Friday, June 1, 2018 6:52 PM

Friday morning: The bus is more crowded than usual. A cluster of soldiers gets on at the train station, headed home for the weekend. One, exhausted, places his forearm on the back of the seats in front of him, lays his head down on it, and immediately falls asleep. Another, her gun slung across her back, her sequined phone case and purse by her side, wrestles with an olive-green duffel bag that matches her uniform. A third sits down toward the back then gets up and makes her way forward. Apparently unskilled in the ways of walking on moving buses, she stumbles several times and falls once, into the seat in front of me. She asks the driver something in broken Hebrew with a strong North American accent. I guess that she is, like me, a recent immigrant and, from her voice, quite possibly from New Jersey. At the heart of the city, I hop off the bus and go into a bakery to get a challah or something like it. I'm told there are several types of braided breads that are not challahs, but I don't know the difference. The cashier asks me something that I don't figure out until later: "Whole grain or white?" The woman next to her asks me if I got it from up front. I did. She tells the cashier which it is, though I don't remember which she said. I'll find out when I make my Shabbat dinner before heading out for another midnight shift.