Friday, October 06, 2006

It's time to play Jewish Geography!

Went to Kol Nidre at the Vilna Shul on Beacon Hill. Within 5 minutes of a conversation with a young woman there I discovered that the rabbi of the shul she went to growing up in NY was also my high school Chumash teacher. Small (Jewish) world.

The Vilna Shul was an interesting experience. The building has tons of potential. I hope that they become more 'disability friendly' in the near future (picture me and an elderly woman, both of us walking very slowly up the stairs to the sanctuary). The cantor went on and on. "Lovely voice, but we're all starving, can we speed this up a bit?" kept going through my head. If the holiday is over at 7:15pm (as was announced by someone official), we shouldn't be so far behind in the service that we won't finish up until around 8pm.

These were the first Yom Kippur services held there since 1984. It felt kind of neat, like I was a part of something special. This place and the Havurah on the Hill associated with it seems to have potential. It's nice to see a movement (if you could call it that) for Quarterlife Jews that doesn't feel to New Agey. I think they'd benefit from doing something with Emerson College's Hillel. (Roommate went there and said that they used to go to services at Boston University's Hillel, which was apparently not a pleasant experience).

There seemed to be a good number of people in my age range there, but not too many were overly friendly, either with me (and Roommate), or with each other. Not that stayed for their break fast- my ankle and I did not want to be anywhere near the stampede to the tuna and egg salad.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I live in Boston and have heard about the Vilna shul and know it was closed for many years. How was it??

Esther Kustanowitz said...

Gee, that must have been some high school...

;)