Friday, September 21, 2007

James Archibald

Friday, September 21, 2007, Jerusalem, Israel--

Little is left to tell. On a day that one would perhaps expect to be remembered for being the 180th anniversary of Joseph Smith's receiving the plates from Moroni, most of the Mormons in town are entirely preoccupied with a different religious milestone. Many Jews are expected to participate in their kapparot ceremony at the crack of dawn and this intrepid band of LDS students at the BYUJCFNES plans to observe it. Armed with specific instructions from Ophir Yarden (who also denigrated the practice significantly), more than 40 people cram into three taxis headed to two destinations in hopes of seeing some hapless birds swung around the heads of their respective owners who hope to symbolically transfer their sins to the fowls before having them slaughtered (the birds were slaughtered, not the owners).

Greg Marsh is the ringleader of this group and, remarkably, at the indicated time (5:30 am) everyone appears to have arrived and most of the women are dressed in accordance with the strict preferences of the more orthodox Jewish sects.

Things boded well for the group that went to the Meah Shearim neighborhood. Immediately upon exiting the taxi, the students saw a chicken vendor wearing an AC/DC shirt and smoking a cigarrette. He was between 17 and 25 and, one can safely conclude, heavier than the recommended weight for his height. Hoping to find a place where the ceremony would occur more visibly and more often, the students trudge off towards the heart of Meah Shearim in single-sex groups of 4 or 5. Whether the denizens of the neighborhood were were able to appreciate that we were in small groups is a mystery since most of the groups started at the same place at the same time and ended in the same place at the same time, making them look suspiciously like a large group at some points.

Our next major find was an alley with a truck full of dead chickens. Their heads were gone and their feathers were stained with blood. For us, trying not to look like a group of gawkers was as difficult as it was for those chickens to look alive. Dressing modestly is a good way not to offend anyone, but it is hardly a disguise. We watched quietly for a while. An older man with a long, white beard performed the ceremony on what appeared to be his granddaughters. He let the girls pet the chickens, but none of them made contact for more than a second before withdrawing their hands in terror like, well, a bunch of girls. We stood far enough back that we could not hear the prayers they recited. Most of the people that purchased chickens in the alley took them to undisclosed locations presumably to perform the ceremony.

The group found that Ophir's instructions were, overall, not entirely satisfactory. The elusive "trail of feathers" that would supposedly lead them to a popular kapparot site never materialized. The chickens were not swung about by their legs with their wings flapping (which, of course, would have been much funnier-looking) as many had imagined, but were rather held by their wings and swung almost reverently over the people's heads. Some groups didn't even see the ceremony until the end when, while waiting for the taxi, the same fellow in the AC/DC shirt performed it on a few women and a man performed it on himself.

Overall, however, it was an instructive and interesting trip.

Little is left to tell.

The 8:30 block of classes went well. The major item of interest was a quiz question in Dr. Ludlow's class involving controversy over the location of Goshen. Though it is clear that it is actually on the Eastern side of the Nile river delta, Hoerth misled most of the students on page 145 of his book where he makes it look like Goshen is in the middle of the delta. This controversy spilled over into the next class where someone asked about the location of Goshen much to the amusement of Dr. Ludlow's students. Dr. Draper's students failed to see the humor in the question.

The rest of the day was mostly spent in pursuits that were hardly noteworthy. It was a Friday, so no one could really leave the center. It was also the last non-Shabbat before our exodus to Egypt, so most of the people spent their time in not-Shabbat-appropriate anticipation of the trip. Some packed. Many, many did their laundry. In fact, this author has never seen the laundry room so crowded and so warm as he did on that day.

When I entered the laundry room, whatever vain hope I had of being the only one clever enough to think to do his laundry on the last possible night before leaving for Egypt was shattered. I found that many, many like-minded students had already managed to occupy nearly every machine. Fortunately, I found two washers and, by inserting my clothes, was immediately promoted in my mind to a person of privileged status (possession of a scarce resource always does). I felt positively magnanimous as I vacated the machines so that other people (who were standing right there waiting for me) could use them. It was as if by my own beneficience I was allowing all people to be blessed as I had been blessed with the use of a washing machine. It was more so because, since there were no dryers available I put my clothes on another spin cycle, which I ended early to enable the less-fortunate to do their laundry.

The dryers were a little harder to use. After playing ping pong on my bad ankle (there were plenty of opponents), listening to music and chatting with the other people down there, I decided that the best way to gaurantee the use of a dryer was to stand in front of one until the person using it removed their clothes (from the dryer, obviously). With the success of this technique, I was ready to go to bed, which I did.