Day 6: Shabbos Kodesh!

Shabbos in Prague. Ah... How can I describe it? Well, for starters, I'll begin by saying it was one of the most uplifting Shabbosim in my life. Yes, I'm serious about that! Let me tell you a bit about it.

We started out Shabbos davening in the shul of the Maharal, the Altneu (literally, "old-new") Shul. The Altneu shul's usual crowd is quite small, and probably not too loud or lively on an average Shabbos - probably like 20 people or less. But we were apparently going to change that...

My first clue that this was going to be no ordinary Shabbos came even before Lecha Dodi (which is usually when the singing starts, if any). They were mechabed our rosh yeshiva to daven for the amud, and before going up, he passed on the message that we should liven things up a bit, that it was time to bring a little simchas Shabbos to this community. And so, when we reached "Mizmor L'dovid", all of us burst thunderously into song, much to the surprise of the locals, singing Carlebach's version of the psalm. The locals seemed stunned for a moment, then joined our singing and dancing in circle all around the shul. This scene repeated itself several times throughout davening, and the locals seemed overjoyed to have this exciting change from their ordinarily dull routine. One of them even went so far as to tell my friend Yechiel that seeing us gave him the chizuk to live the whole next year!

After davening we headed over to the nearby Dinitz restaurant for a delicious seudah, but not before snagging ourselves some guests - a couple of not-entirely-religious guys names Yuri and Roman. Yuri is studying in some kind of university in Prague, and Roman was visiting him. They came along with us to the restaurant, never suspecting the awesome experience they were about to have.

We made kiddush and washed, and then the singing began. The singing seems to be the heart and soul of any major meal in our yeshiva, and this one topped the charts. Throughout the meal we sang song after song, frequently getting up to dance or just to shake back and forth to the beat. The achdus was tangible as we all swayed back and forth together, singing songs of Shabbos. At one point, Roman said to Yuri: "I wish every Shabbos would be as great as this one!", to which Yuri answered "yeah, we need to go to America, or Israel, TOMORROW!". I'm not kidding. This kiddush Hashem really happened.

But what really took the cake was when random passerby started popping on to check what was going on. I kid you not. Random Jews, religious or not, started coming into the restaurant to find out where all the lively singing was coming from! Of course, each time we invited them to take off their coats and join us for a lechayim and some singing.

All in all, it was a meal to remember, enjoyed immensely by all. Gabi, the Israeli guy who runs the place, said that since they opened the restaurant they had never had such a wonderful and exciting group for Shabbos.

After the meal, we headed back to our apartments. Many guys went to sleep, but in our apartment we had an oneg Shabbos consisting of nosh and Akiva's cholent. Is was actually quite good, especially considering how short a time it had been cooking for.

Shabbos morning was pretty much the same as the night before: we davened at the Altneu shul, and then had another lively seudah at Dinitz. Having enjoyed the night before so much, Yuri and Roman joined us once again.

After the seudah, we went for a walk with Akiva through Prague. We walked halfway across the Charles bridge, and saw the "Kadosh Kadosh Cross" - I'm a little hazy on the details, but apparently a Jew was forced to build a cross with Hashem's name on it as punishment for not wanting to pay the bridge toll collected by the church. Or something like that.

We then backtracked across the bridge, and went to find a statue of the Maharal. We wandered around in circles looking for it, although we did come across a street musician playing some kind of weird instrument that looked like a cross between an accordion and a crank-operated pencil sharpener (yeah, don't ask). We eventually found the statue, which depicted the Maharal flanked by a woman and a dog. This was done because allegedly the Satan came to the Maharal on two occasions, once disguised as a woman and the other time as a dog (if you can verify, clarify, or dispute this, please post a comment below).

We finally headed back to our part of town, where I managed to catch a quick nap before mincha. Mincha was once again at the Altneu Shul, after which we joined the kehilla for seudah shlishis in the JCC auditorium. The kehilla members sat on one side of the room, and we sat on the other. We ate, and sang some songs. The rabbi then gave an emotional speech about how much our visit meant to them, after which the rosh yeshiva told us to sing one more song before benching, this time dancing together with the locals in middle of the auditorium.

We then went to daven Maariv and hear havdalah at the Altneu shul, and then went back to our apartments to pack up our stuff, and shower for the last time before we would return to Israel. We then rendezvoused (is that a real word?) with the bus, dumped our stuff onto it, and then headed back to the Danube for a boat ride. We were joined by... You guessed it: Yuri and Roman! I think they really like us.

We got onto our boat, and we each got one drink of our choice. We sat around on the enclosed lower deck and chilled out for a while, then went upstairs to the open-air upper deck for a beautiful kumzitz, accompanied by guitar.

When the boat returned to the dock, we parted ways with Yuri and Roman, trading contact information and promising to keep in touch. Roman, in particular, said he would be visiting Israel in a few months, and he would definitely look us up.

We then boarded the bus, and headed out on our final long ride: from Prague, Czech Republic, through Slovakia, all the way to Budapest, Hungary, which will be our last stop on this trip.