Wednesday, June 29, 2011

My First Open Mic Night

Last night, fellow student Jay invited us out to an open mic night at a small club called "Off The Wall." After dinner with other fellow student Lenette, the four of us went and checked it out. I played two songs: Rachael & my "Ahavat Olam" and a song from How I Met Your Mother, called "Two Beavers Are Better Than One."

Enjoy!

Ahavat Olam

Two Beavers Are Better Than One

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

We're Published Photographers!

If you're reading this, you probably already know about our Flickr stream, which is the best place to see our best pictures from our adventures. Of course, we post to Facebook more often (usually to Sarah's page), but we've been posting to Flickr for quite a while.

The cool thing about Flickr is that you can search for something and look through anyone's pictures (as long as they allow others to see them). For example: want a picture from Petco Park of your San Diego Super Padres? Just search and it will come up.

It turns out, though, that some of our pictures have been featured in actual, respectable publications! No joke! Pictures & Links below:

Continental 737-824 landing at KSAN
Shot by Jer
Featured on Wikipedia (English, German, and Japanese versions), and the OneTravel blog.

Southwest 737-3H4 landing at KSAN
Shot by Jer
Featured on The Week magazine, AOL Travel, US News, The Alaska Dispatch, & BNET (CBS Business).


Prague 343
Shot by Sar
Featured on a Prague travel blog.


Prague 189
Shot by Sar
Featured on a random Italian site.


Cool! We're published photographers!

Date Night with Cars 2!

Things are getting really exciting here in J'lem. My fellow students have started arriving, the sun is out (boy is it hot! and it's not even in the throws of summer!), and I am helping put together an HUC supplement to the Bencher.

Last night, Sarah and I had a date-night. It was such a blast (and let's face it, when is spending time with the love of your life NOT a fun time?)!

First we saw Cars 2.

Now, if you know me, you know that I'm a huge fan of Pixar movies. They are brilliant storytellers and animators. Yet, I was fairly skeptical about Cars 2, since it has been met with the lowest ratings of any Pixar movie. Ever. Seriously. So I went in with an open mind. But here's the kicker: THE MOVIE IS FANTASTIC!

The imagery is absolutely incredible. The car jokes are hilarious. The attention to detail is astounding. It is a great movie. But you can't go into the film expecting UP or Finding Nemo. I found myself leaving the theater thinking that this is a brilliant version of Pixar doing their version of a kids spy thriller. And hot damn did they do a good job.

True, it's not as good as any of the Toy Story's, nor does it tell a story as brilliantly as WALL-E. Cars 2 tells a solid story with imagery that sometimes makes you forget that it was animated, brilliant music, and characters with beautiful integrity.

When you see Cars 2, and you should, don't compare it to The Incredibles or Ratatouille. Compare it to any other kids action movie. There's no competition. It's a 2 hour wonderfully fun road trip.

Then we had dinner at Cafe Hillel (quite literally, not worth writing home about), and gelato on Emek Rafaim. Sarah had a cone of half limonana (mint lemonade) and half melon (melon). I had a cone of half rimon (pomegranate) and half...wait for it.........banana waffle. They were both delicious!

It's always nice to have a date-night. Sarah is such an incredible woman and, while we do spend a lot of time together and entertain a lot, it's so wonderful to enjoy a night walking around the town with just the two of us.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Happy Father's Day


Sar and I have wonderful fathers. They taught us important life lessons, took us on memorable adventures, and countlessly reminded us the most important rule: be nice to mom.

Even though we're far away, we celebrate them and send our love to the men who have had such a remarkable impact on the people we have become.

To Ken & Andy, we love you so much. Happy Father's Day!




Friday, June 17, 2011

Video: Lights of Jerusalem & A HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT!

Okay, first the huge announcement:

After our year in Israel, I will be continuing my studies at the Los Angeles campus of HUC-JIR! Of course, Sarah and I are thrilled to receive this news, as we will be close to our family and friends. Not sure yet if the blog title will remain, or if the blog itself will remain, but we'll cross that bridge later. For now, we're pretty stoked.

And a video! Enjoy:


Thursday, June 16, 2011

Lion, iOS 5, iCloud and iTunes in the Cloud for Dummies...er...Parents :)

Introduction


Last Monday, Apple opened their Worldwide Developers Conference with a slew of announcements. Those who follow tech news were very pleased with the new soft products (I say "soft" because no hardware announcements were made), but for those who rely on us younger folk to interpret tech news (e.g., our parents), these new products may need some explanation. Below is a description of each new product's highlights, presented in a way that will, hopefully, make sense to our non-techie eleven readers. And of course, for those who actually do know something about tech, I'm including some additional commentary.


OS X Lion


OS X is the main operating system for all mac desktop and laptop computers. Lion is the name of the 7th iteration of OS X operating system. There are at least 250 new features in Lion, and there is no reason for me to cover all of them for you. Honestly, a lot of the features provide some minor tweaks to the system that, unless you're really looking for them, and you're really proficient at iOS (the operating system for iPods (touches), iPhones, and iPads) you won't notice. For example, Lion incorporates multi-touch gestures so you can use a four-finger swipe to go between open applications. However, there were some cool features showcased that make me think that it is worth the $29.99 upgrade if you use your computer a lot and every day.


