Yom Kippur

Forewarning, dear readers: no set-ups occurred in the celebration of this holiday.

I went back to the Reform-esque synagogue for Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur, to give it another chance and because the Orthodox one was a little too religious and opaque for me. (Though I was, admittedly, rather curious to see whether the Yentas would arrange any further meetings with the Nice Jewish Boy.) It was much better here than it was on erev Rosh Hashanah – even though most of the melodies were still different (different than the normal High Holiday ones), the prayers were recognizable and the tunes were predictable enough that I could fake my way through it. There were many more people here (~40-50) which really made it feel much less isolating. In general it was much more natural and welcoming, and, as the real kicker, they did Adon Olam (with the tune I and probably the entire Jewish community the world over know and love) as the closing song, so I walked back to the metro feeling at peace and with the melody (of course) stuck in my head.

I returned this morning for Yom Kippur, and partway through the service, the President’s daughter came over and invited me to the break-fast at their house after services. Services continued quite pleasantly throughout the day – around midday I left for a couple hours and bussed down to a park nearby and strolled around – and then, after sunset, we walked to the President’s house for break-fast. The guests included the President and his wife, his two daughters, the Rabbi and his wife, a Swiss girl who was on a trip with her high school class which happened to coincide with Yom Kippur, and me. Everyone was super friendly and welcoming and made me feel very at-home (and I was very able to follow and participate in the conversations!)

The best part of the break-fast was, of course, the eating, but especially so because it consisted nearly entirely of cake. There was a chala and some fishy things – and 9 different varieties (that I can remember) of home-baked goods. We had:

• chocolate
• pear
• apple tart
• blueberry
• apple-something else that was a specialty of Alsace
• cheesecake
• brioche
• pain et chocolate
• a cheese-tomato-vegetable (not sweet) cake

It was marvellous. And, again, true to Jewish stereotypes, everyone kept pushing more cake on me (“Oh, but this is a specialty from Alsace! I used my grandmother’s recipe!” “Her chocolate cake is the best she makes, it’s her specialty!”) but wow, they were delicious and, needless to say, I was stuffed by the end of it. The cake was followed up with about ¼ of a shot of “Jewish vodka” that the President was very excitedly displaying to everyone at the beginning (and end) of the meal. I’m not really sure what made it Jewish, other than the label on the bottle. Maybe frequent consumption makes it easier to kvetch, kvel, or sharpens the appetite for some additional noshing?

Flutag

I’m starting to have quite the collection of absurd events I’ve attended here in Marseille. Today, down at the Plage du Prado, I experienced Flutag, in which teams built flying contraptions and then launched them off a giant ramp (with a pilot strapped on) to see how far they would fly. The ramp was conveniently positioned directly over the sea, so when the (non-)flying machines inevitably fell directly downward, the whole team ended up in the water.

This was pretty astounding, because the contraptions were all built around a theme (these included a Chinese dragon, complete with dancing peasants, a gigantic frisbee, something that appeared to be a shark on top of a piano, and a tour de force of a completely enormous, totally unaerodynamic cylinder topped with a zillion balloons representing the “recycling gang”.) (Though I’m pretty sure all those balloons were not so environmentally friendly.)

Here are some videos of them in action. It seems you can’t embed videos here without a youtube accout, and it’s too late for me to set one up now. For now, links:

Flying Frog Everyone’s yelling “Allez, Allez!” in the background. They had very high hopes for these planes.

Dancing Anchovies! This I can’t explain. The song in the background was something about anchovies and a cat.

Recycling Gang The “flying” machine was so top-heavy and balloon-ed that they could barely get it moving to push it off the edge.

Flying Frisbee Not surprisingly at all, the one built like a giant frisbee flew the farthest and had the least nose-dive-shaped trajectory.

Spectators at Plage Prado for Flutag

The shark-on-piano flying object.

