It is Shabbat afternoon, we managed to prepare lunch for friends Ammi and Anat from Haifa as well as Ronne and Bernard who are here with the CCAR.   It's no easy feat to prepare lunch in a kitchen the size of a table, but we managed to pull it off.  It's good soup weather!  Jerusalem is finally getting some of the rain it needs so badly.  It's windy and cold and Israelis are thrilled and grateful for every raindrop; I discovered that my winter coat is not at all rainproof.  Last night, we walked in the pouring rain to the Jerusalem hotel to join a group of rabbis on a bus to Shabbat services in Mevasseret Tziyon.  We were two cantors among several hundred rabbis who were divided up and hosted by different congregations around the country.  The service was pleasant and the congregational participation was full-voice, but the music, except for one or two pieces, was shopworn and identical to Kol Haneshama and Or Hadash.  There's a lot of Debbie Friedman liturgy here and it seems that the Israeli reform movement is badly in need of some new creativity.  After services we were warmly hosted at the home of Shaul and Tania Feinberg, where we enjoyed a traditional Shabbat dinner with several of Shaul's rabbinic colleagues.

Last week we were delighted to have a few days "on the coast."  Laura, Roy and I joined Henry and Laurie in Herzliyah--truly another world!  After living in a kosher apartment in very kosher Jerusalem, it was a novelty to find ourselves in restaurants where they serve "shrimps" and hamburgers with bacon.  Herzliyah was our base for a day of touring and "hiking" with Laura, Henry and Laurie.   Our guide, Yuval, did the best he could working around the weather.  We did manage to do some great eating.  Our most challenging hike was Arbel, a mountain up in the Galilee.  The pictures say it all...

Laura arrived last night just as Shabbat was about to begin, a challenge for her sherut driver who insisted on driving through parts of town full of observant Jews who resent drivers on Shabbat.  She joined us for Shabbat dinner after a walk through the new city.  We enjoyed a traditional chicken dinner in our kosher kitchen--nice to pull out the meat dishes for the first time.

Today we toured the Old City, haggled with a few merchants in the shuk, but mostly enjoyed walking around the city on this warm and sunny winter day.

Tonight we will head out to dinner on Emek Refaim with the Wolks who are here with their grandson.

It is Sunday evening and we have just completed our first week in Jerusalem.  It's been a glorious week for us, sunny and warm.  Great for us but not so for Israelis who are very concerned because the Kinneret has reached its lowest level ever and the Dead Sea is receding at an alarming rate.  These drought conditions have been going on for several years.  It's a far cry from the winter we spent here eleven years ago when it snowed at least 3-4 times!

We've had a marvelous week filled with hours of walking through the streets of Jerusalem. We celebrated Erev Shabbat at Kol Haneshama, then went to the home of our friends Evan and Don, for a lovely Shabbat dinner.  Shabbat morning was spent at HUC where the first-year cantorial students presented a special service for Shabbat Shirah.  We've loved living on Jewish time and were among the throngs at Machane Yehuda who purchase their challot, food and flowers before all the stores close down for Shabbat.  Today we marked Tu B'Shevat with a seder at HUC.  How much more meaningful this holiday is when not celebrated in the frigid Boston temperatures--the fruits are so plentiful and stores are filled with dried apricots, dates, almonds and figs.