Shabbat on the Upper West Side
I actually managed to wake up this morning and got to services at Ramath Orah by 10:15 so I caught the second half of the torah reading. The melodies are more similar to my conservative synagogue in Saratoga than they are to the orthodox shuls I've been to in Davis and Sacramento. After a quick kiddush and some brief meet and greet I hustled down to O-Z, another synagogue that supposedly catered to the young singles crowd. Unfortunately, by the time I got there everyone had left. I continued on to Key West where I met up with the girls from Friday night dinner. I helped them set up and before long about 20 people from Aish poured in for lunch. More meet and greet. They were almost all older than me and out of school. It wasn't really my crowd. The rabbi and rebetzin were both very nice though and the food was very good. I left fairly early since the people weren't terribly interesting and most were headed towards the frumier territory (I haven't really found any Conservative Jews yet). I walked home and passed many Jews on the way and although they were total strangers we exchanged greetings as we walked. It's like when I put on my Kipah I become a member of a secret society or something. I got home just in time to turn right around and head out for a law school scavenger hunt. I was pretty gung ho about winning but the rest of my group was apathetic. After two hours of pushing and prodding I could no longer prevent them from imbibing at the nearest bar (which at least served a mean philly cheesesteak) and we were out of the running. I gave up on my dreams of glory and we went back to someone's apartment to...you guessed it, drink even more! We played some drinking games, went through a whole bottle of Seagram 7 whiskey and about 3 cases of beer, and once we were all quite tipsy we headed off to the West End (a bar) for our orientation kick off party. I swear all these 1Ls like to do is drink. Anyways, I shook hands and introduced myself to a sizable portion of the class and excused myself at midnight for some fresh air. I figure I need a rest before the house parties begin around 2AM. There's no saying no. I'm severely limiting my own drinking but it's kind of tough in this environment. We'll see how the parties go later, I'm gonna go grab some food now while I have some spare time.