Full Screen Applications - With Lion, you can make any application go completely full screen so you can focus solely on that application. A practical use of this is in Word. Imagine you're writing a paper, and you don't want anything else on the screen to distract you. Now, you can make Word full screen so you can take advantage of your whole screen and keep your focus on one application at a time. This feature, of course, will also be great for screen real estate demanding applications such as Photoshop, iPhoto, and Aperture, where editing pictures on a full screen will make a huge difference.


Mission Control - If you use a lot of applications at the same time, this will be a big feature. My guess is that if you are reading this, you probably don't. So, don't worry about it :)


Mac App Store - The App Store interface that iOS (again, iPod, iPhone, iPad) users are so accustom to is now being ported to the desktop/laptop. The Mac App Store philosophy is simple: All apps for your mac are sold in one place, with a similar interface to iTunes. Best of all, just like iOS apps, all updates go through this one store, making the process super simple.


Lauchpad - When the first iteration of Mac OS X came out, it included something that was absolutely revolutionary: the dock. In the dock, you could place your most used applications so you would not have to search through a whole applications folder to get to what you wanted most often and easily. Launchpad takes the idea of an application launcher and gives it the iOS treatment. Just like on an iOS device, you can have your apps presented on screens and in sub-folders in rows, instead of in folders. It will make finding and organizing your apps much easier than looking through the applications folder because YOU organize them however YOU want. For example, you can make a folder of all of your photo editing software, or one of your games. The best way to describe it is by having you imagine an iOS home screen, but on a mac. This will be a real benefit to most users.


Resume - You know what's the worst part about writing a paper? When you have written the most brilliant piece of prose in your life and your computer dies before you have a chance to save it. Yup, we've all been there. In Lion, everything is auto-saved. To which you might say, "well sure, Word already does that." True, however, this auto-saving feature is system-wide, meaning you can also save auto-save changes on photo edits, iMovie projects, or anything else you're working on. Even better, Resume allows you to instantly resume where you were in an application when you quit it. This means that if you're working on an album in iPhoto, for example, when you quit iPhoto and reopen it, it will take you right back to where you were, instead of back to the library.


Thoughts - This isn't a new feature, I just wanted to present my thoughts. When Leopard came out in 2007, it was a big evolutionary leap from the previous version of OS X. When Snow Leopard came out two years later, it was a very minor update that just made everything run much much faster. Lion, while not a complete revolutionary upgrade, is somewhere in-between evolutionary and revolutionary. The features mentioned above are fantastic for the heavy user and will make the OS X user experience better. And Lion makes it clear that Apple understands that users like the mobile interface and is willing to incorporate the elements that work into the desktop/laptop computing environment. For the heavy user, the $30 upgrade is worth it. For the light user, there's no need to be a first-adopter. Your stuff will work just fine for the time being.



iOS 5


iOS 5 is the operating system for iPods, iPhones, and iPads. This is the 5th major iteration of the software and, boy, is it a doozy! There are sites that have almost all of the 200 new features of iOS 5, but again, you don't care about them. Here are the ones that I find to be most noteworthy:


iOS 5 will be "PC free" - This means that your iDevice will sync with everything without needing to plug it in to a computer. Software updates (including system updates) will happen wirelessly, music syncing will happen wirelessly, and new device activation will all happen wirelessly. Of course, your email, contacts, calendars, etc. that already sync wirelessly will continue to do so.


New Notifications - Apple took a page out of Android's playbook and completely revamped their system of notifications. Now, when you get a notification, a little bar will show up at the top of the screen, without interrupting whatever application you're in, with your message. Want to read it? Just use a single finger swipe down from the top and your notifications will appear, along with the current weather and stock prices (although I imagine that will be completely customizable soon enough). This will eliminate the problem of being in the middle of working in one app and getting a pop-up notification that your friend posted on your Facebook wall. Now, you will be able to choose when you look at the notification. This is a far less intrusive way of dealing with notifications and will really improve the user experience.


iMessage - Think BBM or PingChat, but done in a completely streamlined way. Your iDevice can now send free text and multimedia messages to your other iDevice friends, and it's all organized in the Messages app. In other words, you can text to other iDevices for free. Fun fact: mobile carriers learned about this at the keynote. Suffice it to say, they were not pleased. But as users, we are!


Reminders - We've all made lists of things we need to do. Pick up milk at the store, return book to library, etc. Of course, making a list is one thing. But how often have you forgotten to do those things, even though you made a list? This is where Reminders comes in. In addition to being a to-do list manager, it adds geolocation. For example, you're driving to the grocery store to get your normal groceries. You arrive at the store and you get a notification on your phone: "Milk." In other words, the Reminders app will trigger reminders for you based on your location. Maybe I'll finally remember to return that library book…


Camera - If you're like me, you tend to take a lot of pictures with your iDevice. Now, you can do basic crop & rotate edits to your pics right on your device. Also, they allowed the volume up button to also be a trigger for the camera. This a great improvement over having to press the screen.


