Praha 14, or Shayne Maidel’s Life of Crime
(written 2/2/07)

Quick Note: I've been having serious issues with the internet, so my updates for this week might be somewhat spotty. However, I took a day trip this weekend, so keep an eye out for some amazing pictures! I know I don't get back to everyone's comments, but rest assured, I love and appreciate every one of them. Keep writing!

I went to Masorti services tonight. Masorti is the Conservative movement in Europe and Israel. It wasn’t that much fun, I have to admit. The rabbi (who is originally from New Jersey and was hired by the Conservative movement in the US to help start a Masorti chapter in Prague) was not particularly musical and seemed to use the same tune for nearly every prayer. Plus, he had two speeds: too fast, and too slow.

The Masorti don’t really have a synagogue of their own – I don’t think they’re big enough. Instead, they have services in a conference room at the JCC. (Convenient, because the kosher cafeteria that serves lunch and dinner every day is just downstairs. Their food tastes like it came out of my Mammy’s kitchen, except with more fat.) Tonight, that conference room was packed; not only were there students from two different programs, but there’s some rabbinical conference in town, and they all came, too. So it was rather full.

Since tonight is Tu B’shvat, the birthday of the trees, we held a short Tu B’shvat seder in the cafeteria downstairs. I’d never done this ritual until I was in college, but I was perfectly happy to gorge on the fresh fruit and nuts. Dinner was chicken vegetable soup, roast chicken, gravy, rice and salad. And lots and lots of terrible kosher wine. I never thought I’d find something worse than Manischewitz, but this is worse because it’s bad dry kosher wine. You can practically feel scar tissue forming on your throat as you swallow it. It’s like making a bracha over vinegar. And because it was Tu B’shvat, we each had four glasses of it.

When we got home, some people prepared to head right out to the bars, Ellen settled in for a night with her book, and I hemmed and hawed. Not wanting to be stuck in for another night with only homework as entertainment, I went up to Noel’s or Nol’s or however it’s spelled. Nol’s is an English-speaking bar/café/bookshop, supposedly with wireless internet, though I have yet to have any luck with it. Tonight, there was live music, an Australian dude with a guitar. He wasn’t half bad, and as I settled on the couch with my defective laptop, I started feeling good. It was like a night at Cool Beans, but with lots more cigarette smoke and Czech.

After the performer was done (he billed himself as “Bohemian Bluegrass”), I decided to give up on all hopes of internet, and instead browsed the one-room used bookshop at the back. It was so good to see all the familiar names and titles. It was, I discovered, an excellent way of treating homesickness, as it only made me happy. Here, I was staring at Chris Bohjalian and Anne Lamott and Sharon Creech exactly as I knew them in the US. It was wonderful.

I picked up a book I was certain I wanted to buy, and looked around for a person to pay. There weren’t any. The bookstore was curiously absent of any employees. I tried to ask one of the bar waitresses where I could buy the books, but they said I should find someone who’s name I couldn’t pronounce. So, in the end, I wound up leaving the amount for the book on the front table of the bookstore with a note with the book’s title and author. I didn’t have exactly enough money to pay for the book in cash, however, and I thought to myself that I’d just stop by tomorrow and pay down the rest. I thought I’d done okay there, but when I related the story to one of my roommates later, she seemed to think I’d committed some awful crime. Now I’m a little afraid to go back, because they might deport me for a self-imposed discount on a used book. Thoughts?

And now, before I go enjoy the profits of the night’s criminal activity…a quick story from tonight’s services.

As we were singing “Hodu L’Adonai” at the pace and tune of a funeral dirge, I noticed the girl next to me was crying. Not this-is-so-beautiful crying, but really unhappy tears. When the prayer was over, she slipped out, and I followed to make sure she was okay. She wasn’t from my program, but she was clearly an American, and when I caught up to her, I asked what was wrong. Homesickness, she said. She never gets homesick, but feels like she’s still adjusting to life here, and that everyone she lives with is already past the adjustment phase, and those prayers were just enough like home to throw her over the edge. I listened, found her some tissues, and eventually, when it seemed like she was slowing down, asked her if she’d ever seen that Sesame Street episode.

She had.