HHD@NYC

Jeremy

So we’ve been in New York since early September, and we’ve finished our orientation, survived the chaggim, and even our first two weeks of proper yeshiva. We thought it was certainly time to blog about our experiences. As we mentioned in our introduction, we’re hoping to have this as a conversation. And I’ve got the unenviable task of beginning. I'll be writing like this.

Miri will be writing like this.

Most of the time being here, I could imagine that I’m just living in London. People do look at each other a little more on the subway, and there are marginally more Starbucks, but overall, there’s hardly any difference. So I thought I would tell you one of the first moments I truly realised I was in New York City.

This quintessential New York moment has not been gospel singers on the subway, nor an African American playing songs from Seder night on his saxophone on 42nd Street, nor seeing New Jersey at night from my 11th floor apartment window: rather, it’s been tashlich at the Hudson.

It’s Rosh Hashanah afternoon and all the Jews on the Upper West Side descend on Riverside Park—though as a fellow British person pointed out to us, it’s not a river at all but a ‘tidal estuary’. We meet the people from Kehilat Hadar, an independent egalitarian minyan. Just beyond them are a group from Romemu, a Renewal synagogue. On our way, we pass little boys with peiot playing ‘soccer’ (i.e. football) in the park. The promenade by the Hudson is packed with Jews of all varieties—black hats, modern dressed, playing guitars, having picnics, chatting, reform, conservative, orthodox, unaffiliated, hippies. The personal act of symbolically excising your sins has become the social event of the day.

But not even that is the true New Yorker experience. Because the Jews are blocking the whole cycle path, the cyclists are continually trying to dodge the kippah-wearing crazies with bags of bread. And, because it’s New York, they must know that once a year all the Jews on the Upper West Side come to the riverside. And, because it’s New York, they’re shouting at them to get out of there way and quit jamming up the path!

Miri

The only thing stranger than tashlich on the Hudson has been the saga of buying a lulav and etrog at the last minute. After receiving a couple of very helpful emails from the Hadar list-serve, we concluded that the best place to go was a seemingly random intersection on the Lower East Side. I deliberated for a few days about whether it was a good idea to even buy a set of arba minim (the four species that make up the lulav and etrog), but concluded that, if only for the value of a cultural experience, I'd give it a go.  

After a long subway ride, a friend of mine from the Mid-West and I roamed the streets of the lower east side. Out of place can't begin to describe how we felt walking through the non-touristy bit of China town, all the way along Cannal Street. We were starting to wonder whether the promise of stalls selling a lulavs and etrogs was a complete myth, or maybe some sort of practical joke, until we rounded the corner of Essex and Cannal... Four rotund men in traditional charedi dress with long white beards struggling to get into a tiny car were arguing loudly in yiddish, next to an Israeli man zealously guarding his table of etrogs! 

We picked out the most inconspicuous etrog and lulav we could find (trying not to think about the political implications of the origins of our lulavs), and started the walk back to the subway. As it turns out, it is impossible to find an inconspicuous palm branch, and we were stopped several times by fellow last-minute Sukkot shoppers asking where we had managed to find the illusive lulav and etrog stalls. One man even rolled down his window in the middle of a 4 lane main road to shout across and check he was going in the right direction! It foreign and homely all at the same time, the experience gave us a taste of what the lower east side might have felt like a century ago... 

Jeremy

Apparently NYC is filled with Jews. Who knew? 

We're bracing for a hurricane (or 'Frankenstorm'—not really clear to me why or when or by whom this term arose), so that's about it for this entry. We'll try to get the next post within 2 weeks, about our start of yeshiva and such.

Be safe.