Our new home, by way of tonight's happenings

For those brave few of you that are reading this blog, we should say thanks in advance for caring so much about the "Family" to check this out. If you're reading this therefore I would assume you might want to know a little bit about our new home in Maale Adumim, so I thought that I might share a story or 2 from tonight.

As you may or may not know Maale Adumim is a fairly large community - last I heard is that about 30,000 people were living here, and there are plans for much more expansion. Maale Adumim, as far as we can tell, has a lot going for it - besides liking the hot and dry weather, there does seem to be a nice "vibe" here among the people that I get walking around. perhaps I am seeing this through the rose-tinted glasses of a new immigrant, but I would stand by my comment as the truth. Lots of "amenities" here in MA - restaurants, malls, a really nice Matnas (like an American JCC), and apparently even a bowling alley, for those that are into that sort of thing.

We live in a tiny dead-end corner of Maale Adumim, in the neighborhood of Mitzpe Nevo. Not sure exactly how it got that name, but in theory it might overlook Har Nevo, the burial place of Moshe/Moses, which is in the area across the Jordan River, in Occupied Jordan. As we published previously, the views here are out of this world, both towards the Eastern part of Jerusalem, as well as towards the Dead Sea and the mountains on the Jordan's other side.

The neighborhood is a "religious" neighborhood, which is probably a bit more complicated that it may sound. I don't really see anything monolithic about the people here - could get into a very semantic discussion about what "religious" means, but there really are all types here. I hope that religious does not mean that you have to have a sign announcing that at the beginning of your neighborhood, as we do have one of them, and I am very much not a big fan of it.....

Putting the kids to bed tonight, heard a lot of hub-bub on a loudspeaker - Elana asked me to look into it, and there was a guy indeed in a reflective jacket with the words saying "Chomesh First" in Hebrew, asking for food - for people that are going to be ascending to the Israeli-destroyed Jewish community, I think tomorrow. For our part, I gave him all the tuna and chick peas that we had in the house (not much, but...), which I am afraid may betray my political sympathies. What struck me was his "look" - black velvet kippa, LONG peot.....not what I would have imagined to be an activist look, but, all the best to him. I imagine that we were not the only people giving them food......Mitzpe Nevo, for its part, does have a little bit of the feeling of a "settlement" on the edge of a city. Judging by the bumper stickers and posters around town, that certainly is the feeling that I get. Maale Adumim for its part, is something of a settlement - but again, that would get me bogged way down in a settlement is, and I just do not want to get into it - it is a very boring discussion.

So there seems to be a 9pm Maariv/evening prayer service in between 2 buildings here in the neighborhood. Very much in the "open air" - it is downright stormy around here n the late afternoon - I am no expert at estimating wind speed, but it is something that a sailor would be very excited to be a part of. For that reason maybe, there seems to be a lot of trash floating around the neighborhood - pretty much anything that is not nailed down will go flying away, and a lot of plastic bags seem to be making a run for it.......it was windy enough last night that a chuck of foam, the size of a 3 year old kid, got wrapped around an unsuspecting person while praying the amida - by that I mean not moving his legs - so that he had to go on for a good bit with this large chunk of foam wrapped around him

So in my experience of 2 nights going to it, there seems to be a nice diversity of ages there - little kids to those "more senior". Tonight's special moment came when we had just started davening and a car pulled up to join us - just put on the flashers, engine running, and came over. Interesting thing is that the guy was not looking, well, too "religious", for however little that is worth. Seemed to me that he gave his friend a huge bearhug, who was not only davening, but apparently saying "Shema", which is not when bearhugging somebody is expected to happen (I am recalling a midrash of something of an opposite example during the reunion of Yosef and Yaacov). I say this not at all to be critical of this driver-turned-davener, but rather to give him all the more credit, as it seemed to me that he would not have ordinarily be praying with a minyan. He was not wearing a kippa - so one of the people in the minyan gave him his own kippa off of his own head. Somebody passed him a siddur (that they had in all likelihood brought to use for themselves), and there he was, davening like the rest of us. It all seemed pretty seamless......

Hate to sound like an intoxicated "only in Israel" story, but perhaps it is an only in Israel type thing. I certainly got a good feeling from the event.

Anyhow, I will hope to share more stories as they happem......