visit me, there will be a test :)

"There She Stands in All Her Beauty" is the opening line of the Rutgers Prep school song. Does anyone know if the HUC has a school song?

I Gotta Feeling

We're about halfway through the summer semester!  I'm amazed at how fast the time flies.  Sometimes I wish there were an extra few hours in the day.  Of course, I'd just waste the time on something frivolous like sleep or getting a bit more ahead of homework.

Anyway, classes are going great.  We've received the results of our first Hebrew test this week.  I did quite well  I knew I was prepared, but certain sections made me a bit nervous.  Of course, I will be pushing myself to do even better since I don't want my teacher, Osnat, to think it was a mistake.  Tonight is a vocabulary flashcard night! 

Let me introduce a few important people:

Jay O'Brien, me, Emma Goldin, Laura Breznick, Lauren Levy, and Vladimir Lapin.

This is the Cantorial Class of 5776!  I'm pretty much in love with my class already.



We performed as a class for the first time for T'filah on Sunday Morning, singing the Maseng "Elohai N'tzor."  While the final product was wonderful, it was the rehearsal that really made me proud of our class.  We all got a sense of each other's energies, voices, and talents.  While we had to formally talk out specific musical ideas, others naturally occurred.  The response from our classmates was overwhelmingly positive--much more than a "oh you guys sang great" but "This really helped to make my morning prayer experience fuller."  I can't wait to reflect on this again when we have learned more about Hazzanut and learned each other much better!  Massive thank you to Summer Intern Leslie Niren for getting the ball running on all of this.  It was truly a blessing to find a group with whom I could make music--I haven't had that since Deep Treble in college.  Oh, and by the way...rudeeptreble.com  (Inside joke. The website is under renovations).

Arts and Crafts Time!

I am a crafty person.  I blame my two years working at Michaels for that.  My primary skills include knitting, assembling books out of leftover stuff, and coloring.  Naturally, when a few classmates decided to attend a session about making tallit, I jumped at the opportunity.  We didn't weave the fabric or do fancy fabric work, but we made the fringes, tzitzit, and learned about the history of tallit.  As of this writing, mine is currently unfinished.  I haven't done that much sewing in my crafting career, outside of basic embroidery required for my various knitting projects.  The original fabric is perhaps a bit over the top, but I think it is beautiful.  It will certainly mean much more to me when it is finished than just one that I bought on Ben Yehuda or something. 

This workshop was only a few days after a tefillin workshop.  Tefillin is a box that contains a number of scriptures.  In Deuteronomy 6, we are commanded to keep the "Sh'ma" as frontlets for our eyes and to bind them to our arm.  Up to this point, I have laid tefillin three times: the first at a dear friend of the family's Bar Mitzvah, the second before I left for Israel, and the third at the Shuk.  Each time I felt like it was a costume.  I could never quite understand what I was doing or why I was doing it.  Thanks to a wonderful session led by Student Intern Daniel Bar Nahum featuring Professor David Levine, I felt something in the power of placing it on my right arm and just above my hairline.  I am not quite ready to make the jump to make it a regular part of my religious practice as I think I need to experiment with it a few more times.  That, and they are quite expensive.

Well, now that I've sufficiently procrastinated working on those flashcards, I believe it is time to sign off.  I apologize for not posting in a while.  I am in the process of adding some pictures to my older posts, so feel free to peruse some of them.  I am also thinking about having a weekly feature section about a different part of Jerusalem I am exploring or am learning about.

"I Gotta Feeling" is a great pop song by The Black Eyed Peas, and probably one of the best pop songs of the 2000s.  Best set of lyrics: Fill up my cup. (Drink!) Mazel tov (L'chayim!)