Bejt Praha and Shabbat

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Today we met with David Kraus’ father, the secretary general of the Jewish federation here. We talked a little about issues affecting the community, like how communism obliterated the population’s religious impulse and how the Jewish school they set up is far from academically competitive. David’s father also mentioned that they were creating a new place for the elderly Jews to replace the two, separate places where the elderly currently reside. The project is supposed to allow the elderly to stay where they are, even if they eventually start needing more intensive care. It sounded like a pretty sweet idea.

Right before the meeting, Kim (the program director) told me that last night she had a dream about me. In her dream, I apparently took speed to study better, but then drank a lot of beer at a party around a lake and ended up overdosing from beer + speed at the bottom of the lake. Ummm, yeah...

After the meeting, we went to an inexpensive vegetarian Indian restaurant called Beas. I got the big platter, a.k.a. “velke menu”, which came with a main rice dish, soup, dessert, and more. The meal was pretty good and quite a nice break from fried cheese sandwiches.


Then, this evening we went to Bejt Praha’s Shabbat services in the Spanish synagogue, which is part of the Jewish museum . Bejt Praha might be described as a Reformative (mix of Reform and Conservative) minyan. They have their own photocopied prayer book and no rabbi. Instead, there is a lay leader named Peter and a choir of 3 ladies. It may sound kind of pitiful, but the choir was actually amazing. The women had beautiful voices and sang in perfect 3-part harmony for prayers like mizmor shir. Joel did a D’var Torah about the concept of “Na’aseh v’nishma” (following rules that you don’t initially understand). The people, especially Peter, liked Joel’s sermon. Some crazy evangelical lady cornered Joel after the service and wouldn’t stop talking to him. We sent several people to tell him that we were leaving the building, but that did not stop the woman’s chatter.

Before we left, a little man with payos and a heavy Ashkenazic accent led kiddish. I think they call him Cantor Daniel. Then we went to David’s girlfriend’s house for dinner. David lives with his girlfriend, Zita, and her mother, and Zita’s sister, and Zita’s sister’s husband. They have a nice apartment and a crazy dog named Yonatan, who peed on the kitchen floor as soon as we got there. They also had a weird, anti-social cat that kept jumping on the counter to get the dessert.

A whole bunch of people came to Zita’s house for Shabbat dinner, including this Yemenite Jew born in Ashkelon, and this girl who speaks about five languages fluently. People like her make me feel really unaccomplished. As the evening went on, we consumed copious amounts of wine and managed to get some juicy gossip about the faculty from our program director. Apparently one guy is gay but married to some American woman and another of the professors is in a relationship with a former CET student. Scandalousness.

After that, we went back to the apartment. Joel and I talked about gender and religion for a while. Then we sang a couple zmirot (Shabbat songs); it was nice.

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