Marcus and I are happy to report that Simcha (our dog) has safely arrived in Israel and seems to be adjusting to being here just fine.

When we brought Simcha from San Diego the east coast, it was a very simple procedure. I think that the hardest part was juggling a dog, a large crate, 6 suitcases and 4 carry-ons! Yes, we had way too much luggage with us (which was subsequently repacked, more donated to charity, and some of it shipped to Israel so we didn’t have to carry it all with us). But, when we got off the plane in Newark, all that we had to do for Simcha to rejoin us was to go meet him in the baggage office. Not so getting him here in Israel!

Since we knew it would be really hot when we arrived here, we decided not to bring Simcha with us initially but to have him join us after a month or so. It’s now much cooler here than when we first arrived, and without air conditioning, this makes a big difference to us. We’re sure it makes an even bigger difference to our big furry pal! So, Marcus’ parents watched (and spoiled) him for a month before helping put him on a plane to us here in Israel. So far, so good, no complications.

So, Marcus rents a car on the day that Simcha’s flight arrives and we drive up to Tel Aviv to go pick him up at the airport. We’re feeling pretty good at this point (at least, I know I was). We had the name of the location where we were supposed to pick Simcha up and the phone number of the company who was supposed to help us get him into the country. (For those of you who are wondering, no, there is no quarantine for dogs arriving in Israel. There isn’t one in the other direction either.)

We got up the airport without any problems. But, once we got there, we weren’t quite sure where to go. We didn’t see any signs with the name of the building we wanted. So, we parked by terminal 1, which is used for international flights, and after wandering around the terminal a bit, we managed to eventually find someone who directed us to take a shuttle to terminal 2 and walk from there. We weren’t quite sure how the driver or passengers of the shuttle would react to having a dog with them on the ride back, so we opted to drive over to terminal 2 instead. After parking at terminal 2, we began to wander in what we hoped was the correct direction. We ended up asking a guard that we saw, and he told where we needed to go. He seemed to think it a rather far distance, and asked about our car. Seeing as how we had already paid once to move from one parking lot to another, we really didn’t relish the thought of doing so again. Plus, when we had first arrived at the airport, we had driven in the direction towards which we were being directed and we hadn’t seen any public parking. We therefore decided to continue on foot. At this point, I need to mention that the weather in Tel Aviv, approximately where the airport is, is not the same as the weather in Jerusalem. In fact, the weather at the airport during all of this was rather hot and muggy, fairly oppressive feeling. Despite the weather, we headed toward our destination rapidly, eagerly anticipating the reunion with our dog.

When we finally arrived at the building where we were expected to go, we discovered that the front entrance was under construction. We were directed off to the side, and managed to enter the building without any problem. The inside of the building, however, turned out to be some form of a complicated maze. Somehow, through the help of some friendly people who appeared to work in the building, we managed to find our way up to the room number we had been told to go to. With great anticipation, I tried the handle of the door. Nothing! Knowing that due to security reasons, it is perfectly possible for someone to be in even when a door is locked, I knocked on the door. Nothing!! At this point, we were at a bit of a loss. Here we were: on time, in front of the correct door, and no one seemed to be in. So Marcus called from his cell phone. We could hear the phone ringing, but no one picked up. We waited a bit and tried some more. Not really having any other options we could think of, we waited. And waited. And waited. Meanwhile, we were both growing slightly more panicked, wondering if they had left for the day (it was after 5 pm after all), and hoping that Simcha was o.k. in his crate despite having been in for about 14 hours at this point. A woman came by, also seeking the non-existent people we were waiting to see. She eventually left. We kept waiting and calling (even calling back to the States to see if Marcus’ mom could get any information for us). After a good half hour, someone finally showed up and unlocked the door.

At this point, I would like to remind all of you that all of the conversations referred to throughout this email took place in Hebrew (with some occasional English words thrown in). The woman who unlocked the door was rapidly made to understand that we were there about our dog, and she handed over some paperwork to us. Next, she told us that we would need to go to another office with this paperwork. She started trying to explain to us where this other office was, but eventually frustrated, gave up and walked us over there. We were quite grateful that she did so, because even in the directions had been given completely in English, there is no way we would have found our way from one room to the other owing to the maze-like nature of the building.

In this second office, we waited for a little bit while other people’s transactions were taking place. A very nice lady eventually looked at our paperwork and printed out some more papers for us to sign and bring to yet a third office, the customs office. Once we were done in the customs office, we were told, we would need to return to this second office again. I eagerly headed to the customs office, which we were told was past the construction, expecting that we would be reunited with Simcha momentarily. Such was not to be the case, however. The man in the customs office examined Simcha’s health certificates and other paperwork before going to a cabinet and pulling out about three different stamps which he used to liberally cover the mound of paperwork we had accumulated. Then, we were sent back from whence we had come. Of course, upon arriving back at the second office, we were made to wait. By this point, we had been attempting to get Simcha through customs for at least an hour and a half. Finally, we handed our stamped paperwork back to the lady behind the counter, and were told that we needed to pay some sort of importation fee. Having expected this and being allowed to pay with a credit card, this part of the process was not too painful. After some more stamping of papers, we were told that we could go pick up Simcha between docks 20 and 24 on the south side.

We happily set out to find the south side docks. This was not a simple task. I believe three different people directed us in all sorts of convoluted patterns around the building. As it turns out, if I had followed my instincts, I think we might have reached the correct spot approximately 15 minutes sooner. Confusing the issue, however, was the fact that the south docks were numbered from 45 on up. So, we followed directions up stairs, around corridors, past a cafeteria, down stairs, and attempted to find a ramp that didn’t exist only to discover we could have walked out the door to the building, turned left, walked about 15 feet, and gone up a very short metal staircase. In any event, we finally reached the correct location on the south docks. We handed the top form over to a guy who seemed to know exactly who we were and who Simcha was as soon as we told him that we were there for our dog.

What I would have liked to happen at this point, would have been for him to go straight off to bring our dog to us. Both Marcus and I were concerned that he was still in his crate, needing to relieve himself, and being all upset over all the confusion of traveling. Our concern only increased as we were forced to wait in this huge warehouse space, watching forklifts go back and forth with huge piles of boxes. It was noisy sitting there, and I worried that Simcha was bothered by being in this noisy warehouse for hours as we had gone through all of the procedures described above. I also worried that his crate had been blocked by boxes, or that boxes had been placed on top, or that he had been fork lifted up into one of the very high cubbyholes in the warehouse. It’s probably fortunate that I have no idea where they were keeping him until they brought him over to us.

After stewing with all of these concerns for what seemed like an eternity of watching forklifts and not seeing our dog, we finally saw Simcha’s crate being brought over to the waiting area where we were by a forklift. Amazingly, the crate was very still. Then, when he got really close to us, Simcha started to move about like crazy in his crate. When we opened the door to let him out (and put his leash on instead), he practically leaped out onto us.

With some maneuvering, we managed to carry the empty crate and walk Simcha back over to where we had parked the car. He was very thirsty, but other than that he seemed fine.

He seems really happy to be with us, and has been giving us lots of doggie kisses and cuddles. We’re also very happy to have him here with us, even though walking him at 5:45 am in order to get to classes on time isn’t optimal. Having Simcha here makes me, at least, feel a little bit more at home here. Plus, it’s already been great for my Hebrew! Simcha’s such a friendly dog that everyone wants to meet him, so we get to practice our Hebrew with random Israelis on the street.

