So This Is The New Year

They say that on Rosh Hashanah, Hashem opens the gates of Heaven, and begins to write our names in either the Book of Life, or the Book of Death. Ten days later, at Ne'ilah on Yom Kippur, the gates are closed. This year, in Jerusalem, the gates of heaven opened in a more literal sense, when, on the afternoon of the first day, storm clouds rolled in over the hills and the first rains of the season poured down over the city. I saw them coming earlier in the day, and so when they finally came near Beit Nativ, I climbed up to the porch on the third floor, the porch which faces the street and looks out on the Great Synagogue around the corner. I sat there and waited until the rain came.

It rained for less than five minutes. I was eventually joined by a friend, and when the rain came, after a short celebratory dance, the two of us ran down stairs to stand in the courtyard. By the time we burst through the glass doors, the rain had completely stopped. It came again on the second day, but that was while we were walking to a synagogue in southern Jerusalem, about a 45 minute walk from base.

I went to two different shuls for Rosh Hashanah services. The first, Kedem, will almost certainly be the shul at which I spend most of my Shabbatot. I'm staying in Jerusalem this Shabbat, because two weeks ago in Tiberias I somehow managed to spend between 200 and 350 shekels. I still do not know how I managed this. Shul I went to for the second day was called Moreshet Avraham, and I was disappointed. It was a very American style service, hard to follow, cantor centric and nearly devoid of meaning. I did run into a friend from this summer there, though, and his house was only a few buildings down. Once we were sufficiently bored, a few of us went over there to relax and eat cookies. About a half an hour later we realized we could get in trouble for leaving like that, and returned to the synagogue.

Upon reaching the end of services, even with the cookie break, everyone was starving. We all met up with the families who agreed to host us for lunch. A few of us from Ramah (my summer camp for the last eight years and employer this past summer) went to eat at the house of the staff trainer. His son is the director of Nativ, so we also went with him and one of the Nativ staffpeople, who basically acts like a combination camp-counselor and RA. In all there were fourteen of us who crowded around the table in their sized-for-two apartment. The meal was outstanding, though. Three different salads, two kugels, meat loaf, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, and other things which I only remember as delicious. Stuffed, we met up with the rest of the group and made our way back to Beit Nativ.