Tefilla in the Land of Israel

I am not proud of the fact that, since I've been a parent, my prayer life has dwindled. I made halachik arguments and excuses in the beginning, and I made a point to keep conversations going with God on a regular basis, which allowed me to justify my abstention from traditional Jewish prayer for the better part of the last five years. It makes me sad- I feel a real friend has been lost. The siddur was my favorite Jewish book for many, many years. I sang its praises, and I taught classes about its greatness. However, Having other responsibilities got in the way and I allowed caring for children, spouse and home to take over my routines.


This morning, however, I decided to leave the mess in our apartment, and after bringing the kids to their respective destinations, I sat down on the mirpeset to daven. My old friend, the siddur, hasn't changed a bit. But I have, of course. I am still enticed by the songs in pesukei dezimra- ישמחו השמים ותגל הארץ, ויאמרו בגויים ה' מלך ( Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; and let them say among the nations: 'The LORD reigneth.' -Chronicles I 16) The universal messages continue to reach deep within me and I feel there is no better mouthpiece for singing God's praises than this lovely prayer-book. The length of the service challenges me now in a way it did not when I had the momentum of daily prayer going.

I once argued that the relationship we have to the siddur, and perhaps to much of Judaism, is akin to a marriage- where we might not always feel excited and enthused by every piece, but we stick to our commitment, and we can only stand to gain from that. I now return to my lost love, and I struggle with those commitments that I once took for granted. Also relevant to this week's Torah Portion, singing the song of the sea is difficult for me, not only because the poetic hebrew is difficult to understand, but because the victorious song about the Egyptian people's destruction has never touched my soul in the same way that other parts of the liturgy do.

But the main thing that struck me this morning was the complete and absolute relevance of so much of the siddur in modern-day Israel. Of course, prayers of return and restoring us to our land are now coming to reality, and the seasons that we pray for rain are now the seasons when Israel really needs that rain. But on a deeper level, when we praise God for his strength, and we sing out His ability to resuscitate the dead, and to heal the sick- I feel the pulse of a nation brought back after thousands of years in every word. I know that we were a people nearly dead in Europe, and that this magical, miraculous country is a song of praise to God in its very existence. Our national redemption is not finished, and so the praise also suggests a furthering of our healing and our renewal.

I feel like a person at a siyum- promising the siddur that I will return to her. Dear Siddur, I am grateful for your consistency, and I will make my way back to you, as the people of Israel have returned to this great and complicated land.

Shabbat without a Key

This past Shabbat, we encountered a unique phenomenon that cannot happen in the states in the same way. I locked our apartment on the way out to dinner last night, and then at some point, I lost the key to get back in. We went out to a lovely, slow paced dinner with friends, which went quite late, so by the time we noticed at home, trying to get back into the apartment, it was after 11:00 PM. I checked my pockets, and they had the directions in them and the extra socks that I had taken for my daughter, but no key. I discovered that one of the pockets had a hole in the bottom, and I frantically felt all around the lining, but no key. I began replaying the evening in my mind, from the moment I locked up until that moment, trying to imagine what could have happened to the key, and I continued thinking about that basically non-stop throughout Shabbat, which was kind of maddening. I left my coat upstairs in our building and came down with the unfortunate news for my disappointed family. Luckily, the children were all asleep, but it was only a matter of time before the comfort of our double stroller let up and the kids needed a bed. And of course, I was kicking myself for not taking one babysitter's advice to give a neighbor a key.

We tried a small hotel that's across the street from our building, but they were totally full. We tried a friend's apartment, but they were asleep and didn't wake up to knocking at the door. We tried a different hotel, and they had a small room that they couldn't let us have according to fire regulations, and then they gave us false hope, telling us that we could stay at a different branch of their hotel in a different part of the city, but after much consultation, would not allow us to stay there without a credit card number, which was not something we could offer them, offhand, since we don't carry money or wallets with us on Shabbat. The not-Jewish Arab, working at the desk of this hotel, called the fire department first, but it turns out there is a policy here that nothing can be done for families like ours on Shabbat- neither by Jewish or non-Jewish people... So, we walked back to our friends who had hosted us for dinner on the off-chance that the key had perhaps fallen at their apartment, but when we looked there and found nothing, asked if we could crash on their couch. It was after midnight at this point, and our friends were incredibly gracious. We were two adults and three children who took over their apartment, and they were so happy to have us there. I spent a large part of the night managing our baby's teething. His top two teeth are coming in in earnest, and night time is, for some reason, an especially difficult time for him. Our hosts did not mention anything about the crying.

This morning, we came to our building to get my coat, and then went back to our friend's house who didn't wake up last night, where she welcomed us in for a breakfast, clothing and toy extravaganza. We were all invited to the same friends for lunch, so we walked there together, and then we proceeded to make ourselves at home at their apartment. After a delicious lunch, and putting our middle child in for a nap, my husband fell asleep on one of their couches and I on the other with the baby, while our hostess supervised her children and our daughter. Again, we were totally blessed to have such generous, gracious hosts. Also to our incredible fortune, they have a neighbor who is a locksmith who brought my husband home immediately after Shabbat and took care of letting us back in and changing the locks.

In the states, we had a combination lock box in the back of our house. Even without that we would have been able to break in without help, since non of our windows have the bars up that our windows here have. We would have been able to get help from the fire department, since they are, by and large, not Jewish, but in any event, they in no way governed by Jewish law or having any consideration for Shabbat. We would have gone to family- since our house was in Teaneck, around the corner from my aunt and a mile and a half from my parents. Here in Jerusalem, we were at the mercy of great friends and they made us feel so welcome and I feel so blessed to be part of this wonderful group of friends who are like family. I also hope and pray that if anyone would ever need this kind of help, that I would be able to extend the same warm, open arms that our friends extended to us. Thank God for the kindness of friends.