Thoughts - While they have not yet said how much it will be to upgrade iDevices to iOS 5, my guess is that it will either be free for all, or free for iPhones and $10 for iPads & iPods. Hopefully it will be free for all, but even if it's $10, it is WELL worth the upgrade. For me, wireless sync and the notification system upgrade alone are worth the price of admission.



iCloud


This is the part that, I believe, will make people the most confused for the sole reason that it introduces a concept that, even to Sarah and me, is a bit confusing. It took me a few times reading the articles and watching the keynote to fully understand how iCould works and why it matters. Hopefully, I can explain it in a way that makes sense.


Let's start with basics. With your AppleID, you can have all of your mail, contacts, and calendars stored in the iCloud. Cool, but no different than what Google already offers. In addition to these three basics, iCloud will allow you to keep 5 gigs worth of documents and backups available to you wherever you want. For example, you are working on a presentation in Keynote (no word on good MS Office support yet) on your computer. You get to your presentation and realize you left your computer at home. No problem. If you have the right cable, you can plug your iPhone into the projector, and pull your presentation from the cloud. Cool. Further, your purchased music, apps, and books (i.e.: anything you've purchased from the iTunes store) are all backed up automatically so if you get a new device after yours is lost, stolen, etc., you can just log into the iCloud and get everything back.


And there are pictures. Now, you can automatically have up to 1000 pictures you've taken on your iDevice uploaded to iCloud. Then, when you're on your computer, you can download those pictures in iPhoto (no word on videos). Here's a practical example: You're taking a trip to, let's say, Prague. You want to make sure your pictures are saved somewhere safe, but you don't want to lug around your computer. Now, you can dump your pictures from your camera onto your iDevice, and upload them to the cloud when you have wifi. This way, everything is backed up and safe, and you don't need a computer.


Thoughts - For a lot of people, this may just add one more headache into the mix. I would not recommend most of the people reading this to be first adopters. I don't know if I will even try to tackle iCould at first. Honestly, Google handles my mail, contacts, and calendars really well, so I have no intention of moving those over to a new service (although I might take gimbeljeremy@me.com, just to be safe in case I want it down the road). The photo storing is nice, but I sync enough that I only see its value if I was to take a lot of pictures on my iPod Touch or if I was traveling and wanted to be safe about my photos. Yes, you can stream your photos stored in iCloud onto an Apple TV for easy viewing. But a single purpose like this just seems like a complicated labyrinth to deal with this early in its development. I am going to wait until other people figure it out before I tackle it too intensely.



iTunes in the Cloud


Another feature that's getting a lot of press is iTunes in the Cloud. It's a part of iCloud, but is different enough that it warranted a different section. Honestly, if all of this tech stuff seems too complicated, this will probably be too much to handle. If you don't want to learn what it's about, let me just tell you that this is something you don't need to worry about, because it's something you probably won't ever use. If you are interested in learning about it, though, and are willing to brave the complexities, by all means, keep reading.


Let's say you bought an album in the iTunes store. With iTunes in the Cloud, that album will not only download to the device from which it was purchased, but to all of your devices. Bought it on your mac? Now it will automatically download itself to your iPhone, iPad, etc., up to 10 devices. And you can choose which previously purchased songs you want to download to each device. The nice thing is that as long as your music is purchased in the iTunes store, it will sync for free across up to 10 devices forever (if you need to, you can always deactivate a device if you are getting rid of it so you can get that count back).


If, however, you have music not from the iTunes store (and let's face it, who doesn't?), for $25 a year, Apple will scan your library and match your songs to versions that are in the store, and then sync the iTunes store versions to your devices, up to 20,000 songs. Okay, that may have been confusing again, so I'll try an example. The first album I ever owned was the Hootie & The Blowfish album "Cracked Rear View." Of course, when I bought it, there was no such thing as the iTunes music store because there was no such thing as iTunes. Now, I can pay $25 for a service that will give that album the same treatment in the cloud as if I bought it from the iTunes store, meaning it will be backed up and will sync with all of my devices. Of course, less noble people might download songs illegally, and pay $25 a year to have the music industry's blessing to get the legal version.


Thoughts - If you're not going to back-up your computer and you don't plan on regularly syncing your iDevices with your computer, then iTunes Match might be a good investment. The ability to have purchased songs backed up and available to sync with all of your devices is nice, but all it does it take one step (plugging things into each other) out of the equation. For me, just like iCloud, I think it's too complicated to tackle right out of the gate. Plugging things in seems to work just fine for me now, and since I'm only syncing two devices (my MacBook Pro and my iPod Touch), the service doesn't really do me much good.


Do YOU need it? No. Will it make YOUR life easier? Probably not. But aren't you glad you read this so you can understand it a little better?

