L'shana Tova

This Monday was erev Rosh Hashana and I met up with my friend Ariella in Old Town to go to services at Chabad. I am not exactly used to the way they worship. The men were in a larger room and the women in the kitchen(the symbolic irony of the location was not lost on me) which was adjacent. About ten women came and about forty men. It was all in Hebrew but I recognized most of what was being said or chanted. A really nice woman introduced herself, she was from New York but had been teaching English in Prague for several years. She invited us to the dinner that was happening afterwards. The dinner was very nice and people were very friendly and everyone was using English to communicate. We sat between a family from Israel and man visiting from France. There was also a lot of students there.

The next day Zack and I went to the Spanish Synagogue. Before we went in, the security guard asked if he was Jewish and when Zack said yes, and then he asked if he could see his passport. I went to look for mine but the guard said it was okay. There were only about twenty people inside, and the service was in Czech, English and Hebrew but the Rabbi was American and had a translator. The service was done in a much more familar style but was none too inspiring. The Spanish Synagogue is large and beautiful, with gold and turquiose heavily decorated walls. The contrast was a bit depressing between the gradeur of the past Jewish heritage and the dimsal turnout of the present. I forget sometimes though that it has only been about twenty years that the Czech have been able to worship and one of my professors said that the country tends to be secular, so I suppose this may just be how it is here.