Ultimate Frisbee

A few days ago I saw flyer on campus about a group called “Autour d’un cafe” to help French students practice their English in laid-back, friendly settings. It’s run by a bunch of Americans who have weekly converstaional shmoozes, with the idea that students will show up and get to practice English with native speakers of their own age. Being in the reverse position (that is, needing as much low-key French conversational practice as I can get) and always on the lookout for interesting ways to meet people, I decided to go.

The English class wasn’t too useful (my English is pretty stellar, after all) but I learned they were having a meet-and-greet party at the Plage du Prado later in the week and played Ultimate Frisbee every Saturday at Parc Borely, both of which are pretty solidly up my alley.

The party was last night – it consisted of snacks (including store-bought, prepackaged cheese you can find in the US: the goal isn’t to convert these French students into Americans, is it?) and freshman orientation-type games like Dizzy Bat and a three-legged race. It was nice, though, getting to meet some French students and talk to them about life. I also got my first (somewhat) legitimate taste of code-switching (when two, generally fluent people but I have just extended it to non-fluent ones as well, flit between the languages they mutually speak as dictated by whim and ease of communication of a certain idea). This was extremely exciting. I can feel the neural connections growing in my head and that I need to make less of a concerted effort to switch the French mode on. (Needless to say, I am still very far from fluent. I do lots of sagacious nodding when I actually haven’t the slightest idea what was just said to me. This happens most frequently on the subway, where although it is impossible to actually hear anything because the wheel-clanging is so loud, people manage to detect that I am from afar after about a 12 second non-conversation, after which they proceed to talk to me very excitedly about… something. Of course I never know what because (a) it’s far too loud to understand anything, and (b) I still have plenty of trouble understanding French.)

Ultimate frisbee happened today was excellent as well. When I showed up, they asked me if I knew how to play – apparently playing frisbee on the green isn’t as ubiquitous in the South, where all the other Americans are from, as it is in the liberal North and preppy Ivy League.

While walking to the metro stop after Ultimate Frisbee, I stopped at a park, where there’s a big business expo going on. I began talking to a guy manning a booth about arts events going on around the city and after we got through the bit about my obvious non-Frenchiness, he asked me if I’d arrived today. Seemed like a somewhat random assumption. No, I told him, I arrived 3½ weeks ago. He looked rather shocked at this and compared his extraordinarily tanned arm to my extraordinarily white one. He then proceeded to laugh at me and ask if I spent all my time indoors on the internet. I indignantly told him that I had just returned from playing frisbee, than you very much, and that I burn very easily! I do stick out like a white thumb, here, though. Wow, is everyone tanned.

Rosh Hashanah, part II: The set-up

Today I was set up with a Nice Jewish Boy.

After Friday night’s disappointment at services, I looked up Marseille’s main synagogue online. By Saturday night I started feeling like I was really missing out on Rosh Hashanah, so I took the metro up there to see what it would be like. I arrived an hour before services actually started (since I had no idea what time that would be) and wandered around the building, which was enormous and gorgeous (actually, much like a European church). It was probably 50 feet high, though I’m not positive because it’s surprisingly hard to estimate distances in the z-plane. It was segregated, so there was an upper balcony for the women, which was ringed with stained glass windows. The ceiling was painted geometrically and up front, right above the altar, was a dome painted the color of twilight and covered with little gold stars. I’ll go back some time when it isn’t a major holiday and take some pictures, as it was probably the most magnificent synagogue I’ve ever been in.

While wandering around killing time before services started, a grandmother-type accosted and befriended me, taking me protectively by the arm and forcibly showing me around. As she walked me down the street, she quizzed me on all the relevant points of life: Where was I from? Was I Jewish? What was I doing in Marseille? What’s my work? How old am I? Am I married? Do I have a boyfriend? Do I live in Marseille? Do I live alone? Unsurprisingly, my answers converged on “eligible Jewish bachelorette!”, so she invited me to have lunch with her after morning services Sunday.

When we went back to the synagogue and sat in the balcony during the service, she spent the entire time chattering to me in rapid-fire French, and introduced me to her chum who was sitting next to us – and lo and behold! said chum had an as-yet-unattached son who was 26. And he was such a nice boy! (Interestingly, paying attention and/or actually praying didn’t seem to be the thing to do in the women’s balcony, as everyone seemed to either be wandering in and out of the hall or excitedly discussing something with her neighbors.)

