yah ta, ta ta ta, yah ta, ta tatata; Florence Chabad

So every restaurant has the same food-panini, pizza. Oily food, and my stomach is acting up. I ate at Kasher Ruth, and loved it. Then I saw a picture of Rebbi Schneerson in a storefront, and someone said the Lubavitchers have singing and dancing. I walked by the storefront on a Friday night, and there the Rebbe was, and he invited us to dinner, or lunch on Saturday. I remembered the yummy Kosher at Ruth, but thought lunch was less of a moral commitment than dinner, and so we showed up for a lunch on a Saturday. It was beautiful. Prayers, an amusing and not too stressful homily, and a wonderful lunch of salmon, salad, and turkey stew! Then, the tables were thrown aside (literally), I was yanked off Bills rib as a screen was thrown up, and the service (on the men side of the room) took 20 minutes.
The following Friday I bit the bullet and went to Synagogue. You can watch the light change through the stained glass windows of a synagogue that looks just like a church in many ways. The Chabad dinner included singing and clapping, routine prayers at the table and another lecture, but no service after. There must have been 30 of us, all tourists, most Americans. I know there were several orthodox visitors, for whom the kosher meal was a must. All in all, it was a lot of fun, and when I get home, I will send donations both the the Synagogue via the Florence Jewish Community, and to the Chabad.

The good and bad in Florence

What's good in Florence? San Marco. here, in a place where art doesn't seem to have a beginning or an end, where on any given day you can announce, without having looked to the left or the right, that you've seen a Ghirlandaio, several Della Robbias, plenty of Vasari, San Marco stands out. The repository of the Greatest of the Great-Beato Angelico works intended only as inspiration for meditation by the monks who lived here, one of whom was Savonarola. Even Cosimo dei Medici came here on retreat (he got the good rooms). The most stunning illuminations I've ever seen, case after case of images that leap out of their confines. Having been there, I now have to wonder why, when San Marco is mentioned, it's always Venice that comes to mind - but that's no longer so for me. What else is good? In this city, you can probably walk to anything you need or want to see or do in the course of your ordinary life, taking a bus only when required to avoid terrible weather from time to time. It is so compact, stores are small so you can find things on every corner instead of needing to travel to a central place (except for the fresh food market - but you wouldn't need to go there every day, anyway, and when you do you'll be looking at another good think about Florence). May is good here. We arrived April 27, and had one afternoon rain. There were night storms. Nothing else. People here are patient with my terrible Italian. On my first trip they responded to questions in English. This time, almost all the time, they respond first by correcting my grammar, then by answering in clear Italian. This is very good progress!

What's bad in Florence? Certainly not enough to overcome the good. The computer keyboards. The dogshit on the street (but not as bad as Paris), the same stale sandwiches in every caffe, the exchange rate. Crowds, sometimes. My children and friends are not here. I looked forward to meeting my friend, Angela, in her hometown of Modena, but her husband's mother is very sick, and we had to cancel. I', so disappointed, but what can we do?

All the tiny little Saints

I've been here almost two weeks, and I've seen so many saints! On May 1 we went to Prato - a pretty big city, pretty industrial, but its old core is coherent, walkable, doesn't look at all as if it's connected to anything larger than itself. There, at about an hour past the announced start time of 6 p.m., came the procession, in medievil garb, with banners and trumpets, into the piazza of Cattedrale di San Stefano, where there's a pulpit built outside the church, on a corner of the building high above those assembled below. Outside, we all stood gazing upward as censors swung, perfuming the air, and the Bishop paraded with some others in formal dress, three times around the pulpit, in and out of the church, and each time held up for us to see a glass holding the Sacra Cintola, a belt worn by the Virgin Mary. It was the first of the relics I've seen here in Prato, Lucca, and Florence, with more to come. The belt, a piece of someone's arm, part of a skull, a finger, bits of bone and hair, entire, uncorrupt corpse of Santa Zita. These must have been very small people, before they were saints. Tiny little armbones, hardly any hair, All of Santa Zita can't be more than 4 feet. They probably hardly ate at all. They were busy being devoted, or poor, or giving food to others, or waiting for god, or whatever, they certainly didn't spend their days dining. The priests and bishops, on the other hand, must have eaten well. I surmise this because I have seen the vestments preserved in the church museums alongside the relics, and they're huge, and bright, and bespeak a life of plenty would be required to fill them out.
Florence is loaded with people - tourists, shopkeepers, restaurant workers. Everybody on the street eats pizza and sandwiches, and nothing else - at least in public. I can't afford the fat steaks, so I don't get to see much beside panini on dryish bread, with dried salami crust hanging out the sides, or slices of pizza that were there 5 hours ago, or last night. Today I had a treat. Since I was going to the Synagogue anyway, I ate at Kosher Ruth's vegetarian, where Bill and I shared a mixed plate of delicious mediterranean treats - couscous, felafel, humus. The waiter brushed aside my comments on the incredible beauty of the temple and the sense of connectedness to my past that Jewish historic sites offers me. For his part, the beauty is meaningless. There wasn't a minion for Saturday Afternoon prayer, so the temple had no bueauty and no use. He went home and prayed there. The Synagogue is really quite odd, in addition to being beautiful. It has a pulpit, exactly like those in churches, which I was told, with a shrug, was of course never used. It also has something in the foyer that looks like a baptismal font. I didn't ask any questions about that. I wanted to visit the old cemetary, but it's only open once a month - yesterday. They'll open it for me again, for 80 euro. I'll have to pass.
Tomorrow or Wednesday, we go to Pisa.