A Great Night

Is it Wednesday already? I'm not sure where the first half of the week went! Things seem to be moving quickly now that I'm only a week from the end of my stay. Last night was a really great night. Tuesday is my "early" day--I'm done with school at 4. I went home to do email and relax for a bit, and then two of my friends from school came over and we took a taxi to the Israel Museum, which is holding its annual wine fest this week. For 55 shekels (about $18), we got tickets that included admission to the museum and the wine fest.

The museum houses the Shrine of the Book--which includes the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Isaiah Scroll, and the Aleppo Codex. I'm guessing some of you know what these are and some don't, but I won't elaborate on the specifics here--see the link to the side for more info. In a nutshell, these are a variety of textual artifacts that are between 2,500 and 1,000 years old that either remain canonical Jewish texts (the Bible) or are parallel traditions that didn't make it into the canon but reflect what life looked like for Jews of the past. As you know, I love the books, so this was truly a shrine to me--it was absolutely amazing to see these manuscripts. They look so very much like the Torah scrolls we read today, and if you ever had any doubt that Judaism is a living tradition, seeing texts that have remained central and are preserved in exactly the same way for 2,000 years will surely make the point clearly. One of the teachers in my school is a Soferet, or scribe. She writes sacred texts today, in New Jersey, using the exact same words, lettering, and procedures that people used two millenia ago.

One of the women I was with made an amazing point. She said that for her, seeing the scrolls and the codex was more meaningful than visiting the Kotel, and as soon as she said it, I realized I felt the same way. I get why the remains of the Temple have meaning for us as Jews, and it certainly doesn't have to be an either/or situation, but if you are going to compare the Temple building versus our sacred texts in terms of importance, I'll take text any day.

The museum also includes a scale model of the 2nd Temple and Jerusalem, which was fascinating, though I couldn't help being reminded of Christmas-time train displays (which gave me an irreverent giggle)--I think that's just what scale models tend to be associated with for me. By the time we finished looking at the museum, it was after 8 pm, and it was absolutely beautiful. I felt terrible that I hadn't brought my camera--the evening, the view, all of it was spectacular. We went into the sculpture garden and were given wine glasses and then started walking around to the many wineries' stands. At each we were offered a small sample of whatever we wanted to try. I usually only like white wine, so I stuck with Sauvignon Blancs and the like, though I did try a few roses. Israeli wine seems to run to the sweet, and I had a few muscats that actually tasted like kool-aid, but for the most part, the wines were good. I thought of my father, who is very much a "wine guy"--I think he would have really enjoyed it. Though each sample was only an ounce or so, it does add up after a while, so by 10 we were ready to move along. We ended up back on Emek Refaim at a great restaurant called La Boca, where I had an amazing red snapper dish. I got home after 11 and fell into bed. It really was a perfect evening--great company, food, wine, and the wonderful museum exhibits. I was pretty tired this morning but it felt completely worth it.

We've been talking a lot here lately about observance, movements in Judaism, women's issues and the place of women in our tradition, and what brings us together and separates us as Jews. It gets pretty intense at times. My Talmud teacher argues that in the end, it is text that brings us together, and that learning text is a bridge to the tradition and to one another. She believes that whatever our commitments and observance, if we take the text seriously together, we're able to have a conversation. I'm not sure that this view is completely true--I think I could be the most learned scholar in the world and there would still be Orthodox men who would deny my right to discuss text with them. But I do think that this endeavor--both the microcosm of my three weeks engaged in study here as well as the macrocosm of Jewish education and commitment to text in general--are the key to our continuity and evolution as a people. It was an amazing experience to see scrolls and books made by people who lived so long ago and so differently from me but who are in every sense still my closest family. The fact that I can sit in the Beit Midrash (study hall), open up a Talmud, and actually converse with some of these old family members is an even more precious gift.