The Lazy Day

Final Part of the Shabbat Series

The next morning I woke up at 10:30, the family had all but vacated the house completely for school or morning services (although, unknown to me my cousin Gavriella was still sleeping upstairs) and had thoughtfully let me sleep for Shabbat. Not wanting to make a disturbance the house I did not yet know was empty, I quietly dressed and snuck downstairs, skipping my usual shower because I was unsure if it constituted "work". My phone and laptop were powered down and hidden in my bag, off limits for the day, there was not much to do.

I snuck down the stairs half way and saw Daniel in the kitchen. I didn't want to talk. I really didn't want to go to services again and while I knew he wouldn't make me or even push too hard, there's always the perfectly tailored Jewish guilt. I went back to the bedroom and looked over Eliav's books, eventually settling on a copy of Alice Through the Looking Glass which I made considerable progress through over the day. When I heard the door open and shut again, I wandered downstairs and fixed myself a cup of coffee, careful not to mix the milk and meat dishes or even place my empty milk designated cup on the clear meat designated tablecloth. The coffee, as I have learned, is not, as the campus brew led me to expect, universally terrible, but distinctly different. It is all ground and instant, no beans or filters. I'm actually coming to quite like the stuff.

A few hours later the family returned and I put aside the book. Conversation sprung back up and we prepared for lunch. Once again, the food was incredible. We sat down to a two course meal of salads and chicken and rice-like dishes and sweet potato pie. We said the Birkat again and then settled back in our chairs for some discussion. Then, as so often happens with discussion and Jews, we settled into our argument again. After yet another length of rousing debate, in which Aviva came out of nowhere with points that took me down a peg to say the least, we drifted to various corners of the house content and tired. Daniel had, during our argument, pulled two books off his shelf that he insisted I read even if I had to keep them. The family slept and I read, cover to cover, If You Were God by Aryeh Kaplan. The book was repetitive to the point of redundancy, self contradictory every other page, and written by an obvious narcissist who saw no other way of thinking than his own occasionally baseless claims towards the nature of Angles, Evil, and God. However, to it's credit, much of it was well cited in scripture and it raised some impressive questions that really made me think, first and foremost being,
'If you had the powers of God but could not reveal yourself, how would you form a community into a righteous, peaceful civilization?'
Unfortunately, Kaplan explored only one possible solution, very different (although worryingly similar in all but two key ways) from my own (reached independently prior to reading the large majority of the book).

Once he woke from his nap, I told him (in fewer and less critical words)what I thought. He gave me a sly look like he pitied me that I couldn't understand the pieces depth and just said
"read it again"
I laughed and said
"yeah that's the way to learn, read one source over and over until you believe it" hoping my deeper meaning was clear. He didn't say anything to that.

That night we revisited their shul for a Shabbat potlatch. We began with a service once again in which, again, I was hopelessly lost. Then we ate, we sang a little (more songs that I'd never heard), and went home.

We had been scrambling to find me a bus route home the night before because the computer was not shomer shabbat. It had seemed like it all worked out, but when I got to the station, after half an hour of waiting, we had no such luck. We had done a Havdallah at eight thirty, so we were free to work again. Even so, there was nothing for it. My intended route had me taking the first bus from Effrat to catch the last bus from Jerusalem back to campus. When it didn't come, there was no way I was making that bus. Daniel drove me halfway and we picked up a pair of hitchhikers before realizing it would be to late. We kept on just the same and took them to where they needed to go and then swung back around to their house where I would stay one more night.

I must say, in no part because of the Zahavi-Asa's, I was done. I wanted to get back to campus more than anything. My teacher Akiva was on the line with Aviva, still trying to get me back. Missing class was not an option in his book.
"just get him a ride" He said, meaning hitchhike. He, in a fully Israeli style, seemed to have no qualms with the fact that I would be getting into a strangers car no more than a mile from the scene of the kidnapping. Had not it happened only two weeks earlier, I would've been game. As it was, Aviva pointed out that the contract I had signed prevented me from "taking tramps" and that I was going to have to stay there. That was that.

I slunk into bed and slept for the last few hours before awaking at the ungodly hour of five to catch the first bus back. I arrived at campus at eight thirty, just in time for class to begin, and spent a delightful three hours waiting out the clock to go back to the dorms and take a well needed respite. Shabbat was well past over. I was spent.