Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Last night I was at the craziest, most chaotic and directionless Rosh Hashana service that I have ever been to in my life and I could not stop smiling throughout the very brief yet meandering service. I walked in to the synagogue ten minutes early and found the place full, about 300 people - men on the floor level and women on the top. (I reallized after speaking with Dad last night, that I told him exaggerated numbers. What can I say, it was the wine talking and there was a lot of wine to talk about.)
When I arrived the place was buzzing, everyone was talking to one another and no one was paying attention to the man, who was not the rabbi, giving a speech in Finnish and in English about the present state of affairs in Israel. Then the man stepped down and the cantor began to sing - with no microphone - but the place never stopped buzzing. Everyone kept talking to each other and the cantor kept singing and occassionally bursts of prayer would surface here and there and then loud shushes would pop up and throughout the whole thing, the cantor kept on canting. Finally, less than an hour later, with no sermon, no speeches, no nothing, everyone wished one another shana tova, grabbed their children who were running wild throughout the temple and left. And then there was the after party.
I made my way to an area of Helsinki that I had never been before and chose a direction to walk and when I reached a group of police I knew I chose the right way. The Israeli ambassador Shemi Tzur was attending and security needed to be in place. The ambassador was in Joensuu the day before for the film festival and now, like me was in Helsinki for the holiday. The dinner had Israeli wine and lots of it. We went over the symbols on the dinner table - apples, leeks, fish, pumpkin, beets, beans, 12 in all, all prepared in some fashion or another so 12 appetizers and then we had soup and then dinner was served. I was attending the dinner with an Israeli filmmaker Moshe who we had invited to Joensuu to the festival. His second cousing lives in Helsinki and was helping to plan the dinner. We stayed out until well past my bedtime discussing this and that and since I have no school today I decided to close down the place with these folks. I decided not to go to the synagogue today as I was told that the service in the morning is longer, hotter and more chaotic than the one I attended last night. But however crazy it was, it was a lot of fun.
When I arrived the place was buzzing, everyone was talking to one another and no one was paying attention to the man, who was not the rabbi, giving a speech in Finnish and in English about the present state of affairs in Israel. Then the man stepped down and the cantor began to sing - with no microphone - but the place never stopped buzzing. Everyone kept talking to each other and the cantor kept singing and occassionally bursts of prayer would surface here and there and then loud shushes would pop up and throughout the whole thing, the cantor kept on canting. Finally, less than an hour later, with no sermon, no speeches, no nothing, everyone wished one another shana tova, grabbed their children who were running wild throughout the temple and left. And then there was the after party.
I made my way to an area of Helsinki that I had never been before and chose a direction to walk and when I reached a group of police I knew I chose the right way. The Israeli ambassador Shemi Tzur was attending and security needed to be in place. The ambassador was in Joensuu the day before for the film festival and now, like me was in Helsinki for the holiday. The dinner had Israeli wine and lots of it. We went over the symbols on the dinner table - apples, leeks, fish, pumpkin, beets, beans, 12 in all, all prepared in some fashion or another so 12 appetizers and then we had soup and then dinner was served. I was attending the dinner with an Israeli filmmaker Moshe who we had invited to Joensuu to the festival. His second cousing lives in Helsinki and was helping to plan the dinner. We stayed out until well past my bedtime discussing this and that and since I have no school today I decided to close down the place with these folks. I decided not to go to the synagogue today as I was told that the service in the morning is longer, hotter and more chaotic than the one I attended last night. But however crazy it was, it was a lot of fun.
// posted by Howard @ 11:57 AM 
