Day Thirteen: The Shabbat That Wasn’t Supposed to Happen
Picky-eating and an audacious magic trick
If I look at my supposed itinerary for my Grand Europe Trip™, I should have been in Poland this week for Shabbos. I was debating between spending the Shabbos by Leżajsk (Lizhensk for you uninitiated) by R’ Elimelech or Krakow, by my at-least-triple ancestor the Rema.
Instead I was where I’ve been for the past week, cruising the streets of Jerusalem and sort of regretting my choice to bring one pair of shoes—and them being white. It’s fine if I were to be in Montenegro, where no Hasidic Jews roam, but I do feel a little out of place in the Holy Land in white sneakers. Mind you, I did still somehow bring a hat and jacket shoved into my backpack, so I do look half the part.
Shabbos began with a walk through Mamilla Mall, hoping to make it to the Old City. I made it to the Jaffa Gate before I was turned back, the soldiers stationed outside telling me it was closed for the evening. Well, as if I’m not used to changes of plans by now.
I trekked back up the hill and stopped off at my cousins’ house before heading off to shul around the corner. It is a shul of the Dati-Leumi denomination.
Walking into that shul was like stepping into a visual symphony of Jewish diversity. The place was absolutely packed—standing room only—with what can only be described as the most beautiful melting pot I’ve witnessed in quite some time. The majority were clean-shaven Dati-Leumi types, but dotted throughout the synagogue like scattered punctuation marks were more yeshivish, Lithuanian-style Jews with their black hats, davening passionate hand motions and swaying.
Sprinkled throughout were Sephardim adding their own flavor to the mix, and the whole scene created a pretty incredible tapestry of “Jewishness.” Also, unlike your typical Chabad shul where half the congregation camps out in the back schmoozing with their friends about business deals and vacation plans, everyone here was genuinely engaged. Everyone was locked in, davening with intention.
My cousin’s husband was there with his two-year-old son in a stroller, and the little guy was, shall we say, vocally participatory. As we stood for shemoneh esrei, the child kept yapping away, a big smile splitting his face in two.
Now, I personally thought I heard at least three people shush the child, but my cousin’s husband later told me he didn’t hear any shushing. In fact, he said that when he turned to apologize to the man in front of him for the noise, the guy turned around and said in Hebrew: “What are you talking about? This is our victory.”
Don’t apologize for the future of our people making noise in shul. This little boy’s voice isn’t an interruption—it’s the whole point.
We went back to my cousin’s and if you look back to last week’s Friday night blog entry, you’ll remember this was the same courtyard where I found a ghost town table while the family hid in the shelter, where I watched rockets streak across the sky before falling asleep on their outdoor couch.
This week, the scene couldn’t have been more different. The table was set beautifully in the front courtyard under the twinkling stars. They even had a special challah cover that caught the light just right. Where last week my cousins—not knowing they’d be stuck here for so long—had gotten mainly takeout food, this week they’d cooked for themselves.
There’s something surreal about thinking you’re “stuck” in Jerusalem but then having the cousins you’d normally eat with on a regular Friday night back in Crown Heights suddenly cooking their home-cooked meals for you in the Holy Land. It was actually quite a treat to sit with them, creating this lovely sense of normalcy in decidedly abnormal circumstances.
After the meal, I spent a few hours schmoozing with my cousins before making the walk home around 1:45 AM. And here’s where things got interesting.
My building houses about 15 condos, but mine and one other are the only occupied units. Most of this building is owned by Americans and sits completely empty—it’s a bit of a ghost town. So when I reached my door in the pitch-black stairwell, I couldn’t see the apartment door’s keypad.
I spent what felt like an eternity fumbling around in the darkness, pressing random buttons and getting increasingly frustrated. Finally, I had to give myself a pep talk: “You got this, Waylen. Breathe. Think this through.”
I closed my eyes and felt around methodically until I found the “C” button—knowing that would be the clear/erase function based on its familiar feel. Once I had my bearings, I had to work backwards from my code to figure out where each number would be positioned on a standard keypad layout.
Standing there in complete darkness, talking myself through basic arithmetic and keypad geography, I finally heard that beautiful click of success. The relief was immense—though I immediately went straight to bed knowing I had to wake up early for a ridiculously early Shabbos meal.
On Shabbos morning I woke up thinking I’d slept in, panicked because I don’t have a clock in my apartment and had left my phone off overnight. (Pretty irresponsible considering the rocket alerts, and it turns out there actually was an alarm at 2:30 AM that I completely missed.) I quickly hustled to my father’s first cousin’s house for the absurdly early 10:30 AM meal start.
By the time I climbed to the 8th floor, I was quite winded, but I was greeted by a fascinating group: my father’s 75-year-old first cousin, his wife, and two other gentlemen of similar vintage. One was a former principal of a Jewish day school in Melbourne, an Oxford graduate, former concert cellist, and currently the principal of a school in Manchester. He was in Jerusalem visiting his 98-year-old father. The other was Kalman, a Jerusalem resident originally from Golders Green in London.
Now, here’s where things got awkward. I am a particularly picky eater, and you can imagine what it’s like going into a Yiddishe mama’s house and not really eating much of what she’s offering you. Course after course, I sat there with an essentially empty plate while this lovely woman kept trying to feed me. It was cringey in the way that only disappointing a Jewish grandmother can be, but hey, you gotta own it. That’s life.
We had wonderful conversations covering everything from terror to politics to the Israel situation, education, smartphones, and even alcoholism. It was a lovely experience despite my culinary failures.
The meal ended at 4:30 PM (an insane time to finish lunch considering the early start), and I stayed afterward for a lovely chat with my cousin. He’s much older than my father—one of his oldest first cousins—so I barely knew him growing up in Melbourne. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover we share loves of classical music, art, and we’re both hoarders/collectors. (I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that back home in Crown Heights, I have dozens of paintings dotting my walls, plus collections of vintage film cameras and baseball cards, despite not caring much for baseball.)
After that, I headed to my cousins from Friday night and spent most of Shabbos afternoon there. I played some ping pong (lost every game—I lack that competitive edge that makes for truly formidable sporting), watched my bar mitzvah boy cousin attempt a very audacious magic trick involving trying to somehow get his 17-year-old sister through a cereal box (it was as absurd and unsuccessful as it sounds), and sampled some candy that I pined for as a child but as an adult left a lot to be desired.
At the close of Shabbos, I returned to my apartment for a quick nap, then ventured out into post-Shabbos Jerusalem. I grabbed a burger from Burger’s Bar that earned a disappointing 5.5/10 (I don’t know why I expected anything better), spoke to my sister who’s still deciding how to leave this country, and dealt with the awkwardness of being in this time zone where it’s nighttime for me but still Shabbos for all my American friends.
And that’s how I spent the Shabbos that was never supposed to happen—in Jerusalem instead of Poland, with family instead of ancestors’ graves, creating new memories instead of visiting old ones. Sometimes the best adventures are the ones you never planned for. Until next time!