-Suzanne (and Marcus, and Simcha)

It has been awhile since my last update. Now that Suzanne and I are online I think we are going to tag team a little. I try to tell the story from my skewed point of view and she will tell it with eloquence and dignity, so I will from time to time leave out details that Suzanne is better able to give.
As you might imagine, things have been kind of hectic around here since the beginning of the Chaggim. In this post I want to tell you all about our first time experiencing the High Holy Days here in Israel. The first thing that we felt we really should do was to figure out where we were going to daven…at least for Rosh Hashana. The difficulty in this here is that there were so many choices. If you were wearing a kippah and tallit you would be dragged into a minyan. Actually in some communities you have to wear a yalmulka and a tallis, but that’s no matter. At one point during Yom Kippur I went into the wrong synagogue by accident but more about that later. No one required us to buy tickets. A couple wanted you to call to reserve a seat and only one that I can think of even asked money to reserve a seat. And these were just the places that would appeal to us Ashkenazi, Conservative/ Masorti types. Not the Sephardi, Charedi, Sephardi-Charedi places not to mention the Cotel, which is open 24/ 7 and never needs tickets. In fact, if you didn’t mind standing the whole time you could go just about anywhere without a problem, there were so many synagogues or minyanim. What turned out to be the biggest dilemma was where to go for dinner and lunch. One of the Ravs at the Yeshiva had invited us to lunch on the second day and Dan had invited us for lunch on the first day and an amazing couple we know, Abby and Juan, had invited us to dinner on the second night, but to our horror and dismay we had nowhere to go for the first night of Rosh Hashanna. So being the quick thinking scientists we are we decided to host first night ourselves. Now mind you that our apartment came with one meat pot, one milk pot and some silverware. So we went into hyper mode and headed down to home center in Talpiot. Now Home Center (translated from the Hebrew: Home Center) and got another milk pot and frying pan. We then dashed over to the Machson Mazone and got a set of dishes (36 pieces for 69 Shekels ~$15-$18). Fortunately we had received 6 glasses as a free gift from M’Edan water when we ordered a water cooler. So now we were set.
We decided on a menu for the event. The menu was based on an idea by Suzanne. We would base all of our foods on puns. This is a traditional thing to do for the New Year. I am not sure why. Hopefully my erudite wife will be able to fill you all in on the history of this tradition. I’ll give you an example though. You traditionally eat the heads of fish or a lamb, because in the next year you want to be at the head of your endeavors rather that the tail. It is my opinion that it is always better to be the head rather than the tuches. So we laid out a tentative menu: first salatim brought by our guests, then a fish head/ vegetable soup, a stuffed fish main course and then dessert also provided by our guests.
So we had a menu, but wait we needed to buy food. Well I thought. I haven’t been to the shuk yet. And what better time to initiate oneself at the shuk that the Thursday before Rosh Hashanna? I mean there won’t by thousands of people or an enhance chance of a P’gua, and the people working there are all really helpful and speak great English. I should go!! Many of you might know the shuk. It is an indoor/ outdoor market in the center of Jerusalem, which is sort of a combination swap meet, farmers market, and a WWF wrestling event all wrapped into about one city block. In other words it is strangely traumatic yet wonderful experience (actually this describes much of Israel). It is full of vendors and customers jockeying, yelling and bumping into each other. The belief is that things are much cheaper in the shuk. This is true for some things and false for others. The meat, fruits and vegetables are cheaper and better quality, but you need to search a little and compare prices (kind of like Marshalls). You have to beware of anything not priced. They saw me with my crummy Hebrew and American accent and started rubbing their hands in anticipation of a big red, white and blue frier. That day I stayed mostly with the meats, and veggies. I got a lot of fish. I bought the live fish just for the experience of doing so. So, I wandered into there with my kitah aleph level Hebrew and about four hundred Shekels. An hour and half later I stumbled out with really knowing my numbers, a shuk cart filled with stuff, about 25 shelkels and greater life experience. The shuk is a great place to learn your street Hebrew.
Well we had a wonderful dinner. And as some of you know most of our holidays follow the formula: They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat! Well supposedly we are also supposed to thank HaShem for this by praying (exaggerated rolling of the eyes). So we wanted to find a place to do this. Well as I mentioned before there are a ton of places to go. The closest place for us is Yakar, but unfortunately their women’s section was already filled and Suzanne felt she would like to sit once in awhile. Shira Chadashah (also popular among the Yeshiva crowd) was also filled. Fortunately, Kedem a traditional egalitarian minyan had finally found a home and we decided to daven there. I have to say this was the smallest congregation I had ever prayed with during the high holidays. We had about 50 people in all. Like many of the minyanim we attend Carlebach