Jerusalem before Shabbat and Pesach kick in

You've got to know that almost everything I do day to day and need is within 10 minutes in one direction or the other. So today I walked to my hairdresser who on Friday works out of the basement room of the Kelmans, he the rabbi of Kol Haneshama Reform synagogue. Sam reduces prices on Fridays because conditions are a bit primitive and you have to wash your own hair over the bathroom sink. The hair story is incidental to Sam musing about all the different ways his clients deal with Pesach and how he himself manages to overcome the oppression he experienced as a boy with a demanding and unbending father. Then another woman arrived having an agitated conversation on her cell phone with her daughter who decided not to come to the planned seder at a friend's house. Obviously disturbed about this rebellion she resisted Sam's attempt to start a conversation about her agitation. He offered that it was best to ignore the daughter's decision. Woman in chair said there was more to it than that and so it ended.

Max phoned to alert me to the chametz burning (symbolic burning of forbidden grain products that you can't eat during the week of Pesach) that Saul's family was about to do in the park opposite their house. While rushing to be present at the fire-making that kids always love--they are 12, 9 and 7--I passed the chametz burning on the abandoned railroad tracks between Baka and the German colony where a friend from our former shul in DC was hanging out on the edge of the smoke with people for whom this is an annual event, at least as important for the conversations as for the ritual. All along were small clumps of charred newspaper and pieces of soon-to-be- forbidden bread. And those who weren't burning were rushing around buying gifts for hosts, last minute I-may-need-this before Monday (the end of shabbat and Pesach in Israel while outside it is Tuesday)items. Neighbors were loading up their van to drive to his mother's town in the north for the seder.

You don't have to know much or be particularly observant to realize that something unusual is going on today. Judaism for a few hours exposes itself on the street.