Saturday, July 22, 2006
Living next to the shuk emphasizes the idea of Shabbat rest. Every other morning, we awaken to endless honking, fights over parking spaces, and the cries of the salesmen in the shuk. But on Saturday morning, it's so peaceful. We slept in till 10:30am. It was beautiful, and necessary.
Friday night we went to a Modern Orthodox shul called Shira Chadasha. It was an intense experience, and it took me by surprise. It's held at a youth center, two equal sides with a sliding curtain (the mechitzah) in the middle to separate men from women. In a radical departure from traditional orthodoxy, a woman leads half the service. What was so incredible about the service was the ruach, the spirit of the congregation. Everyone there really prayed. We sang a few melodies I'd heard before which I didn't care for, but I was impressed by how better it got when everyone participated.
This reinforced my belief that it doesn't really matter what you do in prayer, as long as you have active participation. Which raises the question: how do I, as a shliach tzibur, get the congregation engaged in prayer? The first key is clearly education. If you can't read the words, you can't sing the words. And you can't feel emotionally engaged to a prayer if you don't understand the meaning, at least a little. I'm organizing a progressive Shabbat dinner, with the hope I can take a crack at some of these problems.
Questions, questions, all the time. But here's some fun stuff I did last week. We have "Jerusalem Days" where we take trips out to various parts of the Old City and see neat things. Last week, we went to the Tiyul, a large park overlooking the city, for the morning prayer service.
This is part of the view from the Tiyul:
The tiyul is believed to be a spot mentioned in the bible. In the story of the binding of Isaac, it says that after three days, Abraham looked up and saw the spot where God had sent him. The first place along the path from Beer-sheva that looks over the Old City of Jerusalem is at the tiyul. I might have been standing in the same place Abraham did 3000 years ago...
Afterwards, we went into the old city to take a trip through Hezekiah's Tunnel. As we descended underground, we stopped at an excavation which was once a wall of Jebbus (home of the Jebusites).
That's my teacher, Rabbi Wilfond (known around campus as "Gingy") telling us all about it. There was a picture of a piece of clay excavated from this site, which showed the name of a scribe mentioned in the bible. How funny that of all the billions of people that have lived on Earth, a random scribe mentioned in the bible is also mentioned on a stone thingymcbobber.
We then went through Hezekiah's Tunnel, the original water source for Jerusalem. It was dug by King Hezekiah a couple of thousands of years ago and was used by David to sneak his troops under the wall and take over the city. It's long; it took us about 20 minutes (maybe it was more, but who could tell?), but it seemed like forever. We waded through knee-deep water the whole way. It's about as wide as I am plus a few inches on each side, and the height of the tunnel ranged from 10-15 feet high on down to 4-5' high. It's still the source for water in Jerusalem, and where it comes out is the only natural running water in the city.
It was a little intense in such a small place for so long, but we sang songs and told jokes the whole time to keep the mood light. I can't wait to see what next week's trip brings up.
Friday night we went to a Modern Orthodox shul called Shira Chadasha. It was an intense experience, and it took me by surprise. It's held at a youth center, two equal sides with a sliding curtain (the mechitzah) in the middle to separate men from women. In a radical departure from traditional orthodoxy, a woman leads half the service. What was so incredible about the service was the ruach, the spirit of the congregation. Everyone there really prayed. We sang a few melodies I'd heard before which I didn't care for, but I was impressed by how better it got when everyone participated.
This reinforced my belief that it doesn't really matter what you do in prayer, as long as you have active participation. Which raises the question: how do I, as a shliach tzibur, get the congregation engaged in prayer? The first key is clearly education. If you can't read the words, you can't sing the words. And you can't feel emotionally engaged to a prayer if you don't understand the meaning, at least a little. I'm organizing a progressive Shabbat dinner, with the hope I can take a crack at some of these problems.
Questions, questions, all the time. But here's some fun stuff I did last week. We have "Jerusalem Days" where we take trips out to various parts of the Old City and see neat things. Last week, we went to the Tiyul, a large park overlooking the city, for the morning prayer service.
This is part of the view from the Tiyul:
The tiyul is believed to be a spot mentioned in the bible. In the story of the binding of Isaac, it says that after three days, Abraham looked up and saw the spot where God had sent him. The first place along the path from Beer-sheva that looks over the Old City of Jerusalem is at the tiyul. I might have been standing in the same place Abraham did 3000 years ago...
Afterwards, we went into the old city to take a trip through Hezekiah's Tunnel. As we descended underground, we stopped at an excavation which was once a wall of Jebbus (home of the Jebusites).
That's my teacher, Rabbi Wilfond (known around campus as "Gingy") telling us all about it. There was a picture of a piece of clay excavated from this site, which showed the name of a scribe mentioned in the bible. How funny that of all the billions of people that have lived on Earth, a random scribe mentioned in the bible is also mentioned on a stone thingymcbobber.
We then went through Hezekiah's Tunnel, the original water source for Jerusalem. It was dug by King Hezekiah a couple of thousands of years ago and was used by David to sneak his troops under the wall and take over the city. It's long; it took us about 20 minutes (maybe it was more, but who could tell?), but it seemed like forever. We waded through knee-deep water the whole way. It's about as wide as I am plus a few inches on each side, and the height of the tunnel ranged from 10-15 feet high on down to 4-5' high. It's still the source for water in Jerusalem, and where it comes out is the only natural running water in the city.
It was a little intense in such a small place for so long, but we sang songs and told jokes the whole time to keep the mood light. I can't wait to see what next week's trip brings up.
