Coming to America - Days 3-4: Vacation Routine

During the next couple days we started to settle in to a kind of routine, which mostly revolved around feeding and entertaining the children (duh - what did you really expect?).  In parallel to sharing those responsibilities, each one of the adults felt into their familiar roles.  I found time to work, the non-working and grandmother managed the kitchen, and the handyman grandfather found things to fix around the house.

Kitchen consultation

Dedushka (Leo) fixing the screen door

American Jewry*

Part of my regular routine is going to synagogue multiple times a day.  I began making trips to the local synagogue in the morning and at the end of the day, which is about a 15 minute walk from the house.  The synagogue is a run-of-the-mill mainstream Orthodox establishment, not particularly Zionist but not anti-Zionist in any regard.  From my first visit I felt extremely sad, nearly moved to tears, by the superficial way in which they related to their faith.  In our home community, Judaism is not related to as merely a religious practice, a communal framework, or a code of belief.  It is seen as a driving force behind personal, political, and even world change.

There is a well-known statement in the Talmud regarding the state of the Jewish people after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem: "Since the destruction of the Temple, all the Holy One has left in the world is 4 handbreadths of halacha."  The 4 handbreadths refer to, essential, a person's personal space as conceptualized by the Jewish code of law, and is equivalent to 1.9 meters.  This maxim is usually understood to mean that after the destruction of the Temple, the only part of Judaism that is still relevant, is still feasible for practical purposes, is the code of personal conduct.  Nowadays, there's a saying, "He's a man of the Shulchan Aruch," meaning that a person's focus is on properly observing all the personal halachot, as delineated in the Shulchan Aruch, a definitive 16th century work that became the basis for all further halachic discussions since.  Most people read the statement regarding the place of halacha as an imperative: since this is all we have left, this is a very important thing, and should be the sole focus of your religious devotion.  I recently came up with a very different reading, which makes much more sense to me - it's an outcry: this is all that people do anymore, and it's a travesty!  It's a travesty that the vast and powerful effect the Jewish faith once had on the entirety of personal, communal, municipal, and national circles of influence has been reduced to a mere set of prosaic directives for how to tie your shoes and which side to sleep on.

*This section contains my reflections of American mainstream rabbinical Orthodox Judaism, and its failure to fulfill its purported yearning for spirituality and the redemption of the world.  Since my criticisms are essentially just a decrying of the hypocrisy of this group, non-orthodox Jews who do not necessarily subscribe to a belief system that frames the Land of Israel as the only true home of the Jewish people and the only land in which the complete Jewish life can be attained should not see these particular comments as pertinent to them.  Not that they're without blemish, but at least they aren't a bunch of hypocrites...

Strengthening Bonds

The following days saw a general closeness between cousins develop and blossom.  They slowly turned into a single teeming mass of youthful impulses and energies, sharing equally breakfast, bedrooms, board games, Babushka, and bedtime stories.  The two notable exceptions were a) in upsetting situations the child would still seek consolation from a birth parent, and b) Arik was not in on the whole experience, since he was not home most of the day.  In addition, our children's abilities in spoken English (the main language spoken by their cousins) gradually improved, which greatly facilitated the whole process.

Avigail and Maya starting to hit it off

Dinnertime shenanigans

So Many Ducklings

Dear reader: if you're not familiar with the classic children's book Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey, please go find a copy and read it before continuing on.

On the fourth day of our trip, I decided the take all the children in the house (6 of ours + Maya and Layla - Arik was at opera camp, and Binyamin hadn't arrived yet) to reenact the story of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and their ducklings who come to Boston and make their home in the Boston Public Garden.  All the children were familiar with the story and very excited to go and see it first hand.  So first we take the tram down Beacon Street, retracing their waddling footsteps, then entered the Public Garden, observed the ducks and geese present their, took pictures with the swan boats, and then went to visit the bronze monument to the ducklings.  We were very surprised to learn that everything depicted in the book, written over 77 years ago, is just the same as it was then, except for one small detail - you no longer may ride bicycles in the park.

Dreamy Elisheva on the tram

Rereading the story, in the very place it happened

We really went out on a limb for this picture

The swan boats

The ducklings 

Layla, Amiel and Chanania hitch a ride on Mrs. Mallard's back

After we finished our duckling tour, we went to a nice little park along the river.

When it was time to head home, we walked back to the tram, but we discovered that boarding a train was futile.  We were downtown, and trying to travel in the direction of Fenway Stadium, on the day of a Red Sox game, in the middle of rush hour.  We didn't have a chance.  So we rode a different train line that run along with hours for as far as we could - one stop.  Then we started walking.  We walked for about an hour, during which time I was constantly scanning behind me for Noam, who was lagging, and peering ahead to make sure I didn't lose sight of Maya and Avigail, who were leading the pack.  When we all gathered at intersections, waiting for the light to change, people gaped.  On at least four different occasions over the course of the day, stupefied passersby asked me in awe and wonderment if all those children belong to me.  I usually downplayed it, saying no, some of them are my nieces, but later I realized that I should have just said "I have another five back at home."  I felt like I was reliving another page of that book, where Mrs. Mallard walks with her ducklings from the river to the park, and people on the street stop in wonderment.  Here I was, marching down the street with eight ducklings!  Eventually we passed Fenway Stadium and made it to a tram station where the cars were no longer crowded.