Monday, June 13, 2011

Dinner. I Wish You Had Smell-o-vision

Sarah found a recipe for a summer style strawberry balsamic flatbread that I really wanted to try out. However, strawberries are no longer in season (turns out that in places other than the US, when a food isn't in season, it's not available). So what did I do? I just adapted the recipe and made the following supporting meal:

Garlic & rosemary cheese bread
Original recipe:
http://www.joythebaker.com/blog/2011/06/strawberry-balsamic-flatbread/

I made some substitutions (replaced orange zest with garlic powder and rosemary) and before popping it in the oven, I put a light sprinkling of shredded cheese and fresh garlic on top. Then, I baked it for about half the amount of time the recipe called for; partially because our oven just cooks hot and partially because that's just my style!
Result: Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum…Yummy. Sarah said that it's one of the best breads she's ever had. It made me feel pretty good to hear that :).


Salad with Ranch

Tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper, and home-made (from the packet, but made with low fat mayo made from olive oil and 1% milk) Ranch dressing.
Result: Yummy with a side of yum.







Pasta (Jer's)

Spaghetti with home-made tomato sauce (made from scratch with onions, peppers, squash, herbs, and tomato paste). Yum yumyum yum…..yum yumyum yum YUUUM!

Pasta (Sarah's)

Spaghetti with cottage cheese and cinnamon (an Israel family classic). I had a bite. It was yummerific.

Conclusion:
Everything we had tonight, except for the spaghetti and cottage cheese, was completely home-made and fresh. It was, as Sarah's great uncle Benia would say, VERY DELICIOUS (now, imagine that being said with a heavy Israeli accent…as those are two of about five words he can say in English). I can't wait to make this again and again (and for our friends and family in the states, get ready…because that bread recipe is coming back with us!). I have a feeling I'll be making this bread again VERY soon!

Photos: Our Trip To Prague

Sarah recently wrote an INCREDIBLE piece about our trip to Prague with wonderful detail and commentary. While Sarah included some pics, we wanted to share all of them with you!

Enjoy!





Saturday, June 11, 2011

Our Trip to Prague

Guest post by Sarah

Prague - June 5 - 9, 2011


Jeremy and I had been thinking for a while about going on a little adventure. As most of you probably know, Jeremy really likes airplanes, airline websites, and pretty much anything that has to do with travel. In his perusing of local travel websites, we found a site with last minute deals to Europe. Now, when I say last minute, I really mean it. Some of these trips give you less than 5 hours to get to the airport and on the plane. Now, 5 hours is a little short for me, but we did decide last Thursday night to pack our bags and head to Prague just two days later.


DAY 1 - Sunday


The sheirut (shared cab that takes you to the airport) picked us

up on Sunday at 2 AM, after just a few hours of rest. We dozed on and off on the way to the airport, got our boarding passes and headed through security. We changed some shekels into Koruny and boarded our plane to Prague. The flight was a charter flight on an airline called "Travel Service." We took a bus from the terminal out to the plane and went up the steps where Sinatra music was playing. A very nice touch. The flight was completely uneventful, at least in my view since I slept the entire time. We landed in Prague around 10am, and were met by a Hebrew-speaking Arkia representative(Arkia is the travel agency we used to book the flights, but they are also an Israeli airline), who loaded all of us onto a little bus and took us to our hotels.


Jeremy and I stayed at the Dum Hotel, which was nothing to write home about. Or blog about, as the case may be. It was perfectly satisfactory for our needs, and our reservation included breakfast in the morning. We dropped our bags in our room, and braved the bus and metro to get to the center of the city. We found that public transportation in Prague is actually very easy. The buses, metro, and light rail come exactly at the minute they say they will and get you reliably to your destination. We bought day passes that were good for 24 hours, so we just hopped on and off all three modes of transport as we pleased.


(Feel free to peruse our pictures from Days 1 and 2 as I describe where we are going. Or, if you prefer, there is a "best of" set on Facebook)


Our first stop was the famous Prague Castle, Pražský hrad. On our way, we walked through the Mala Strana neighborhood, and had lunch at a little cafe right on the river overlooking the Charles Bridge. We saw the Kafka Museum, and the famous statue of two men peeing in the courtyard. We meandered through Mala Strana, through the neighborhood with all the foreign embassies, and up some very long stairs to the castle. Our first stop was the square outside the castle, where we walked around and admired the views of the city and the myriad different types of architecture found around the square. Prague Castle is actually the biggest castle in the world and has housed the Kings of Bohemia, Holy Roman Emperors, and the presidents of the Czech Republic. Once inside the castle, our first stop was St. Vitus Cathederal (which can be seen from all of Prague). St. Vitus is a gothic style cathedral, which really stands out from the romanesque Basilica of St. George (also beautiful).


From there, we visited the Memorial to the Victims of Communism, which is a beautiful set of metal statues of men set on an incredible steep hill. Our walk took us to the 120 year old funicular (funiculee), which took us on a ride up to the top of Petrin Hill.We were able to visit the inside of the Catherdral before heading back to the gate to watch the changing of the guards. We spent about an hour walking through the streets of the castle and admiring the buildings and the views, the walked down the hill back to the Mala Strana neighborhood.


