Vodka-swigging rabbi and stray guardian angels

Friday's services turned out to be rather short--we spent longer walking there than we did at the services--and though it was not officially an orthodox community, the men and women had to sit separately. And, surprise, the gender segregation was not my cup of tea. The men's side was very active in all the prayers, while all the women but three or so sat around barely even reciting them. The rabbi, of course, was with the men, and couldn't be seen by the women because of folding screens. During the very short talk in English, a small upper portion of the screens were opened so the women could peer in at the rabbi, but that was all the contact we had. Still, this was much better than it could have been. Kyle went to one service where the women were all crammed into a space the size of a parking spot. After that service, the men did kiddush (blessing and sharing bread and wine, minus that "blood of Christ" part) and then lobbed their leftover, bitten-into hunk of challah bread over the dividing screen for the women. Nice.

Our service ended so early that we had time to head back to the student village for the free Chabad dinner. The Chabad (a certain type of Orthodox) rabbi was theoretically there to try to get secular Jews to become more observant, but the dinner turned out to have no more of a religious bent than any other Shabbat dinner. This one just included lots of poor students trying to mooch a meal. Let me tell you about the rabbi, though. He gave the impression of a doofy, bumbling American guy in this mid-thirties wearing a rabbi costume. He kept asking Kyle and I if we were sisters or roommates.

Midway through the meal, he brought out two huge bottles of vodka and two smaller ones of banana schnapps, and announced that everyone was to order a shot and then introduce himself to the group. We proceeded, one by one, to tell the rabbi what we wanted (half a shot of vodka, half vodka-half banana [ew], etc.) and say our name to the group. This took a good half hour. The rabbi announced that the second round was "self-service." More food came out. I had thought the rabbi was joking about seconds until he started taking more shots. Then he stood on his chair to give a little talk, during which people were passing the vodka around. Every time it came within arm's reach of the rabbi, he would grab it and pour another half shot. He'd toast, drink, and continue. When people started to get rowdy, he pounded the huge bottle on the table to get their attention. The guy was trying so hard to be heard that he started losing his voice, which prompted even more frequent vodka shots--as much as one every half sentence--in order to moisten his throat.

By the end of the talk, of course, the rabbi was drunk as a skunk. He started singing traditional Shabbat songs and pounding on the table with his vodka bottle. A pipsqueak adolescent who was at the dinner (why? I dunno) had had his own shot of vodka, and had weaseled another shot or two from the crowd. This kid decided that the bottle-pounding was a great idea. He picked up an empty schnapps bottle and imitated the rabbi. By the second or third tap, the bottle shattered and everyone shooed the kid away. The evening concluded with the rabbi dancing with three of the male students, who took turns wearing his hat.

So that was Friday.

Saturday evening, Kyle and I went to Bethlehem for a party. Long story short, getting home was something of a production. Around 2:30 am we got a ride to the checkpoint , where there was a little market set up outside with everything from coffee to canned tuna. We had to step over about fifteen men lounging on the entrance ramp outside. Whether they were waiting for an appointed time to cross through, were homeless, or just thought it would be a great idea to take a snooze there, we're still not sure. We proceeded through the deserted, fluorescent-lit checkpoint maze as someone yelled in Hebrew over the loudspeaker. There were no soldiers in sight at most of the expected places, but they must have been watching us because they buzzed us through a couple of doors. Finally, after watching a Palestinian guy have to show his ID, special papers, finger prints, blood type, and DNA swab (kidding on only the last two) to a nineteen-year-old soldier who was paying more attention to telling a story to her colleague, we gave a quick flash of our US passports and exited.

On the other side, we started walking toward Jerusalem in search of a taxi. A medium-sized, collarless dog came bounding up to us just outside the checkpoint and Kyle and I each tried to jump behind the other in fear of a canine attack. Rather than biting us, the mutt was just running up in greeting. He ran ahead a bit and sniffed around, then continued forward. Kyle noticed a similar dog several hundred meters behind, who kept trailing us. After a few minutes, we realized that effectively, we were being escorted by the two mongrels. It was 3am, the streets were deserted, and the evening was starting to feel surreal. Our buddies escorted us in safety for about 20 minutes until we flagged down an off-duty bus, who whisked us farther toward civilization, where we picked up a cab.

Thanks to Kyle's new video camera, we have these lovely grainy movies of our protectors.

Rear guard:



Front escort: