Welcome back

Yesterday we started the morning weary of a late night at a salsa club and went to a prominent Jewish Community center in Montevideo where we would procede to undergo a variety of experiences. The Kehillah had a very nice synogogue that is mostly used for services on the high holy days. Our group sat alone in the vast two-decked hall and learned about the solid Zionist culture within the Uruguayan jewish community. While 15,000 jews in Uruguay seems like relatively modest number, there are also 15,000 Uruguayan jews in Israel today.

From there we quickly scurried through the small holocaust museum to the side of the lobby, briefly experiencing that familliar traumatizing mass of different emotions that enter our minds every time as we looked forward to the service were going to provide for today.

But still, there was one more stop before that happened. There was a large room in the basement floor that had several different bizarre clothing items. I will leave the rest of this to whoever gets to blog about our Purim party at Hillel tomorrow night, as there will be several outfits of note. The money used to buy these outfits benefits the efforts made by this magnificent center to provide services for people with mental and phiysical disabilities, which was the focus of our day.

Very few of us have had any experience doing this, but were happy to help, and essentially, that is what the people liked to see. For the next couple of hours we helped people make various art projects. Some were making cedar plates, some were polishing mezuzot, and paintings. I worked with a mentally disabled man who knew English better than I know Spanish. The reason for this, he said, was his love for American music, as shown by his AC/DC t-shirt…. which is actually an Australian band but an english speaking (screaming?) one at that. Being a musician, we were able to find common ground with some of our favorite bands. Before we left (we would return later) we were provided by the people who come here with some delicious pizza and rice.

We took a two hour break from the community center walking through the city center of the very Europeanesque Montevideo, including an area known as Plaza Independencia. There was a statue of a man named General Jose Gervasio Artigas who fought against the British invasion of the Rio Del Plata (the river that Montevideo is on) in 1806. However, the most eerie experience of this trip so far came when myself, Justin Selzer, and Kyle Sears walked under the statue, believing the stairs led to an underground arcade or subway station, only to arrive in a vast, dark, silent room alone, with the cremated remains of Artigas enshrined in the middle, guarded by two soldiers, as still as they would be in front of the Buckingham palace.

We returned back to the community center and spent time making matzah and wine with the same people and were sent off by an enthusiastic and touching set of songs and dances.

After a reflection of the days activites at Hillel we went to a very fun restaurant featuring a live and exciting trio of a mix of latin music and fusion jazz, as we consumed pizza and beer and whatnot (and beer) I noticed very early on that whoever this drummer was in Montevideo, he was definitely good enough to be a well known musician. Surely enough he knew my teacher in Los Angeles who apparently produced an album he played on, so hopefully this will remind me to ask my teacher when we get back in…. two days?!

All the best,
Jacob Steuer