Shabbat #7: The crazy lady downstairs

Exhausted from the wedding, we headed over to friends' apartment for a low-key dinner of chili and kugel, with a mediocre apple-walnut babka that I whipped out early in the morning. For Shabbat lunch, we had invited over a crew of people we'd never had over before. We thought we were in for a lovely afternoon with homemade salatim, engaging conversation, and a spread of cakes.

Instead we experienced a series of unfortunate events. First, we hadn't informed one friend that we have a cat, so she started coughing and gasping for air. So we decided to move the meal to the mirpeset, which meant moving tables and chairs and squeezing into a too-tight space. The mirpeset walls slide open all the way down to the floor, so we had to deadbolt Matador into our bedroom (he can turn all the knobs in our apartment, so simply locking the door wasn't an option). That meant he spent turns staring forlornly at us through the mirpeset door and throwing himself against the locked door on the other side of the room. But we did it, and we finally made motzi and settled in for a cozy meal with a soundtrack of wild beast in the next room.

That was when the screaming started. And the pounding. On our front door. Ben and a friend whose Hebrew is fluent went to investigate, but when they opened the door no one was there. A neighbor peeped out to say that we should pay no attention — it was just the crazy lady from the apartment below ours. Cautiously, we resumed our meal, chatting and laughing with the walls open to the perfect Jerusalem weather. A yell came from below us. She was angry about the noise. A few moments later, the pounding resumed. When Ben opened the door, she let loose with a torrent of screaming — "If you don't quiet down I will call the police!" Ben tried to shut the door and she pushed back on it. When the door was finally deadbolted again, it was clear that the Shabbat reverie was over. Shaken, we benched and sent our guests home.

We spoke to our landlady about the issue today and have been assured that we have nothing to fear and that we are not the first victims of this neighbor's rage. But we're frightened and embarrassed, and we've been scared off of hosting guests for the next little while. I kind of wish she had called the police, because I want to know what they would do with seven observant Americans kibitzing about rabbinical school politics after synagogue on Shabbat afternoon. But I'd be more thrilled to return from Amsterdam next week to find a "for rent" sign posted on our neighbor's door — even if it means that there will be no one left to feed the kittens.

Shabbat #3: We break in our kitchen

Our first anniversary

We have been married now for a whole month. But if you told us it has been a year, we'd believe you. We didn't choose the easiest way to start our marriage but we are thrilled to be together in Jerusalem.
To celebrate? We watched the second episode of "Walking Dead" and then headed to Sushi Rehavia with some fast friends to down a big plate of chicken fried rice. Seriously — the צ'קן פריד רייס is that good.

A little bit of Chambers Street on Rehov Berlin

As we were winding down our night and walking home from Emek Refaim, my old stomping grounds in New York City were just heating up.

Mayor Bloomberg called a surprise press conference to announce that Joel Klein, schools chancellor since 2002, was resigning and a publishing executive, Cathleen Black, would take his place. I spent the whole night and much of today feverishly reading, writing, Tweeting, and editing about this unexpected news. Here's the fruit of that effort, an article about Klein's 8-year tenure that my colleague and I are calling a "first draft of history."

I've been reporting about New York City's schools for two-thirds of the time that Klein was running them, and my all-night sprint down memory lane awakened a serious sense of nostalgia in me. It also made me anxious about the path I take when we return to New York in June. When Bloomberg won a third term last year, I told anyone who would listen that I couldn't fathom another four years of writing about the same education agenda. But now I'm wondering what it will be like to walk into a press conference and see unfamiliar faces, to have to rebuild my Rolodex with unfamiliar administrators, to get used to a fresh set of pet peeves and passions. I had an idea that just as I was putting my life on pause to be with Benjamin in Jerusalem, the city and my beat would hit the pause button too. I'm a little bit devastated every time I'm reminded how wrong that idea is.

Tidbit from the Beit Midrash

Irony: The Essenes (the 2000-year-old Jewish sect that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls) were quite fastidious about issues pertaining to ritual cleanliness. Apparently they used to visit the mikvah in order to purify themselves following each bowel movement. Naturally, the bathwater was not the most hygienic. Modern scholars theorize that mikvah-related infectious illness might have been a major killer in the Essene community.

Religious boundaries at the gym

Prompted by the uptick in my pastry consumption, I joined a women's gym today.

Right after I settled in on the elliptical machine, a religious woman got onto the machine next to me. Just as I had done, she pulled out her headphones, arranged her magazine, and adjusted the volume on her iPod. But then she departed from my routine, pulling off her long skirt to start pedaling in bike shorts. When the movie we were both watching veered into a passionate kiss between two women, she changed the channel. She finished her workout watching MTV's "Cribs."

