4:34 pm Thursday, the day before Yom Kippur. I get a call from Ariel (Ratner) that he is on the train back from Jerusalem, do I want to join him for the trip to Ra’anana?
4:45 pm I give Iris (Bar), my Israeli mother, kisses and run out the door towards the central train station in Tel Aviv.
5:01 pm Ariel and I are on the train together to Herzaliya.
6:00 pm Ariel and I arrive back in Ra’anana arriving just in time for Pizza with his family.
6:45 pm Daniel (Belik) comes over and after about an hour of conversion we decide what we want to make this Yom Kippur different: were going to Jerusalem.
Next morning at 11 am Daniel and I set out for Jerusalem. (Ariel had already committed to be at home with his family) After some VERY quick planning, Daniel, with some help from friends had arranged for us: 1. A place to stay, 2. A place to have the pre-fast meal. Apart from that, we were running free. We were told to try and arrive by 1 pm, we arrived at 1:55 pm. Just outside the Jaffa Gate in Old City Jerusalem we met Ari, a recent Ole Chadash (person who has just made Aliyah) from Australia. After a quick walk, he shows us where we will be spending our Erev Yom Kippur, the Heritage House, 2 Ohr Hachaim Street, the Old City, Jerusalem.
After an incredible pre-fast meal complete with delicious chicken soup and apple pie for desert, we bade ado to our hosts and walked into Jerusalem’s cool and calming evening. The weather was crisp, like fall, and the sky crimson as the sun set: starting the Yom Kippur fast. We made our way out of the old city and up to the Prime Minister’s residence, which sits on a hill looking over the Old City of Jerusalem. There, for the last three months, the family of Gilad Shallit has been camped out, outraged at the government at their inability to negotiate the release of their son after FOUR YEARS of captivity and isolation in Gaza.
Outside the white canvas tent that had been set up there, in front of the hundreds of flags, posters and prayers that had been left for Gilad and his family, there was a Tefillah (Prayer session?). Contrary to popular belief, the majority of Israelis are very secular and do not attend synagogue regularly, as such during this Tefillah there were only a few people singing/praying but that was not the aspect worthy of note. You could see in the eyes of all the people there that they wanted to pour their hearts out for this family. Their tear soaked eyes and sorrowed gazes revealing what they were truly feeling: but all they could do was stand, unsure of what to do. After the 30-40 minute service the praying had come to an end, so a few of us just started singing, wanting to leave the family with something with more energy than half sung prayers and long faces. Immediately, 100 people were singing at the top of their lungs in the middle of an abandoned street on Yom Kippur: The Shallit family in the background; standing outside the Prime Minister’s office. After the singing, Daniel and I made our way into the tent hoping to wish them Shana Tova. It was such an empty moment. Not from our side of course, but you could just see in those trauma ridden eyes that they suffer every second of their lives with the fact that their son is not safe.
The next morning we were awakened by the director of the Heritage House with promises of amazing Tefillah if we could just get ourselves out of bed. 6:55 am we arrived at synagogue to start our full day of praying. 9:30 am after two and half hours of morning prayer, the first lesson of the day started, its topic: “ A Moral Approach for the Existence of God.”
3:30 pm after three more hours of prayer and one more lesson we found ourselves at the first and only one and half hour break in our day. (*this time was spent at the Aish Hatorah Yeshiva next to the Kotel in Jerusalem.) After a little walk and a little sun bathing on the roof tops of the Old City we made our way to a different Minyan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minyan) which was much smaller and much more musically inclined than the last, but still quite traditional in its prayer. There have been few other times in my life when I have felt so much energy in one room, people singing at the tops of their lungs, feeling so happy and blessed to be where they are, doing what they love most.
6:18 pm. After 25 hours the fast had finally come to an end. The entire men’s congregation danced around the cozy synagogue celebrating our success and wishing each other a sweet new year. The proletarian that I am, I was celebrating that we were done and about to leave when the rabbi announced that we still needed to daven (pray) Ma’ariv (This is the evening service done by religious Jews). So it was closer to seven when we finished that, and finally did Havdallah (The ceremony that signals the ending of Shabbat) and Sof Sof (Finally!!!) ate and drank for the first time in a day.
Ari, the mensch that had arranged everything for us to make this incredible trip possible, also found us a place to break the fast. It was at the beautiful home of Aba and Pamela Clieman. They treated us with unimaginable kindness and hospitality. When Aba was 48 years old he made Aliyah from Los Angeles, CA wherein after moving to Jerusalem he decided he wanted to be a religious Jew. Now, Aba and Pamela Cleiman are in charge of some of the most wonderful programs to help soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces, the most recent of which is called Momentum a program to help soon-to-be-released soldiers acclimate more easyily into the civilian world.
The 10:15 bus from Jerusalem’s central bus station marked the end of my time in the Old City, but most certainly did not end my weekend’s experience. On the bus I met a wonderful religious young woman from Ra’anana and had my first “first encounter” all in Hebrew. We spoke about everything from how I got to Israel, to Israel’s problem with public image. All in all my Yom Kippur was absolutely incredible and exactly the break from normalcy that I was hoping for.
I hope that all of your Yom Kippur’s were the same, and for those who do not observe this holiday I wish that that love, health and happiness are finding you constantly.
Unimaginable love in this New Year,
אנדרו
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