Skipping Class

When I got home late the other night, my roommate told me that he had been invited by a friend of ours to go to Masada the next morning, and they wanted me to come along as well. (Well, not me specifically, but additional people so that they could have ten for a minyan.) Our friend's mom is in town and her mom had a friend who, in middle age, decided to climb Masada at sunrise and become a bat mitzvah by reading Torah for the first time on top of the mountain. They had already rented a van and they just needed people to fill it. As planned he bat mitzvah woman, Anne, climbed up at sunrise, and the rest of us drove down at about 8am and met her there.

Masada is an mountain next to the Dead Sea where an entire Jewish community that lived at the top murdered each other in resistance to Roman enslavement. I'm not sure I particularly feel that it was a great act of Jewish heroism, but I do appreciate the site as iconic, think the ruins are pretty interesting, and can't really get over the amazing view. I haven't been to Masada since I was here when I was 15, and whatever I may think of the history, it has stuck out since then as story of my own heroics, since I managed to climb up before dawn (with a lot of help from my friends) despite by crippling fear of heights.

We were on a tight schedule and didn't get to climb up or down this time (though I might have liked to), but it was all worth it. I've never, ever seen anyone so excited to become a bat mitzvah as Anne was this week. I had never met her before, but when we started to service, I could tell she was nervous. As soon as she finished reading from the Torah, though, she started beaming with pride and dancing around the little room we had designated for shachrit. This is the story I'm telling to every 12 year who doesn't want to be bar mitzvah'd, and I was proud to be a part of it.

The whole thing also reminded me of what a beautiful country this can be and of what amazing things I will see if I skip class once in a while and breathe some fresh air. Despite the fact that in this tiny country everything is about 3 meters from everything else, it all seems really, really far from Jerusalem. I think if I can get out of this city and see some more of what Israel has to offer, I'll may actually learn to love it.