Day 10: July 17th, 2010 (Jerusalem)

Woke up at 7:45 AM and showered then headed down for breakfast at 8:25 AM. We then met in the lobby at 9:00 AM and went across the street to The Great Jerusalem Synagogue which is an Orthodox Synagogue. Then woman went upstairs to another section while the men went down to the main sanctuary. We stayed there for 45 minutes then headed down the street to another Synagogue that was conservative. In this Synagogue they spoke a lot of English so it was much easier to follow. We caught the second half of the service which lasted a little over an hour. Behind the Synagogue we had the Kiddush and then we took a tour of the Fuchsburg Center which runs the Synagogue. The Fuchsburg Center is part of the National Jewish Conservative Yeshiva that houses and teaches people conservative Judaism from around the world. The Director gave us a quick tour and then walked back across the street to our hotel and went back up to the room at 12:15 PM. We relaxed in the room until 1:00 PM and then headed downstairs for lunch. We had no scheduled plans for the afternoon so Al hung out and I took the kids to the marketplace in the old city (Arab Shuk). The shuk was a maze of little side streets where hundreds of vendors sold anything you can think of.

Arab Shuk

The kids were very focused on getting Israeli t-shirts and there was no shortage of them.

Rows of Hebrew T-Shirts

We spent hours there and the kids bought a few things. We walked back to the hotel and got to the room around 6:15 pm. I was exhausted and took a quick nap before meeting the group for Havdala at 8:15 PM. For dinner we walked over to Ben Yehuda street. Hannah and I split a falafel and Schwarma and Al and Zach had pizza. After dinner we walked around the shops that started opening up after the Shabbat and we bought Zach a couple of Kippas and Tafilin.

Kippa Center on Ben Yehuda

After a couple of hours we walked the 15 minutes back to the hotel and got back to the room around 11:45 PM. We finally went to bed around 12:30 AM.