Day 26: Saturday, May 17, Samaria

Part of the reason I haven't posted in a while is that I don't have my notebook with me at the moment, so consequently I don't remember things like where exactly we were this day. (It was somewhere in Samaria.) Also, since it was Shabbat, I don't have any pictures from the day.

Saturday was Shabbat, so we had an easy day and just did stuff within the community. I should actually backtrack and say that we went to synagogue on Friday evening. There are several synagogue meetings, the biggest of which is on Saturday morning. The room was roughly hexagonal, with desks laid out in rows along the outside, all facing the front. Women were in the balcony in pews. In the center of the room was a platform with a desk and ornamented pillars. There was a podium up front facing the ark (where the Torah is kept) – thus facing away from the audience – where someone would lead the ritual; however, they rotated out from time to time, with almost no break in the action. They would read in a sing-song voice while bobbing their head, and at certain times everyone would join in singing songs in a dirge-like but attractive melody. Not quite wailing Arabic, but definitely Middle Eastern. This wasn’t like in a church where the pastor would say, “Now let’s turn to hymn such-and-such,” but rather the whole service was one big script that everyone obviously knew by heart, so they could join in on a song on the first note and knew exactly when it was coming. There were times when we stood, but mostly we were seated. I couldn’t figure out the reason we stood. When compared with my church services (Bible church/Presbyterian) I would call this service organized chaos. People wandered in at any time, people walked around, people looked around, little kids played. (The men would be still singing/reciting as they walked around, like it was subconscious.) When people would come in late they would go around and greet their friends before going to their seat. People were always bobbing as they said the rituals, and there was no prescribed way to bob. Some people were practically thumping their heads on their desks, some were doing more side-to-side twist than forward-backward, and some would dip by bending their knees before tipping forward. It really did remind me of a bunch of bobbleheads. Everyone had a head covering – were were given yarmulkes before entering – but one guy had a ball cap and another had a straw farmer’s hat. Some people were reading synagogue newsletters. There was a “sermon” – I don’t know what he said, but his delivery was just like a lot of American pastors.

The official rule on Shabbat for Jews is that they are not to work. However, this was interpreted by Jewish sages to fundamentally mean you should not “create or destroy.” Later commentators specified what was/wasn’t an act of creation – writing is an act of creation, for example. Still later, commentators said that you should not carry pen/paper on Shabbat so that you cannot unwittingly create by writing. This seemed pretty typical of a lot of Jewish religious laws – the real Biblical law is X, but in order to make sure you don’t do X we’re going to ban Y and Z. Don’t forget that the ancient commentaries have the same force as the original Torah in Judaism. Using electrical devices has been deemed bad because electricity is too much like fire, and you are not to create fire on Shabbat. One of the families on our trip was joining us this day, so Benjamin had given his cell phone to one of the other people on our trip just in case the family called – that way he wouldn’t talk to them directly and thus not break Shabbat. However, the Jewish taxi driver called for directions, and since only Benjamin could speak Hebrew, the other guy held the phone up to his ear.

A soldier named Ed joined us for lunch. He was in his early 30’s and doing reserve duty. I really enjoyed talking to him. I asked him what he had found different/odd when he first came to Israel. Among other things, he said they call all cereal “corn flakes,” stereotype Americans as soft (and Americans in turn stereotype Jews as CPA-soft), that all American Jews want “exotic”-looking Yemmenite Jewish wives, that there is no sense of personal space, and that most Jews think America is all like Disneyland and that everyone becomes a millionaire within a year of moving there. He also said that Jews aren’t very polite, but he said it’s more like they all treat each other as brothers – ordering each other around to some degree, but it’s not meant in a rough, I-don’t-like-you way. I got him to read some bumper stickers to me, because I think bumper stickers reveal something about the hot issues or what people think. We were in a settlement and this particular sticker was, understandably, a pro-settlement sticker. It was or orange, and Ed said that orange is associated with pro-settlement and blue is anti-settlement. After that I could count the blue vs. orange bumper stickers and have a feel for the area’s sentiments. He also said that all men serve reserve duty until they are 40. Whenever you are called up you are paid your regular salary, unlike the U.S. reserves. I think this is an excellent – but expensive – system. Doctors get paid a week of lost doctor wages; construction workers get paid a week of construction wages. The U.S. military has a problem with drawing disproportionately from lower classes, and taking away the financial penalty to those with upper-class jobs might help.