niggunim seem to be the order of the day. It was a very lively and participatory service. We went there for all of Rosh Hashannah. We had some really great meals (at least one which I had cooked). The days of awe seemed to speed by this year and we were looking down the barrel of Yom Kippur. Now remember that food is the basis of our system of worship, so I decided to make a brisket for final meal before the fast. We were then invited to our friends again, so we brought along the brisket and introduced it to their chicken soup, kreplach, and kneidele. They all got along handsomely and along with the humus and zatar, we had a merry little party in preparation for the fast. Yom Kippur is amazing here. After we had finished eating, Suzanne and I walked back to the apartment to light candles. The streets were fairly deserted; only a few cars were speeding to get home before candle lighting. From every open window you could hear the sounds of family and friends eating their meals. We arrived home just as the candle lighting siren sounded. Fortunately the siren itself is fairly far off, so for us it is a pretty gentle siren all and all. Suzanne lit and we set off for services. The transformation of the street was astonishing. Now there were no cars on the street. In fact the only vehicles I saw moving during the holiday were emergency vehicles. Instead of the masses of cars, truck and buses belching fumes that usually fill the streets of Jerusalem, there were thousands of people dressed in white walking to their schuls, whole families walking together talking and laughing. For Kol Nidre, we decided to try a new place Yedidja. This was a nice traditional modern orthodox schul in the Talpiot area of Jerusalem, and it had a very nice Kol Nidre service. The next day Suzanne really wanted to daven at the Lieder Minyan. There were a couple of issues with this however. 1) The service reputedly began at 6:30 am. 2) Nei’lah didn’t end until 7:30 pm. Twelve hours of service? I was a little wary but for Shlom Habayit I decided to go along with the plan and I’m glad I did! This was the most incredible Yom Kippur service that I have ever been to! How to describe it? First of all it was definitely Carlebach/ Hippie wonderful. Lots of linen clothes, hand knit kippot, and colorful tallitot. It was a very long service. It started at 7:00 am (not 6:30 as reported). We, however, didn’t arrive until 8:30 when they were just ending the silent amidah and beginning the Chazzan’s repetition during Shachrit. As a side note, at this point I walked into the wrong schul. The Lieder minyan is held in the Livnot building (Livnot u’Libhanot (I think) is a volunteer organization “To build and To be built”). Right next door is a Sepahrdi schul. The two share and entrance which splits of one to the right and one to the left. However, when we arrived there all the men were going to the left and all the women to the right (coincidence), so Suzanne and I thought right was for men and left for women. Well I walked into the schul and sure enough the ezrat nishim was in a balcony, so I thought ok this is right, but the tunes didn’t sound like Carlebach. In fact they didn’t sound like Ashkenaz either. Was that Ladino they were speaking? So I went back outside and found out that I was indeed in the wrong place. I managed to find the correct entrance for the Leider Minyan.
OK so I managed to get to the right place, but it was packed. I saw one of Suzanne’s colleagues and asked him if there was any room in the building. He said no, so I was completely bummed. I really didn’t want to pray through a grate in the window and feel like I was outside of the experience. (note: any man who thinks a ezrat nishim on a balcony or a thick curtain way in the back is great for the women should try praying through a grate in a window and see how it feels to be on the “outside.” The Lieder Minyan has a curtain with side by side sections. The Aron Kodesh is split by the curtain. Women wear tallitot, can lead the Torah service and are allowed to lead certain prayers throughout. The women there really know how to pray and their voices are welcomed by the men even if there still is separation.) Not satisfied with the situation, I kind of pressed myself inside and found a place to stand by the door. I stood for the next 2.5 hours and it felt like 10 minutes. I have been to some wonderful services for Yom Kippur. Two years ago the cantor at Tifereth chanted Kol Nidre in such a way I could feel it going right into me. In Virginia at Beth Israel, after the end of Aytz Chaim, the whole congregation went silent and I could feel Hashem in the quiet, but I have never had prayer fill me like the service this Yom Kippur. This was dare I say it….fun. They, we were truly enjoying ourselves. We danced, sang, clapper and beat to the rhythm on the stenders, machzorim, and the walls. At one point the singing stopped a people just clapped and drummed for ten minutes. I mean this was really amazing. Suzanne and I stayed until around three when we were just about halfway through the Chazzan’s repetition during Musaf. We then did mincha on our own, since by then most other places were already mostly through Mincha, and we headed up to Moreshit Israel, one of the American style Conservative synagogues, to do Neilah and Maariv. We broke the fast at the home of some of the JTS Cantorial students with bagels, lox, hummus, onions..oh not to forget the mahtbuchah.
Well that ends my High Holy Day Experiences. Next time I’ll tell you about building the Sukkah and our trip up North to the Galil. Now I have to get ready for Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom

Marcus


Glossary: As always sketchy definitions and spellings.

Kippah: head covering worn by men and women. Also called a yarmulkah in Yiddish and.. “groan”… a skull cap in English. The pope wears one which is kosher for Sukkot because it has a pitom.
Tallit, tallitot (pl): prayer shawl. Worn to fulfill the mitzvah of “…and it shall constitute tzitzis (fringes) for you, that you may see it and remember all the commandments of Hashem and perform them.” Worn during the morning prayer service.
Masorti: traditional. A Jewish movement connected to the Conservative movement in the US.
Ashkenazi: Jews from Eastern Europe. Sephardi: Jews from Spain: Mizrachi: Jews from the Middle East and further. They all have different customs and eating habits and such. In the past (hopefully) this has caused some schisms in our people, but we are all Jews.
Charedi: So called ultra-orthodox, black hats, messhuganners (wait I don’t mean that). In the US we often call them Chasids, although not all Charedi are Chasids.
Cotel: The western wall of the Temple mount.
Minyan, minyanim (pl): In Judaism a quorum of ten individuals (men in some communities) is needed to perform certain prayers. Minyan has then come to mean a group who comes together to pray. A minyan usually doesn’t have to have a dedicated building for prayer they meet in any space they can find available. A synagogue is a place where a minyan may meet to pray and learn Torah.
Talpiot: a neighborhood in Jerusalem. Good shopping and an industrial section.
Machson Mazon: Food warehouse
M’edan: “from Edan” bottled water suppliers
Salatim: plural of salat which means salad but here a salad can be anything from what Americans think of salad to coleslaw like stuff. Salatim are also what you put on Schwarma.
Tuches: What you sit on.
Carlebach: Shlomo Carlebach (z”l) was a minstrel, Rabbi, spiritual leader who wrote many wonderful Niggunim. Here, in certain communities, his music dominates the prayers and chants. Check out http://www.rebshlomo.org/ and http://www.geocities.com/shlomocarlebach/ for more info,
Kol Nidre: The opening prayer of Yom Kippur where we disavow any vows or pledges made over the previous year. This is a beautiful service and I suggest that if anyone wants to hear a beautiful version to go the Tiffereth Israel in San Diego and listen to Cantor Pomerantz-Boro do it!
Nei’lah: The final prayer of Yom Kippur.
Aron Kodesh: The holy ark where at one time the tablets containing the Ten Commandments were stored. We also call the place we keep the Sefrai Torah the Aron Kodesh.
Ezrat Nishim: The women’s section. In traditional synagogues women and men pray separately. The place where women pray can be side by side from the men, but the more “traditional” the congregation is the farther the women are kept away form the action and the torah. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the ezrat nishim was across the street and the women watched by closed circuit TV. Except that you can’t use electricity on Shabbat. Oh well what do they want to pray for anyway?