The woman working the front desk asked my friend and me where we were from. "From New York, and also Florida before that," Shira answered. The woman's mother is from Miami and her father is from New York City. "That explains why your English is so good," Shira said.

"That, and we lived in Los Angeles for four years," the young woman answered, her shoulders tan and buff under her tank top. "My father was on schlichus. He's into things like that."

Back in Brooklyn

We're encouraging all of our New York friends to eat at Pardes, a brand-new kosher restaurant on Atlantic Avenue. We're not big meat eaters, but it's exciting to imagine eating kosher meat in our neighborhood. It sounds pretty chef-fy, too, with "Sautéed Sea Bream in a Pumpkin, Sweet Garlic Cream, Endive-Almond-Parsnip-Hunza Mullberry, Crispy-Skin/Nori/Pumpkin Seed Crunch" and "Duck Breast, Vanilla Barley, Charred Corn, Carob, Tarragon" on the menu. We would love to welcome ourselves back to Brooklyn with a meal there in June.

We'll need help to make that happen, though — Pardes's stretch of Atlantic has been a black hole for eateries in the past, and without Friday or Saturday hours, it's sure to face an uphill battle.

Hebrew class

Exercises from my Hebrew textbook (we had to conjugate the missing verbs, translation my own):

"I think that my neighbor won't shut up if the municipality also kills his third dog. He will write letters and he might even enact a hunger strike outside the municipal headquarters."

"If the guard prohibits you from entering the garden, gather some big stones next to the wall and climb over it. In my opinion, the guard won't catch you."

Graduation day

I am proud to announce that as of this afternoon, I am a proud graduate of Ulpan Or's two-week Sabra course. I now know about 700 words, the present and future tenses, and how to order an almond croissant (available in pretty much every café here). I'm planning to study on my own to fill in some gaps and move forward, but I might sign up for a continuation program at some point — though I don't think it will be full-time.

For my last session, I didn't have the energy to hike around a new neighborhood (it would have been Yemin Moshe, the neighborhood created by Moses Montefiore in the 1890s to encourage Jews to move outside the Old City) so instead Ben joined my teacher and me for a waffle and ice cream. I did the ordering.

Leaving on a jet plane

We just booked plane tickets for our first international tiyul — we're heading to Amsterdam for Hannukah! Ben has visited several times but I have never been. So far, we've made reservations at a fancypants restaurant in a restored hothouse and contacted a progressive synagogue about their "kabalat sjabat" services. We've also learned from a friend living in nearby Leiden that we'll be in the Netherlands for the biggest holiday of the year: Sinterklaas, where apparently men dressed as Santa Claus are followed by cronies in blackface who hand out candy to children. Any suggestions about what also to do, see, or eat while we're there?

Public space in Tel Aviv

Without a real weekend, it might be hard for us to get down to Tel Aviv very often. But seeing the new port public space, which just won a major European landscape award, might be the incentive we need.

[Images by Iwan Baan]

Not all a moonscape

I passed all of these plants on my 20-minute walk from our apartment to meet Ben's class in the Old City today.

Shabbat #1: Alone and with friends

We spent our first Shabbat evening in Jerusalem all alone.

One of the things we're most looking forward to here is spending Shabbatot with Ben's classmates, which we can't do easily in New York because we live in Brooklyn. But last night was exactly as it should have been. After a long week of marrying, traveling, and getting adjusted, we were craving the downtime that Shabbat would bring, and we didn't have any energy left to share.

On Friday morning, we joined thousands of other Jerusalemites at the shuk to buy fruit, vegetables, halva, and — in our case especially — basic household goods that we were missing, such as a knife. Then three friends brought a home-cooked meal to our apartment. We lit candles at 4:28 p.m. and forced ourselves to wait until the crack of 6 p.m. to cut into our challah, quiche, salad, asparagus, and chocolate cookies. By 7:30 we were asleep.

What we lacked in social interactions on Friday night we more than made up for on Shabbat morning. Up early, we decided to walk down to Emek Refaim, the main drag of the German Colony, for services at Kedem, an egalitarian minyan. Populated mostly by rabbinical school students and other Americans in Jerusalem for short spells, Kedem felt a lot like stepping into Altshul, or onto the Upper West Side. In the future, we'll try to visit synagogues unlike those we frequent at home, but davening at Kedem made for a comfortable way to ease into Shabbat in Jerusalem this week.

Afterwards we headed to a Shabbat lunch hosted in our honor by two friends, a couple who were also married in North Carolina (but before we knew them). We closed our week of sheva berachot around a large table packed with new neighbors, munching until havdalah on a huge spread of salads and a Yerushalmi kugel (made with caramelized oil and black pepper) — a perfect way to end a turbulent first week of marriage.