What an interesting Shabbat it was. I, once again, forgot that people bring in Shabbat a lot earlier then the actual time here. It did not occur to me to check that until 8:20. What I saw, as I had feared, was that all of the Shuls had started between 7:15 and 7:30 even though candle lighting was not actually until 9:30. I lit my candles and ran to the Jewish area as fast as I could. When I got there I spotted some Chasidim getting into a car. "Oh joy," I thought, "there are still some people who have not brought in Shabbat." I ran over and stoped their car. The man that I spoke to informed me that they were bringing in Shabbat later than most, but, if i wanted to pray earlier, there might still be some services that i could join. I went to the nearest one and it was over.

There they told me that my last chance would be the Lubavich center that the people in the car were going to. This nice French teenager walked me to that Shul and what was great was that even though I do not speak French, nor he English, we were able to comunicate in Hebrew. Jews are cool.

It was not until I arrived at the Lubavich center, however, that I understood that when they said "later" they meant that they start at 9:30 (it was 8:40), engage in a one-hour learning session (in French) between Mincha and Kabalat Shabbat, and do not end Maariv until 11:15. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! The only saving grace was that the Rabbi of the comunity (the guy i spoke with in the car, coincidentally) promissed me a place where i could eat and sleep.

Now I had a new problem. After the "incident" in London, I was not going to just dissapear for 27 hours when I had agreed to meet Panzer at Ilya´s place that same night. It ended up being good that the Shiur was in French. It was the perfect excuse for me to duck out fo an hour and run back to tell Panzer the new plan.

I mannaged to get back about 5 minutes before they started Davening, which was pretty standard. afterwards, I saw the Rabbi going around his Shul trying to make good on his garentee. He walked up to someone, said something to him, the guy looked up in my direction, replied to the Rabbi and then the Rabbi moved to the next guy. I got shot down by every English speaker in that place (about 15) before someone finally said yes. He was a Parisian-from-birth and spoke no English. Once again, yay Hebrew!

On our walk back to his house the weekend turned a whole new shade of "interesting." After he found out that i was a New Yorker, he asked me if I had ever been to the grave sight of the Rebbe. I, hoping not to get into the whole "Mashiach or Not" descusion, replied that i am a Kohen. I assumed that that would be the end of the discusion because, as he was well aware, Kohanim are not allowed to enter grave yards. Boy was I wrong. First he said, "that´s no problem, just wrap yourself in plastic wrap." He followed with, "in fact, that is not even nessesary; there in no problem for a Kohen to visit the grave of the Rebbe, there is no "Tuma" (ritual impurity) at the graves of "Tzadikim" (great religious figures). At this point i just employed the "Smile and Nod." "Uh Huh, Uh Huh."

After we covered a few other important details (are my parents religious, how real was my Yeshivah anyway...) we finally got to his house. We walked through a series of doors into a pitchblack hallway. After my first few step, I realized that it was a stairwell. (Ouch, btw.) Turns out that he lives on the third floor. The next few minutes were a srious case of the blind leading the blind.

To make it all more fun, this stairwell couldn´t decide if it wanted to be straight or winding, so it chose to be a mixture of both. Each time that I thought I had a handle on how to do the whole thing, the stairs would switch it up. I was so afraid of falling. Luckily (I think) my host realized I was strugling and grabbed by the arm to lead me the rest of the way. Dinner was pleasent, but, I was a bit confused when, before starting to make Kiddush, there was a moment of silence while everyone looked at the picture of the Rebbe as if to ask permission or dedicate it or something. I was soo tired by the time I got to go to sleep that i just collapsed.

Since Shul ended so late at night, they were kind enough to have Shacharit start at 10. I awoke in a daze at 7:30 and was thinking to myself "Where the hell am I?" Then I caught a glimpse of the Rebbe waving from the wall, thought "Oh ya," and went back to sleep.

The rest of the day was basicly slight variations of that experiance. Turned out that the starwell was dark all the time becasue it was internal and therefore had no windows. It is infinatly scarier to go down stairs like those than up them. I had fun trying to play Shabbat games with my hosts´ son, who only spoke French. Then we had another pleasent meal. After Shabbat finally ended at 11:30, I made it back to meet Panzer, who had had a way more chill day than I did. I found out that he had accomplished quite a bit in the planning of the next few days of our trip which was great because of the insanity that insued on Friday morning.