Fitting the Part

Recently, I got a call out of the blue from my old roommate Captain Kirk. He wanted to see how things were panning out for me in Jerusalem. I told him things were great and we had a little chat. A few days later I got another call from him and we were invited to the neighbours' house for shabbas dinner. These are the same folks hat had invited me in my first few weeks in J-town. James and I happily agreed.

But now James could no longer put off a task that he had been avoiding for months. James had to buy a kippah. At the shook there are a couple of Judaica sellers with their booths full of menorahs, silver cups, double handled mugs, rams' horns, Star of David key chains and a whole table full of kippas.

Of course, being The Chicken, he picked out a kippa with blue on it. (I vetoed any kippa that had a sports team logo knitted into it. As well The Chicken wisely avoided black ones- they are for the hardcore people.)

James' suit pants are black and his dress shirt white, so combined with the kippa, my hubby looked like seriously Kosher Chicken as we headed out for dinner. This made me giggle considering the man practices religion like he irons shirts: only on special occasions and only under wifely duress. If you are wondering what I was wearing it was modest. Long skirt. White T-shirt. Flat shoes. If I was really trying to play Haredi dress-up, I would have had long sleeves, nylons and have covered my hair with a scarf since I am married.

We had a lovely dinner and again, I got to ask lots of questions about the religious communities since the family is what is commonly called "black". This is not a reference to their skin colour but rather the black suits the men wear amongst the more religious communities. We laughed when Taniel told of us a sect of Jews who jump out of vans on red lights and dance around until the light turns green. Likewise, they got a kick of our description of what Happy-Clappy means.

I also learnt that some of my secular friends may have it slightly wrong. They often complain that religious men only study in the Yeshivas (torah school for life), the women start poppin' out kids in their teens, neither work and basically the families suckle off of the government teat. This family tells me the government stipend is only 300 shekels per month (100CAD) and that many "black" families work at least part time, many under the table. In this family, the man studies at the Yeshiva in the morning and works as a computer programmer in the afternoon. The wife teaches women's studies at a women's religious school a few mornings a week and otherwise takes care of her two kids with another on the way. Like me, they didn't understand how the hardest of the Hard-Cores, who really don't work at all, survive on such a pittance. There must be some charity going on or something.

Since cabs are hard to find on Shabbat, we had a long walk home in the cool evening. James de-kipped, I de-skirted and we both crawled into bed. Today woke up and managed to spend the day doing absolutely nothing. I have to say, this shabbat thing is pretty nice.