Breaking the Fast

It is Wednesday night in September. An hour earlier, Yom Kippur ended. Expiation of sin. A clean slate. Beginning of vacation.

Two taxies are on their way. Each car will hold seven of us, and soon we are at the beach in Tel Aviv. The sun rises and we daven in a minyan on the beach. We have three weeks of vacation, almost no plans, no responsibilities.

Even the Mercaz spy has faded into the background.

By Thursday evening we are exhausted. We have somehow made it to Netanya, and our original group of fourteen has shrunk to 3 or 4. We go to a dance club, my first time. I am wearing a tank top, shorts and a baseball cap, and I am completely underdressed.

I can’t dance at all. I have no rhythm, no sense of beat or music or movement. Yonason jokes that I look like I am boxing, the way I am jumping up and down. This is the night I begin my streak of never meeting anyone in a dance club, with the exception of the night we accidentally went to a gay club. With girls.

We are up all night again, for the second night in a row. There has been a considerable amount of alcohol consumed over the past two days, but no one is noticeably drunk.

Soon, we are down to just three of us. It is Friday morning. Shabbos will be in soon, and we have no plans, no food, not much money with us. We are, of course, starving. We find a bus back to Jerusalem, buy some rugelach, and sleep straight through to Motzei Shabbos.