Petrin Hill sits on the west side of Vltava River, and is about 130 meters above the river itself. The top of the hill boasts incredible rose gardens. We really enjoyed just walking through the flowers and all the paths through the parks. Also on top of the hill is the Petrin Lookout Tower, which strongly resembles the Eiffel Tower. Even though the tower itself is only 60 meters high, it actually stands taller than the Eiffel Tower since it sits atop a hill. Climbing the tower was a recommendation we had received from my brother, so we decided to do it. We climbed the 340 steps up to the top, and were rewarded with a 360 degree view of the city and the river. As you can imagine, we took a few pictures up there before heading back down to the river.

From there we jumped on the tram, and headed toward the Old Town Square. Although we just missed the Astronomical Clock show, we were able to see the clock, the Tyn Cathedral, St. Nicholas Church, and the Old Town Hall. Since we knew we'd be back in the square the following day, we headed down one of the side streets and picked a small Italian restaurant for dinner. Jeremy and I shared a pizza and some absolutely incredible Gnocchi. After dinner we journeyed back to the hotel (we had been up since 2am…).


DAY 2 - Monday


Well rested and tummies full from breakfast, we headed out Monday morning to the Museum metro stop. We walked up from the metro to the beautiful National Museum, located right on Wenceslas Square. The museum is built in the neoclassical style, and is truly breathtaking. As we walked into the lobby we bought tickets for a concert later in the evening, right in the National Museum. Just in front of the museum, there was a long wall displaying the history of Prague from 1000 years ago, through WWI and WWII, Nazi occupation, the communist era, and present day. We walked through Wenceslas Square and over to the Municipal House - an incredible building built around 100 years ago in the art nuveau style. Adjacent to the Municipal House is Smetana Hall (a concert hall). We unfortunately only got to see it from the outside, but it's supposed to be absolutely spectacular on the inside.


From the Municipal House we walked back to Old Town Square, and were able to see the Astronomical Clock do its thing. The show lasted about a minute, and involved some puppets coming out of the tower while the bells rang. Jeremy said he wants that minute of his life back, but I thought it was fun to see. After walking around for a little while, we met up with Aharon, our guide for Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. (Quick side note: if you get the chance to visit Prague and are interested in seeing the Jewish sites, you absolutely must get in contact with Aharon. He was fantastic, and really enhanced our visit both to the Jewish Quarter and to Terezin the following day.) Aharon is truly an expert in the Jewish history of Prague, and it was so cool to visit the Jewish sites with his commentary. Jewish history in Prague is like nowhere else in Europe. Jews have been living in Prague since the 10th century, and were eventually confined to a walled ghetto. Most of the Jewish quarter was actually demolished in the early 1900s, but there are six synagogues, the Jewish cemetery, and the Old Jewish Town Hall left. While most of Jewish life in Europe was destroyed by the Nazis during WWII, Prague was preserved to be a museum of an extinct race. Artifacts from all over the Nazi occupied "Czech-lands" (as Aharon kept calling them) were brought to Prague and catalogued and preserved. So really, Prague has a very old Jewish history, uniquely preserved unlike any other European Jewish community.


We started our tour at the Pinkas Synagogue, which is now a memorial to the Jews of the Czech Republic who died in the Holocaust. The Pinkas Synagogue was opened in 1479 and showcases renaissance design. Now, as a holocaust memorial, the walls are covered in names of Czech people who lost their lives during the Holocaust. Each wall is covered with writing, starting with the name of the town, the person's last and first name, and dates of birth and death. It is truly a stunning site to see all of these names covering multiple rooms - it truly provides a sense of how many Czech people lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis. Upstairs in the synagogue, there is a display of children's drawing from Terezin from 1942-44. Terezin was unique, in that people who were there were allowed to keep the things they had brought with them, and arts and culture truly flourished both among the adults and the children during their time in the camp. We saw the drawings done by the children, and also some hand-made Judaica (menorahs and kiddush cups) that clearly was made for Jewish ritual activity in the camp.


From the Pinkas Synagogue we moved to the Klausen Synagogue, just next door. This synagogue got its name from the German word "klaus," meaning small. There were originally 3 small buildings where the Klausen synagogue now stands, erected by Mordechai Maisel in the late 1500s. When these buildings were destroyed by a fire in 1689, the Klausen Synagogue was build. Even though it is not a small structure, it kept a name reminiscent of the buildings that used to be there. The synagogue is the largest of those in the Jewish Quarter, and now houses an exhibition about Jewish cultural life. Each display cabinet is about a different holiday, and while Jeremy and I didn't learn much from the displays, we can appreciate that it is an incredible teaching tool for non-Jewish people who come to visit Jewish Prague. Adjacent to the Klausen Synagogue is the Old Jewish Cemetery. This cemetery is truly like nothing I have ever seen. The oldest graves in the cemetery have been traced back to the early 1400s, and the cemetery was active through 1787. While there are 12,000 tombstones in the cemetery today, there are though to be many many more people buried there. Since this was the only land where Jews were allowed to bury their dead, graves here are in layers, with new earth being brought to build up the ground around the new graves. Some headstones were lifted along with the additional earth, and some were not. This leads to the incredible cemetery, with headstones in every direction and at every height. Walking through the cemetery, it is clear that the level of the earth is way above the street level, and in fact, one (well, one taller than I) can reach up and top the roof of the adjacent building. Probably the most famous people buried in the cemetery are Rabbi Loew (d. 1609) and Mordechai Maisel (d. 1601). Even though we refused to pay the 40 Koruny fee to take pictures in the cemetery, we managed to snap a few photos of the headstones.


