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.