Saturday, July 24th

Our pace slowed to a leisurely stroll to synagogue this Shabbat morning, with no need to scramble onto the bus. Some of us chose to daven at the Conservative synagogue where (of course!) Rabbi Adam Frank knows our rabbi. It is amazing how many people David runs into from his past experiences in Israel. Just yesterday in the Iraqi section of the shuk he ran into a former student whom he last saw 13 years ago. The Conservative service was comfortably like our own at the PJC. The Sephardic hazzan sang beautifully. Andrea Rothberg and I were enchanted to hear a version of Ein Kelohenu sung in Hebrew and Ladino.

We all joined up in the Bloomfield Garden for our Shabbat luncheon, enjoying the bread, salads, fruits, cheeses and vegetables that were purchased at the Machaneh Yehuda market. Then we held a show-and-tell of strange items purchased in the shuk. The most exotic was a dark green potion that our guide Jared purchased from a vendor named Uzi, drinking which was supposed to create harmonious relations between husband and wife.

After lunch was also the time for the group to talk about what we had experienced so far in our travels, especially our visit to the West Bank on Thursday and the visit to the Har Herzl Military Cemetery on Friday, which had helped us to realize how complicated the situation has become and how unlikely it is that any solution can be arrived at in the near future. Our group continues to ponder and discuss the problems of what it means in this day and age to be a Zionist and what the future may hold for the Jewish state.

The rest of the day was given over to walking, swimming, and of course Shabbat napping. SherLi led a tour of the quaint houses and pretty alley ways of Yemin Moshe and the Mishkenot Sha'ananim settlement complete with a very Dutch-looking windmill, founded by Moses Montefiore in 1860, the year of Theodore Herzl's birth. It was the first modern Jewish neighborhood outside the city walls, and had rules governing security and sanitation which helped protect its residents during a cholera outbreak.

The quiet day closed with Havdallah conducted under the stars overlooking the walls of the Old City. The braided candle and wine, the spices, the singing of Eliyahu HaNavi, were especially poignant as we bade farewell not just to Shabbat but to the magnificent city of Jerusalem.

Andrea Prigot