Our next stop was the Ceremonial Hall, with a display about the Hevrah Kaddishah, the burial society (originally founded in Prague in 1564). The museum contains a series of paintings depicting the steps from sickness to death to burial preparations, to burial itself. From there we walked to the Old-New Synagogue, originally built around the middle of the 13th century in early gothic style. This is one of only three synagogues in Prague that are still used for services. The main room boasts a beautiful vaulted ceiling, with traditional wooden chairs and desks for study covering the walls and surrounding the centrally located shulchan (the table from which the Torah is read). An addition to the synagogue was built much later for the women, who are able to be in the hallways surrounding the main room and listen to the service through small slit-like windows build into the walls of the main room.


The Spanish Synagogue was next. Interestingly, Hebrew does not distinguish between "Spanish" and "Sephardic," both being translated from the word "Sepharadi." So, even though this synagogue is called the "Spanish Synagogue" and was built in the Moorish style, it has no connection to the Spanish Jews. The Spanish Synagogue is absolutely stunning. The entire interior is covered with Islamic motif painting, and it all culminates in a large dome over the center of the synagogue and the ark. Jeremy and I were excited to learn that there would be services at the Spanish Synagogue for Shavuot the following day, especially since its the only synagogue in Prague that has mixed seating for men and women. We unfortunately didn't get to daven there, but that's a story for another day and time (keep reading, that day and time is tomorrow evening).


Our last stop on our tour with Aharon was the Maisel Synagogue, named for Mordechai Maisel, the mayor of the Jewish Town who funded extensive building in the renaissance reconstruction of the ghetto. This synagogue was built in the early 1590s, but was destroyed by fire and was rebuilt in the baroque style, and eventually again in the pseudo-gothic style in the early 1900s. Today, the synagogue contents an exhibit about the history of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia.


We parted ways with Aharon, and headed back toward the Spanish Synagogue to have lunch at a pasta place that he had recommended. Boy, was it delicious. If you find yourself in that area, we highly recommend lunch or dinner at Pasta Cafe. It seemed to be mostly locals, and the food was absolutely delicious. (Side note: This is the only place in Prague where we found tap water offered.) Even though this was a late lunch (about 3:30pm), it ended up being perfect timing. A few minutes after we sat down inside a huge rain storm swept into Prague. Lucky for us, the rain and hail were gone by the time we finished lunch and were ready to continue our stroll. After lunch, we walked down the street to the Robert Guttmann gallery, which was included on our Jewish Quarter admission ticket, but wasn't part of our tour with Aharon. The gallery currently has an exhibition of pictures of synagogues from all over the Czech Republic. After just visiting the Prague synagogues, it was really interesting to see what synagogues throughout the rest of the country look like.

Our next stop on our adventure took us to what is probably the best known landmark in Prague - the Charles Bridge. We walked from the right side of the river over to the left, and enjoyed watching the musical performers and vendors along the way. While the bridge was crowded, it was fun to see all the people enjoying the bridge. The statues along the bridge are beautiful against the backdrop of the city, but unfortunately are starting to crumble since they were made of sandstone. Most of the statues have been replaced with replicas in order to preserve the originals. When we reached the other side of the bridge we wandered around the Mala Strana area for a little while, then walked back toward the National Museum and Wenceslas Square, where we had started our day by buying tickets to the Czech Strings Chamber Orchestra concert that night.


The concert was held right in the main foyer of the Museum, with the musicians on a landing and cushions on the stairs leading up from the landing for people to sit and watch. The concert was fairly sparsely attended, but really was a highlight of our trip. The orchestra included a pianist, first and second violin, viola, upright bass, and a cello. They played pieces from Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Smetana, Paganini, Brahms, and many others. After the concert we walked back to the river to watch the sunset, then came back to Wenceslas Square for dinner at a restaurant featuring "local cuisine" with live jazz music. After dinner it was back to the hotel via the metro and the bus to get some sleep.


(Pictures from Days 3 and 4 can be found here)


DAY 3 - Tuesday


Tuesday morning we headed back to the bus and the metro into the city to meet Aharon at the train station. The train station has both a very modern portion that is all metal and glass, and a much older portion from the early 1900s that is just stunning. Since we all know that Jeremy likes modes of transportation, we took some time to walk around the train station before meeting Aharon. Aharon picked us up and we drove about an hour through the countryside to the town of Terezin and the concentration camp. Terezienstadt is a concentration camp unlike any other in Eastern Europe. While it housed tens of thousands of Jews in the early to mid 1940s, it was never intended to be a death camp. Rather, Jews were transported from Terezin to other camp where they were exterminated. Terezin was originally a fort that was built in the late 1700s to protect the region. Hundreds of years later, it was used for military and political prisoners. In 1941, the Gestapo turned Terezin into a ghetto. This camp, unlike the others, was set up as a "model Jewish settlement" to show the Red Cross how well the Jews were being treated and was used as propaganda to be distributed around the world. In reality, though, it was a concentration camp where over 33,000 people died during the Holocaust and another 88,000 were transported to be murdered. Unlike in other concentration camps, Jews in Terezin were allowed to keep the belongings that they brought with them from home. Because of this, there was an incredible amount of art, plays, musical performances, and religious expression that took place in the ghetto.