Lucky for me, this Nice Jewish Boy happened to be reading Torah Saturday night, so I could see his skills on display, which my adopted yenta proudly and continually brought to my attention. Even after she’d run out of complimentary things to say about his Torah-reading talents, she keps looking at me meaningfully and kissing the tips of her fingers in a very “Oy, he’s such a catch!” gesture.

The next day the four of us went to the mother’s home for lunch. When we all sat down, after a bit of initial random chatter, one of the women said to me, “So, Rachel, ask Bruno a question!” and everyone turned very enthusiasticly and expectantly to me, waiting to see what insights I was dying to learn about my future betrothed. Needless to say, I was unprepared for such pressure, both mentally and linguistically, so when I asked what he did, everyone seemed rather disappointed in my lack of creativity. Seriously, what was I supposed to ask: “How many children do you want?” “Do you like your latkes with applesauce or sour cream?” “What’s your schedule like next week? – cause I’m thinking Thursday would be convenient to go sign our Katubah.”

I don’t know if it was because of or in spite of this initial question gaffe, but the yenta and the mother spent the subsequent four hours speaking French so absurdly fast I managed to understand about 1% of it. The topics of conversation seemed to center nearly exclusively on their grandparents and Israel (not politics, but the land itself), though at one point, we had a mutual discussion about how people (read: Jews) in the US have fewer children than they do in France. Hmm.

Throughout this, the Nice Jewish Boy didn’t much participate in the conversation either, so I spent most of the time looking bewildered and every so often agreeing to comments I didn’t quite understand. When I left, they all called out “à bientôt!” to me, which I’m not sure is totally a good sign. They were referring to Yom Kippur services, which are just around the corner – right?

Rosh Hashanah

Last night was erev Rosh Hashanah, and I really wanted to go to services here. Even though they hadn’t returned my calls, I took the metro over to the Reform (“Liberale”) Temple I’d found at the reasonable-seeming time of 7pm with the hope that I’d just be able to walk in without any problems. I followed a middle-aged couple into the building, and there I was. No tickets required, no questions asked, no particular noticing of me. Great.

It was tiny – there were maybe 25 people there, and they were nearly all 40-60-year-old couples. That’s alright. I was content to sit in the back and attempt to follow along with the French/Hebrew combination. The fact that I wouldn’t be able to read the French fast enough and don’t know by heart most of the Rosh Hashanah-specific Hebrew prayers wouldn’t be too much of a problem as I’m just getting over a cold and so had pretty much completely lost my voice.

I was expecting to be able to just sit back and drink in the traditions, and feel the familiarity of the words and the service. This was, in fact, exactly the opposite of what actually occurred, as there was not a single melody I recognized. Even the V’ahafta. Every temple, every Friday night, every holiday – it’s always been the identical melody, the one positive anchor point that you’re basically guaranteed to have. Or so I thought, because what was produced last night was a very far cry from anything I’d ever heard before.

(Interestingly, most of the people in the congregation didn’t seem to know the tunes and/or the words, either. They were carried entirely by the Rabbi and a couple of stalwart-looking men in the front row who sang every single word of every single prayer at slightly different rates, so the words kept bumping up and tripping over each other as one sped up while the other slowed down.)

Religion can be such a great unifier – I was walking down the street today and saw four men wearing yarmulkes walk by, and it made me happy knowing they were coming home from services – because it allows people to form communities based on shared knowledge. But for exactly that reason, it can also be extremely isolating. Last night, I was with a group of people who were supposed to be my spiritual bretheren, but the fact that this all should have been familiar and comforting but was, in reality, totally unknown, was disappointing and mildly depressing. During the service last night was the first time I’ve felt at all homesick here.

I didn’t go to morning services today because I wasn’t sure what to do. I’m thinking I might try another synagogue at random for evening services, but it will be hard to predict the denomination of the temple and what time the services start. We’ll see.