Today was kind of a crazy day. It started with me skipping Hebrew again and making it to class in time for lunch and a speaker, who talked about this really fascinating thing:

So there are these poems that ancient rabbis wrote to put into the siddur. Like, we sing them randomly (L’cha Dodi) - I think he called them Pi’utim. And he talked about how you can see historical halachik rulings based on the age of the pi’utim. It’s just fascinating.

For example, there are two halachik rulings about dishes on Passover: 1) you break your dishes before Passover, buy new ones and use those through the holiday and then the rest of the year and break them again before the next Passover; 2) have two sets of dishes and store them alternately when you aren’t using them. It seems as though for a long time people used to do option #1, because there is a pi’ut that talks about breaking your dishes before Passover. But then all of a sudden, later, there is a pi’ut saying to store your dishes.

And so then this rabbi went and researched it and it seems as though this pi’ut was made near this area of France (I think) that happens to be known for its fine china. And it happens to have been written around the time that this area of France started to become known for its fine china. And, long story short, you can posit that someone went to one of the great rabbis and said, “Look, rabbi, I am not breaking these dishes.” So the ruling was changed - they didn’t make up their own halacha, they just used the other halachik ruling that already existed.

Anyway, I don’t know if that was super confusing or not, but the talk was awesome.

After that we took a short walk to the Great Synagogue. It wasn’t mincha but Jason refused to say no and got us in anyway. But everything was dark. Here are a few shots:

The outside:

The inside:

So that is the Great Synagogue. Well, mostly just the stained glass in the Great Synagogue because there isn’t much to show in the dark. Maybe we’ll go back during a service so the lights will be on.

Then we chilled in the park and randomly this Parisian walks over asking for directions to the Kotel in Hebrew. So we gave him directions and then he starts talking to us and hitting on Becky hard core. And they exchanged numbers so we could all meet up later. On the walk back to the Yeshiva I also saw Sarah, a girl I know from college, and Becky saw a friend of hers as well. So yay Jewsh geography.

Later we went to Malcha Mall for some real shopping, although we didn’t buy anything really. I did buy this really pretty chamsa necklace:

Becky was supposed to buy a necklace, too, so that we could be protected, but she didn’t want to spend the money on this one. It was kind of expensive but I like it a lot a lot. It looks kind of dull in the picture but it is very pretty and shiny and beautiful. It’s bright orange and teal with pink and brown stones around the jewel in the middle.
And then later, drinks at Cafe Rehavia, my new favorite hangout.

We made plans to go to to the Dead Sea on Sunday and then Eilat Monday through Wednesday morning. So hopefully that will be a good amount of fun stuff for me I may be going on a tour of the Knesset tomorrow morning as well.

I am going to back out of a tour to the Temple Mount that I was signed up for because of the trip to Eilat, but to be honest I think I am okay with that. I was having some reservations. One main thing is that you are supposed to go to the mikveh before you go there, if you care about halachik problems that might arise (being that we don’t know where the Holy of Holies is/was/will be). And I don’t want to go to the mikveh until I’m married. And also, I don’t know if it’s okay for me to go at this time of the month anyway, since I don’t really know all of the rules or if I have to wait an extra week to go by the Temple. So… yeah. It feels better to just not go. Even though it would be so cool.

Today was a lot better than yesterday, if I do say so.  I am moving in a positive direction