We started our tour at the museum, where we saw a short movie of the way in which the Nazis portrayed Terezin for the Red Cross and the rest of the world. The movie was actually lost for many years after the way, but was found and has been integrated with drawings from the Jews in the camp to show the differences in the way that the Nazis and the Jews were portraying what was happening in the camp. We continued through the museum, which detailed how the Jews came to the camp, and where they were transported from there. After the museum we visited a really interesting building that had been used as a secret synagogue during the war. The inside of the little space was painted with all sorts of Jewish symbols and Hebrew sayings, and you could just imagine people gathering there secretly to pray. Our next stop was outside of Terezin, at the cemetery. Since Terezin is a town that has existed for many years, the cemetery houses mass graves from WWI, mass graves of Jews from the Holocaust, and Soviet soldiers who were killed during the war. Also in the cemetery is the crematorium, which was used during the last few years of the war to help bury those who died in the camp. Our last stop was to one of the barracks, which is not set up as a museum both exhibiting the living conditions in the ghetto and displaying the incredible music and arts that were present during that time. Being there really gave me a sense of what it must have been like to live in those conditions.


For me, visiting Terezin was a really important part of this trip. My mom's parents were both survivors of the Holocaust, and even though they were in labor camps and were hidden for parts of the war, the concentration camps are a huge part of my family's history. Especially since my grandmother passed away just a few months ago, it was so important for me to be able to see the conditions that existed during the hardest time in her life. A few years ago I visited Klooga with my parents, which is a labor camp in Estonia where my grandfather was during the war. While not much of Klooga is left and it really is just some barracks and a memorial, Terezin still looks exactly like it did during the war. It was a little weird to see people living in the city and going about their daily lives there.


After our drive back to Prague, Aharon dropped us off at Havansky Pavilion, which is a beautiful park up on a hill overlooking the city. Jeremy and I enjoyed the views from up there, then walked down via the metronome (literally, a giant metronome on a hill), to the Jerusalem Synagogue. The Jerusalem Synagogue was built in the late 19th century, and is an interesting merge of the Moorish style and art-nouveau. The colors on both the outside and the inside of the synagogue are vibrant and fantastic. Even though the inside of the synagogue was under construction and covered in scaffolding, we could see the true beauty of the space. From the synagogue we walked back toward the Jewish Quarter, and had some gelato along the way (Jeremy had banana-chocolate and I had apricot). Since we were planning on going to the Spanish Synagogue for Shavuot, we went back to Pasta Cafe and had dinner. At 7pm we walked next door to the synagogue, but it was closed. We waited around for almost half an hour, but nothing. I can only guess that either services were much later, or they were in another location. I was disappointed, I'll admit - I was really excited to be in such a beautiful synagogue for Shavuot. So instead, we ate ice cream and lots of cheese to celebrate. Our evening ended with a walk along the river to watch the sunset, then it was back to the hotel for our last night in Prague.


DAY 4 - Wednesday


By the end of Tuesday we had seen most of what we wanted to see in Prague, so on Wednesday we saw some lesser-known sites recommended by the guidebook, and by Aharon. We started the day at the Vysehrad Castle, with is smaller and less well-known than the main Prague Castle. The castle has an incredibly elaborate cemetery and the Church of Saints Peter and Paul. The views from the castle were beautiful and very different than many of the views that we had seen so far. Since the castle was on the right side of the river and far south of most of the places we visited, it was interesting to see this new view of the city.


From the castle, we walked down the hill and took the tram up to the dancing building. This building is quite new, completed in 1996 by Frank Gehry. The house is nicknamed "Fred and Ginger," as it was designed to resemble a pair of dancers. From there we continued up the river and took the tram up to Strahov Monestary. While the monastery itself was beautiful, my favorite part was the restaurant overlooking the city where we had lunch. The food was delicious, and the view was absolutely spectacular. If you have some time when in Prague, I highly recommend visiting and eating there. From the monastery we headed down to the Vrtbov Gardens, which were a recommendation of our guide Aharon. And he was right, they were just beautiful. The gardens climb a series of terraces, from which you can see the whole city. Our next stop was at the Vystaviste iron building, which boasts a dancing water show. Unfortunately, the water show is only at night, so we stayed long enough to see a few buildings then took the tram over to the Zizkov TV tower.


Zizkov TV Tower is the tallest tower in Prague, build between 1985 and 1992. In 2000, it was decorated with climbing babies, which were pretty fun to see. On our walk to the metro we passed the Former Jewish Cemetery where Kafka is buried, then walked past a beautiful church and farmers market. We took the metro to Namesti Miru, and had more delicious gelato (I had yogurt flavor, Jeremy had orange) before meeting Alison at the church. Alison is a friend of ours from San Diego who is spending the year teaching in Prague. She took us to a fantastic local beer garden and introduced us to Gambrinus, a local Czech beer. It's always so nice to see friends from home, especially so far away!


