Rosj Hasjana

Well, my first ever yontif (holiday) outside of the US or Israel actually went pretty well. On the first night, I was invited to a large dinner at an Israeli family’s home, which was very nice though unfortunately not kosher (probably the first time that’s happened to me at a yontif meal). Besides the non-kosher food, the other odd thing was that the meal was videotaped by a cameraman for Dutch TV. Apparently, the local station is putting together a piece on the holiday and sent someone over to get footage of the meal (since they were denied access to film in the synagogue). Throughout the meal, the cameraman kept asking people to explain on camera what the holiday means to them. I politely declined to be interviewed, but I’m definitely in the background of a lot of shots. Someone please set their VCR...

I had already met many of the people at the dinner from the couple of times I’ve been to synagogue, and many of them were American or Israeli expats. I was the only 20-something at the dinner, and there were more little children then there were adults. Normally, I would find this scenario roughly equivalent to the third circle of hell, but it actually wasn’t bad. In fact, one of the kids – a three year old adopted from Ethiopia – kept calling me “Uncle Jordan” and asking me to read to him. It had been a while since I’d read to someone, but as long as he wasn’t picking the Dutch books, I was happy to oblige.

On Thursday, I went to services at the liberal temple; there were between 100-200 people there, so it was pretty packed. They did have a choir, but the members sat among the congregation and only sang a couple of songs. The service did leave out a couple parts, but it hit most of the important things, and I actually enjoyed it a great deal (except perhaps for the sermon in Dutch). I probably liked it because it’s surprisingly traditional for a liberal synagogue (it’s apparently the only non-egalitarian liberal synagogue in the world), so it pretty much felt like a Conservative service.

That afternoon, I went to Kijkduin, another beach in The Hague. It’s less commercial and less touristy, so I liked it immensely. There was almost no one there and the beach was quite clean, so it beats most LA beaches in that regard. And I was there almost a full hour before it started raining – very impressive for the Netherlands! That night, I was invited to a smaller dinner hosted by one of the lawyers at the ICTY. And most exciting of all – I ate meat for the first time in a month!!!! Yay! They served jambalaya, and it was wonderful. Apparently the only kosher butcher in The Hague is closing this week, and probably won’t be replaced until after I’m gone. Boo. But I was pretty happy that night – and after I ate meat and drank wine, port, and some kind of Kenyan liqueur, I could have curled up and fallen asleep in my chair. It was quite tempting.

On Friday, I tried the Orthodox shul for the first time. It’s in a chapel in the back of a nursing home in Scheveningen and was not the easiest to find. If I hadn’t run into someone outside the shul, I could’ve been wandering for quite a while. I was surprised to find that there were barely ten men there. (I couldn’t guess how many women were in the balcony.) The service was a lot of chanting, not much singing, and went on forever with both the cantor and the congregation repeating every single word out loud. I was not a particular fan of the experience. Plus, the men kept snorting tobacco during services, which did not look terribly appealing. Afterward, the rabbi (a Chabad rabbi) invited me back to his house for lunch. And there was more meat!!! Yay! The rabbi seemed like quiet man with a sense of humor, and it was one of my more enjoyable Chabad interactions. There were only a few people at lunch (besides the rabbi’s six small children), and the meal was over in about an hour. Such a thing is usually unheard of at a Chabad house, and I was quite happy to forgo the hubbub that often takes place. I probably won’t be back to Chabad very much, but it’s nice to know it’s there if I get another meat craving soon.

Anyway, that’s enough blogging for now – I didn’t get back from going out to Amsterdam last night until 7:30 this morning, so I’m a bit tired. I’ll definitely have to write about that night, though, so I’ll post again in a day or two.