100 gates

Yesterday I went to Mea Shearim with some classmates. In addition to wanting to buy a gemara for class (the difficulty of not being told what you are learning prior to arriving means that you have to sometimes purchase duplicate books), I also wanted to buy some skirts.

Here is my list of the top ten things that I love about Mea Shearim (in no particular order):
1) People don't touch you. In a country filled with a lack of personal boundaries, it was great to be in a place where the seas part when you are trying to get through.
2) When you ask a question about a ritual item (I asked about Huppa embroidery for a friend), people are eager to give you a mazal tov. I think that everyone could use a little more mazal and a lot more tov in their lives.
3) Prices are not set. The woman helping me to find a skirt said one price and the person behind the counter said 20 shekel less. I got it for 20 shekel less.
4) The Mea Shearim sound track. You can find Rebbi Nachman trance music for sale. What great shabbat prep music. There is also a "Shekel Vachetzi" store where everything is a shekel vachetzi (about 35 cents). There too there is trance music that repeats shekel vahetzi, shekel vachetzi,...shekel vahetzi. Efrem thinks that you should also purchase the soundtrack for a shekel vahetzi.
5) It's close to the shuk and Ben Yehuda- meaning you have an easy excuse to end up in that area.
6) The dry cleaning. There are multiple dry cleaners in a row that specialize in Kaputtas (http://photos.upi.com/slideshow/lbox/6477057ec2ca4ecaabff892d8c958372/PURIM-IN-JERUSALEM.jpg and http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_8JWxgIIq020/SnK5HDnMuiI/AAAAAAAAAE4/V9m665zt3AY/s1600-h/Bobov+Rebbe.jpg).
7) The tourist industry makes it that you can find some really cool, ugly, hideous, and obsene things. There is one store that will embroider anything on a kippah or tzitzit and another that had hats for sale with sayings such as "I am a great savta because I support my son in kollel" and "my other hat is a shreimel."
8) Everything must be kosher because it is closed on Shabbat.
9) No one teases you because you "look so frum," on the contrary...
10) You hear people speaking Yiddish into cellular phones.

And for good measure: #11) I can still go home to my apartment right off of Emek Refaim at the end of the day!