Sinagoga

All summer, I did many tangentially Jewish things. Actually, all my life I have done many skewedly Jewish things. My life could quite decidedly be declared as Jewish New York.

Then I moved to Spain, ate a shark, and missed sitting on the couch for NU Hillel's Conservices and Challah for Hunger gooey warm challah. Friday nights here were the few times I truly deeply felt as though I was not missing home, but missing out on the most important part of my week.

There is one 'sinagoga' in Sevilla. Naturally, I contacted the email I found for information. I got a short and sweet email back saying services were at 8 on Calle Bustos Tavera and also, there's a way to order Kosher meat to Sevilla. My mouth is watering for some Saturday afternoon deli sandwich as I write this.

I decided to work on the meat thing later and try out services this week. One step at a time, and Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year is coming up - a seriously bigdeal holiday, and I wanted to at the very least scope out my options for finding a service and potentially, a Jewishfam to have a meal with. Asking to meet a nice Jewish boy at services would be pushing my luck, but the world works in mysterious ways...

I met my friend Liz, a religion major at Princeton who is not Jewish, but thinks we're cool folks, and we walked to the 'sinagoga' together. The streets were basically as meandering and tiny as the opening scene in Aladin. Except, we were not harem-pant wearing roof jumpers. We were just sort of lost looking foreigners. Somehow, we found the right building. According to the email.

There was no one there. It was dark. The shades were down. And none of the buzzers corresponded to a sinagoga or Moises Hassan, my contact. So, we walked around the block, a little panicky, but it's really hard to get anxious in a super-relaxed city on a lovely Friday afternoon. We asked some cafe workers if they knew anything about the sinagoga and they told us they'd never heard of one. Great, since it's two doors down. Clearly, this is a quiet little operation.

After 20 minutes of wandering, we came back and still, closed doors and no lights. It was a quarter past eight. We called up to a man on a balcony across the street and asked him what he knew. He essentially said, "Not much, but every Friday around 8:30, a bunch of men go into that building." He pointed which window we should be creeping on. We decided to stroll around and upon return, ten minutes later the door was open and the lights were on.

We were ushered behind the friendliest mechitza (wall dividing men and women in orthodox prayer spaces),  coming to about hip height giving us an unobstructed view of the strangest group of men. They each wished us a Good Shabbat and many shook our hands. It's weird to shake hands from behind a mechitza - but whatever. It was a nice gesture. The service involved complex Moroccan 'tunes' a lot of mumbling, and awesome transliteration with 'J''s for the 'Ch' sound and accents over letters. The translations were also fun to read in Spanish, especially since I was as lost as Liz with the Hebrew for most of the service.

Much like Hillel, a handful strolled in late, walked around, talked in services, and fraternized with one another. We felt like we were at a bizarre spanish Men's Club meeting. I was dying to ask them to stop and just sing one beautiful tune from the Kabalat Shabbat I knew.  Though the room was simple and small, the decorations were comforting and splendorous - lots of jewel-toned curtains, an ark with a familiar Hebrew inscription, wall hangings in ceramics and metals with images of Jerusalem and phrases from prayers... While the service may have felt a bit off for me, the environment allowed me to feel intrigued and more importantly, gave me the peaceful familiarity I was looking for.

After the short service, we were kind of ushered out. Closing time. As if no one had ever been there. I don't know if I'll go back after Rosh Hashana. It's hard to get to and not safe to walk home alone after and taxis are expensive. And, if I do my own kabshab on the rooftop here, I get to hum the tunes that cool off and restart the week so well for me.

But, I have to do it alone. That's the hardest part. The Jewish community has been there for me in EVERYTHING I have ever done as an integrally strong cornerstone to every stage of my life. From Beth El nursery school through Hillel at school, I've always had a crew to fall back to. Now I have to kind of go it alone.

Except I ended up leaving the sinagoga with a new friend... The former Chief Justice of Israeli Labor Courts. See proxima blog for details.