theyellowhobbit

So Shabbat at MM and AM’s was fun. For Friday night services I went to Shira Chadasha¹ which normally meets on Emek Refaim, but since their building is undergoing renovations they’re now meeting at the Hartman Institute. I met up with

rachinisrael there, and we went to her place for dinner.

It turns out her house is pretty much right across the street from the King David, (where I’m staying) which meant it was about a 30-40 minute walk from her house to MM and AM’s house. Dinner was nice and

alissainisrael was also there, which was cool because I met her a long time ago when we were both in youth group in high school but haven’t seen her since.

As

alissainisrael and I were walking out of

rachinisrael’s place she pointed out graffiti, which originally said “Homosexuals are unsafe for children,” but then “sexuals” was crossed out and now the graffiti reads “homophobes are unsafe for children.” I was glad that someone changed it to what it currently is. I’ll upload the photo that I took today [Sunday] at some point.

When I got back to MM and AM’s apartment, their infant daughter was still awake, and in no mood to go to bed. It was almost midnight, and it took us forever to get her to fall asleep, but finally she did.

I slept in until 11:30, finally catching up on all that missed sleep. This meant that I missed services, but I didn’t mind.

Lunch was really good, and I got to see my friend N, who is British and awesome.

Then we had a bit of Shabbat afternoon left, but Shabbat is really short. After Shabbat ended, MM and N showed me “Achmed the Dead Terrorist.” Quite amusing.

Eventually I went back to the King David. My family and I went to Norman’s³ for dinner. I got myself the smallest burger, which was still ½ a pound of pure beef. My mom and my cousin Lisa ordered this appetizer which was a sampler of all their meat things. It was massive. I ate one of the onion rings from it. And there were fries with my burger. Hopefully by the end of this trip I will have eaten enough fries to last me until I get to Israel/a kosher restaurant with fries again. And the meat was delicious. Yay meat.

Today we did a bit of touring, though our van broke down for a while and that was not fun. And I took lots of pictures, which will go up eventually, i.e. when I stop being lazy.

And now I’m chilling with

spin0za1, who just gave me an awesome back massage. (This is the first back massage I've had in months. I think the last one I got was from MZ and the previous was from

pastwatcher. Both of these were in October.)

¹A minyan where women lead all the things that don’t require a minyan² and men lead all the things that do require a minyan, and both men and women read Torah. And men and women sit separately. And they sing everything. Basically it’s my ideal prayer situation except for the fact that I would never be able to lead anything there because it’s huge and I’m not a member. But everything is well-led so it’s not the end of the world if I can’t lead.
²[Insert whole explanation about levels of halachic obligation and how one can fulfill another person’s obligation for something and the differences between men and women’s level of obligatedness here. If you’re really curious I can explain it, but it’s much too involved for me to actually write it out]
³Norman’s is the best meat restaurant in Israel. They have amazing steaks and burgers. And for the really adventurous eaters, they have a “sumoburger” which is a hamburger with 1 kilo (2.2 lbs) of meat. If you finish it you get a T-shirt and your name in their guestbook and on their website. I have friends who have eaten this burger and somehow survived the ordeal