Sabbath bride? Isn’t there anyone else who thinks that this is the most ridiculous term ever? Sabbath? Bride? Anyone?

I’m currently living in the Livnot U’Lehibanot guesthouse in the holy city of Jerusalem. It is my (quite possibly misinformed) understanding that the house serves as somewhat of a long-term hostel for volunteers from abroad, or a safe haven for people to work, sleep, and eat together in pluralistic Jewish socialism. The Livnot residents call us “chevre,” which I’m pretty sure means “group of comrades” in Hebrew, and we take turns participating in “toranut,” or “breakfast preparation for the chevre duty.” That’s right, everyone gets a chance to wake up at 6:45 to make giant buckets of oatmeal and scrambled eggs.
In addition, our comrade leaders at Livnot are very big on gloriously crunchy, guitar-playing hippies with masculine names like “Pesach” and “Ariel” accompanying our kitchen labor with repetitive songs about liberal selflessness and Mother Earth. We even drove two hours into the Dead Sea region for a midnight stroll in the desert and ten minutes of solitary meditation while munching on fire-roasted potatoes and onions, the official bonfire snack. It’s all quite endearing, but there are times when I’d like to welcome the Sabbath bride without being smothered by spiritual eccentricity, which is why I escaped to my uncle’s house in Metar for the weekend.
But if you know me at all, you should know that this is all right up my alley. I’m totally all about living in communism with the added bonus of my friends cooking me a fabulous breakfast every morning! However, I’m here in Jerusalem not to volunteer with Livnot, but for a three-week seminar at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. Going into it, I expected that Pardes would pretty much be my death, since most of the classes are based on intense discussion and deliberation of ancient texts from the torah, from rabbinical commentaries on the torah, and from rabbinical commentaries on other rabbinical commentaries on the torah. Emphasis on MY DEATH. However, I’ve found my first impressions of Pardes to be quite the opposite, if the opposite of death is 8 ½ hours a day, five days a week, of laughing my face off at religious people and their ridiculousness.
First of all, for me the name “Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies” conjures up an image of an academy built of Jerusalem stone, with marble hallways and beautifully decorated chambers of antique mahogany workstations, all surrounding a finely landscaped courtyard with a fountain and perhaps a statue of Maimonides or Moses. That being said, Pardes is located in an office building behind a Mazda dealership, with half of the classrooms on the first floor, and the other half up five flights of stairs in another part of the building. And while all of the OTZMA-specific seminars are held on the ground floor, we all must ascend the staircase every hour or so to study in the beit midrash. You see, the beit midrash is this magical room with too many books and too little air ventilation, where students are free to be loud and passionate about Jewish texts in a vibrant and encouraging environment. The beit midrash is apparently the only room in the building where true independent learning can take place, because every time an instructor finishes lecturing on this torah portion or that rule of Kashrus, we all take our photocopies of the Talmud or Mishna or whatever and head upstairs to devour the texts in groups of two or three. Oh yeah, it has also become quite apparent that learning is not possible on one’s own, and we instead must find a “chavruta,” or communist study buddy, to work with. It’s quite fascinating, really, and whenever I’m in the beit midrash I can feel the ADD wheels churning in my head as my chavruta and I are compelled to people-watch and discuss the possibility of flirting with the one and only attractive boy rather than read the assigned material.
Despite the absurdity of it all, I have actually learned quite a few important things in the last four days. The first, and most significant, is that American Jews are huge tools, or at least the Pardes-tastic ones here are. I definitely don’t miss Americans, or the boys, specifically. Second, I discovered that it is a West Coast phenomenon to hold a Passover seder whenever it is most convenient for you, rather than the first night of Pesach. I mean, in college I found out that you’re supposed to have a seder both the first AND second nights, but I thought I had just been ignorant because I’m not really Jewish, not because I’m merely from California. (Evidently, you only celebrate one night in Israel instead of two, which I also just learned.) And third, apparently the Purim story ends with the Jews killing all the bad guys. Who knew?
But the best part of this whole experience is the chance to observe the English-speaking world’s nerdiest Jews as they study religious nonsense in their natural habitat. I watched a kippa-wearing mensch passionately throw his hands into the air as he bellowed out the verses of the parsha; I attended a lunchtime ceremony for a woman to publicly proclaim that she had finally finished writing out the entire torah on notebook paper; I listened to a baby howl in terror of the roaring enthusiasm as her long-bearded father paraded her around the beit midrash. Who cares if the classes bore me to tears, and so what if the instructors don’t consider me a real Jew; having had this experience, I will always know that even on the most intolerable and miserable days of OTZMA, there are far worse ways that I could have spent a year in Israel. And baruch ha-fucking-shem for that.