Shalom L'chulam!
The Jewish afternoon prayer, Mincha, is not something you usually rave about. It is relatively short. People are tired, focused on their work or study, and want to get on with the day. This usually leads to a quick 10 minute, no-nonsense affair.
Not at Yeshivat Orayta. Instead of quickly murmuring the opening Ashrei prayer, we sing it loudly with joy. The clapping and singing add an extra 5 minutes, but the upside is that it brings energy into the "midday slump," galvanizing us into action. This idea of trying to make the most of every moment and injecting energy is something I hope to apply to other areas in life. (video to come in the next post...)
view from the dorms
The first two weeks so far have been action packed. After the 8-day quarantine ended, I got into the day to day schedule of learning. One interesting thing we learned is that you can use a stolen shofar, because the object of the mitzvah is the sound, not the shofar itself. I personally still find this problematic because without the shofar, the sound would not have been produced.
During my free time, I visited places like Shuk Machane Yehuda- a bustling Jerusalem market, and Ein Uzi, a spring outside of Jerusalem (there's no pool in the old city, so this is the only way to cool down :)
One great aspect of living in the old city is that it's a place of worship for 3 different
religions. From our dorms in the Yeshiva, we can hear the muezzin from the Al-Aqsa mosque chant the Salat, the Muslim call to prayer out loud, which happens 5 times a day. Similarly, now that we are in Elul, Jews started saying selichot, and at night we can also hear the chazzan chant prayers from the Kotel who also uses a loud speaker system. So both religions have the aspect of a loud call to prayer. The Temple Mount is usually a topic which divides Jews and Muslims. But realizing that our worship is similar and we share a lot in common can bring us together.
Avigayil is still in quarantine, but we will hopefully meet up when she is out.
With the Jewish new year this week, here’s a line from the poem Ahot Ketana:
“Tikhleh Shanah V’Kileloteha" — May this year and all of its curses come to an end
“Tahel Shanah U’Birkhoteha" — May this new year with all of its blessings begin.”
Niv
Comments