A Shabbat to Remember

You're all probably thinking, "Why is he writing another post about Shabbat?" Well, because last nights Shabbat was particularly fun. Here is a photo of everyone present:

A couple people got cutoff, but I think this was taken with a camera phone, so it turned out pretty good. Anyways, we had a potluck Shabbat dinner, so there was tons of awesome food to be consumed, and there was about 20 of us all crammed into one room. We temporarily commandeered two tables from other flats on the floor. We had everything from homemade mac n' cheese to quinoa. From chicken in lemon sauce to bread covered in Israeli Nutella (which is about 30 times better than brand name Nutella).

Once we were sufficiently engorged with food we relaxed for about an hour, and then about 75% of us went to the Old City. It is a much different place at night, so it was fun to go. We went to the Western Wall for about a half an hour to pray, meditate, watch, pay our respects, etc. (since not everyone was Jewish). We then attempted to find Robinson's Arch, which is a located at another part of the wall that men and women are allowed to pray together. For those of you who don't know, the Western Wall is divided into two sections. Women are only allowed to pray in a small section along the wall. If you look at my post with all the pictures, you can make out the divider. This causes some tension, as women are not allowed to be Bat-mitzvah-ed at the wall. Once a month, a group called Women of the Wall put on their prayer shawls and bring their Torahs to the Wall and pray. This too is met with tension.

Since Robinson's Arch was closed for the evening we continued on our meandering of the Old City at night. We eventually found ourselves in the rooftops on the edge of the Christian Quarter. It was very cool. You could see The Dome of the Rock, a synagogue, and a church. They all seemed like they were only 3 blocks away from where we stood. We all just relaxed on the roof, stargazed (with what stars you could see. I was only able to see Orion and the Little Dipper), and talked about how our time in Jerusalem had been so far, etc. However, at about 1:00am we thought it would be best to start heading home.

By this time the city was dead. The light-rail was done running (One, because it stops running at midnight. Two, because it stops running at about 4:00pm on Shabbat.) so we decided to just walked along the tracks to get back home, since our student village is right off a stop on the light-rail. Walking takes a little while, so we didn't get home until about 2:00am, where I proceeded to fall into my bed and sleep until 10:00am this morning. Now I am sitting blogging and washing my laundry, enjoying a calm Shabbat in the student village.