From there we headed ran over to Mala Strana to try to buy some incredible mugs that we had seen in one of the stores, but unfortunately the store was closed. We jumped back on the metro and headed back to the hotel, just in time to grab our backpacks and head to the airport.


Some concluding thoughts:

  • Prague is an incredible beautiful city. If you've never been, I would definitely add it to your list.
  • I'm pretty glad that the weather on the internet can't be completely trusted. We were expecting rain and thunderstorms the entire 4 days we were there but only had a little rain during lunch on Monday and just a little more on Wednesday (we only had to briefly pull our our umbrellas and rain gear).
  • This is the first time that I've travelled with just a small backpack. Traveling light was pretty fantastic.
  • Water in Prague is more expensive than beer. Also, most of the food there is based around meat and potatoes since during the communist era people were only allowed one cookbook and goulash was the most common food.
  • We can, in fact, exist for 4 full days without a computer. Go us.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

This is Why Twitter is Amazing

Only in this medium could this kind of conversation happen with such incredible people.


Here's how I connected to Julie Silver -- acclaimed Jewish singer/songwriter("Chazak Chazak" and "I Am All Around" to name a few)/awesome person -- and Jason Robert Brown, Tony Award winning writer of such musicals as Parade, The Last Five Years, and 13 (which the San Diego J-Company recently put on).


I was listening to my iTunes on shuffle today, and the song "Shiksa Goddess" came on. This is a song from The Last Five Years that describes how the guy main character would fall madly in love with anyone who isn't Jewish (I'm putting commentary on that issue to the side for the sake of this story). Two of the stanzas go as follows (emphasis added):


If you had a tattoo, that wouldn't matter

If you had a shaved head, that'd be cool

If you came from Spain or Japan or the back of a van

Just as long as you're not from Hebrew school

I say, now I'm getting somewhere

I'm finally breaking through

I say, hey, hey, Shiska Goddess

I've been waiting for someone like you


I've been waiting through Danica Schwartz

And Erica Weiss

And the Handleman twins

I've been waiting through Heather Greenman

Annie Minkus, Karen Pinkus, and Lisa Katz

And Stacy Rose and Ellen Kaplan and Julie Silver and Janie Stein

I've had Shabbas dinners on Friday nights

With every Shapiro in Washington Heights


I had always assumed that this reference to Julie Silver was some sort of "in" joke. Of course, when mentioning Jewish women, Jason Robert Brown would mention some famous Jew that everyone who's in the community would recognize! "In" joke, good times.


Stage set.


After listening to the song, I reached out to Julie (since we played a Shabbat Unplugged service in March and have since been going back and forth on Twitter) and asked about the line. I will let the tweets speak for themselves. They are presented in chronological order.


Me: @JulieAnnSilver So I'm listening to "Shiksa Goddess" from Last 5 Years...do you know Jason Robert Brown or is ur name drop just coincidence?


Julie (in a message): Huh?


Me (continuing the message): Have you heard the song "Shiksa Godess" from musical The Last 5 Years? The character lists all these Jewish women he's dated & he says u! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C99-mHTMSzI


Julie: Well now I certainly have made it big time. Thanks for sending.


Jason Robert Brown: It's actually "Silber", but close enough! RT @jeremygimbel: @JulieAnnSilver Listening to "Shiksa Goddess"- Is ur name drop just coincidence?


Julie: @MrJasonRBrown @jeremygimbel I'm at 35,000 feet and just heard the news. I'm crushed. . . But I did not get a shout out from him! The only consolation is that I married a shiksa goddess. HA!


And that is why Twitter is so wonderful. My friends got wedding registry advice from Top Chef head judge Tom Colicchio and winner Michael Voltaggio (BTW, Mazal Tov Seth & Stacy!). And I got a lyric correction from Jason Robert Brown. What other medium could connect people who otherwise would probably never connect on such a personal level and from anywhere in the world? Unreal.


...But I still love technology, always and forever... -Napoleon Dynamite

Friday, June 3, 2011

J-Gimbs will be in P-rague for a few days

...with S-Gimbs!

We found an amazing website with last minute deals, and we are taking full advantage of the fact that I'm not in school yet.

So, I won't be posting for a little while, but when I return, I will begin writing some posts for you:
  1. A Trip Report with pictures & videos
  2. On Monday June 6, Apple will be headlining the World Wide Developer's Conference with a keynote address. For all of our family who don't know as much about technology (and who rely on my to translate what Steve Jobs says into more practical terms), I will be writing an easy summary of the news. I am kinda bummed that I'll miss it live. It's the first keynote I will be missing in a long time. But who cares. We're going to be in PRAGUE!
Shabbat shalom!

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Hebrew phrase of the post:
When someone leaves on a trip, you wish them "נסיעה טובה", n'siah tovah, or "Have a good trip / God speed."