Tefillah Journal Entry #5

I returned to Jerusalem from Carmiel yesterday at about 1pm, blogged and read in the beit midrash, and at 7pm my new roommate Hillary cooked up three varieties of French toast, kosher chicken sausages, Israeli salad and Tapuzina mimosas (Tapuzina is something like Orangina in the States).  This was one of the most successful attempts at buttering me up that anyone has ever launched.  Props to you, Hillary.  You scored.  I had been feeling iffy about having another third roommate.  Having invested a lot in the previous two roommates, both of whom only stayed with us for 3 weeks, I had gotten used to women crashing in my apartment for three weeks at a time without really laying anchor.  But Hillary laid anchor.  First of all, she and Benjamin already knew each other, and it made me feel left out when they talked about how much fun they had when they met last summer.  Hillary’s comforter announced clearly that she had come to stay.  What more can I say about this blanket?  You don’t bring a fluffy cushy pink comforter to Jerusalem in August unless you’re planning on staying for a while, right?  Right.  Plus, she was cooking, and the vegetable knife had been moved, and I “borrowed” one of her Q-tips without asking on her first day here and that made me feel a little guilty.

But after the french toast and the chicken sausages and the mimosas, I started to feel better about Hillary.  And then Benjamin and Hillary and I went out for drinks and told our life stories.  And I felt even better.  After 5 or 6 hours of sleep, we trundled down to Moreshet Yisrael, a Conservative shul about 5 minutes from our apartment.  We davened Shaharit with a minyan, Benjamin read Torah (and so did my friend Gella), Hillary gave a talk about the question, “What makes Jewish music Jewish?”, and then Benjamin, Hillary, Gella and I went back to the apartment, ate breakfast and talked for the next three-and-a-half hours about music, feminism, how to respond to a kid in a Hebrew school classroom who asks if he can refuse to get in the car on Saturdays because it’s Shabbos when his mother wants to bring him along to the supermarket, and how to deal with “Uncle Shlomo” the Shoah survivor who tearfully asks you the rabbi if he can lead the graveside Kaddish, the only Jewish prayer he knows, even though you don’t have a minyan.

I showered, came to the beit midrash for a while to check my email, davened minchah, called Mom to talk about car insurance and her upcoming Sukkoth visit, called my old car insurance company, ordered local organic vegetables to be delivered to my apartment every Wednesday at 4pm, caught some dinner with Gella and Franklin, ran into cousin Naava and her daughter Bathsheba at a bookstore, studied Talmud Tractate Berachot with my orthodox hevruta and high school band compatriot Daniel Finfer, and now…maariv?