Shabbat in Jerusalem

I realized this past shabbat that I really had not commented on it recently. Shabbat in Jerusalem is vastly different than any where else in the world. Okay, that is somewhat presumptuous of me to say the whole world, but I can imagine.
I realized too this Shabbat how familiarity eases the mind. For the time I've been studying at the yeshiva here I have been going to services on Friday nights and Saturday mornings. All at different shuls. There are so many different places (and ways too) to daven here that I felt it unfair to limit myself to just one. So, I've been to Sephardic, Ethiopian, Italian, Carlbach, reform, conservative, and many "general" orthodox. Where the m'hitzah is placed used to be important to me and initially I found it a barrier I constructed to inhibit my davening. These days I clearly have a preference but I don't allow it to stop me from getting the most out of the place as I can.
I have been to places where the walls truly shake during Kabbalat Shabbat and others where most of the congregation is subdued. Some congregants are warm and welcoming to a clear stranger. Others are frigid and unwilling to assist in my fumbling around the service. Keep in mind these are still orthodox services and my knowledge of them is not vast. How quickly they go and what I can hear because I am in the women's section and what I can understand because my Hebrew is not great are all variables in each place.
Well, this past Friday night, I went back to the conservative synagogue (Medreshet Israel). I had been there for one night and one morning service. Going back gave me such a sense of knowledge. I felt less insecure and I could really be in the moment much more. And all this from only going once before. So to think about people who have been going to the same place for decades is astonishing and I cannot imagine what they feel when they walk through the doors. For me it is a delicate balance because I enjoy learning and experiencing the new and yet there is something to be said for the familiar.

I'm back to some fun/strange activities. I can't even plan my days any more because the random is so much more fun. Take for example Yom shishi, Friday before Shabbat starts. That day I had planned to go to a beach in Tel Aviv with an Israeli friend. He didn't call so I helped my roommate make some bead necklaces. Then we took those over to a reggae festival to sell them. I was hippied out in dress and I was selling necklaces I had made to hippie religiously observant jews in a bar garden. Very surreal. And someone even bought one of the ones I made. I spent a few hours there and listened to live music and danced with people with dreadlocks that rival Bob marley--except the tzitzit which were hanging from their torsos or the kippot which was on their heads did not exactly fit the expected scene. Free love, expect you don't touch members of the opposite sex. Truly, it was a bizarre mishmash of cultures.

Then I went to shul from 6-8:30p. Wrote in my journal a bit (one thing I just don't see myself giving up even if I become traditional shomer shabbat), and then I walked over to the kotel at 12:30a. Going to the wall after midnight is something else. I am going to miss doing that greatly.
I was there for a couple hours in total. Saturday morning I got up to attend services at 8:30-11:30a. Then Shabbat lunch with fellow yeshiva students. They were all raised in the conservative moment and had this connection that I was on the sidelines of. Lunch lasted 4.5hrs. Then I played rummicube while we waited for third meal. From 6-10:30p we did mincha, third meal, ma'ariv, havdallah. It was one of the best shabbat's I've had in Israel. I didn't sleep (though that is not that unusual) and yet I was fully energized everywhere I went (again, fairly typical).

Shul hoping here is giving me the confidence to do so in Boulder, which is good. I feel more confident in going into Bonai shalom or Aish kodesh or the reconstructionist one in town by myself. And to think there will be moments which will be in English! I cannot imagine anymore.

Also, here the streets are fairly quiet, except for ~10% of those that aren't shomer shabbat and the tourists which aren't either. Cars are silent, buses don't run, people are respectful and they speak to you on the street. Usually they will say "shabbat shalom" or the like. This is very different than what happens 24hrs later though on Sunday (yom rishon) when people don't even notice others, let alone speak to them. I guess Shabbat here is somewhat akin to Sunday morning in CO. Being part of the majority is something which I think most people take for granted. I didn't notice how much of a difference there was until I experienced the other side and now to have to go back to a secular or Christian centered world will be a culture shock all over again.
I still have one more full shabbat this coming weekend. And then I have a Friday night because I fly that Shabbat. That will be the first change--riding in a car and spending money on Shabbat. I imagine I will sit at the kotel much of those times.

That's just a little peek into one of the experiences I've had doing Shabbat in Jerusalem.
Hope all is well in the States and I will see most of you soon.