Our prayers were answered!

If I didn't mention it before, the hotel we're staying at is located directly next to the pre-war Great Synagogue building, that we knew still housed services every Saturday morning. We woke this morning up to a loud resonating voice, which we assumed would be the Rabbi's from the next building over, but instead turned out to be Lady Gaga's being played at an outdoor "marathon." I say marathon in quotes because the start and finish lines were just across the street from each other and no one was seen running between them. A large crowd was gathered around a few Taekwondo masters jumping over each other. We walked back over to the synagogue for services. They were held upstairs, in what was likely the original main prayer room, but that was obviously renovated/repainted over the years. About the building itself: the whole original building is intact (minus a few decorative towers on the roof), but the front half is divided into various other offices and businesses and only the back half and the top floors belong to the current synagogue. Anyway, the services were held in a room that once held probably a few hundred people, and now held about 20 men and 6 women, including us. The services were all conducted by a Rabbi from another city, while the men in the congregation read mostly from newspapers, not the siddur. It seemed like only a few of them read Hebrew, since when they did follow along or read blessings, it was all in Ukrainian or Russian transliteration. The "Gabbai" there was a lanky old man who, when he wasn't knocking on his bench to tell everyone to stand up or calling out when to say "Amen," spent most of the service coughing phlegm into a handkerchief. It's a good thing I didn't shake his hand. The synagogue's general atmosphere did not seem that foreign to me, since mine at home also consists of old European men and women. Anyway, when the service was over, the Rabbi invited everyone to Kiddush--a small meal in another room. We all sat--separate men and women--at tables pre-set with small plates of salad, and the Rabbi made kiddush over grape juice while everyone else made it over local Vodka. I sat with the Rabbi and a man from California also visiting Ukraine, and we talked a little--me and the other man in English, and us three in Hebrew. My mom sat with the women, who knew no English, no Polish, no Yiddish, and barely any Hebrew. That didn't matter too much, since the Rabbi interrupted often to give a L'Chaim. After we left the synagogue, we spent the rest of the day relaxing and walking around the town. And--wait for it--our luggage finally arrived at our hotel! Though, after it arrived, it was still a lot of fun to go into the clothes shops in town and imagine what we would have to continue wearing if the luggage never came. It was good to see more of the city, which turned out to have a lot of very nice areas--we walked down one wide street that was closed to cars and had beautiful old European buildings on both sides--probably what people refer to as a boulevard. Tomorrow we're going to see a few more things in Kolomyja, and will possibly visit Nadworna, where Papa Joe's brother lived. In the evening we'll travel to Ternopil, a city close to our second destination--Zborow, where my mother's mother, Manya Birnberg, was born and grew up.

No more wearing things like this!