Yom Kippur

Immediately beforehand, when I still had no plans, I called Flo to see if it would be OK to stop by her house in the afternoon. But I didn't tell her that a) I'd be going to her shul or that b) I'd be bringing a friend. I won't say which, if either, of these I knew at the time. The hostel brought in a cantor to lead services here all day, starting with Kol Nidrei at 4:50 (actually Minchah, but close enough). In Israeli, you see, they move the clocks back an hour on the 3-AM-Sunday after Shabbat Shuvah, that being the Saturday before Yom Kippur. After getting the OK from Flo, I decided to stay in at the hostel for Maariv and not to try to go to the synagogue up Givat Masua (close-by, but which kind of Sephardic?).

It wasn't that pleasant, either. His voice was annoying and, more importantly, he used extra (Sephardi, I assume) words and, even more importantly, his melody was only mostly the same as the regular one. If they talk all the time about the "cycle" of the year, I want my holidays especially to remind me of the previous ones. Usually there's no rushed hostel meal at 3 PM before the holiday; usually there's a room with an echo and lots of space; usually there's no talking during the service; usually there's a walk in the cool October breeze.

After the service and a short dvar torah (why, I asked in the course of the discussion, do Aaron's sons die in the beginning of Shemini and then three weeks later the reading begins with "God spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron") there was some intense backgammoning until I announced my bedtime. "You're going to bed at 9:30?" Well, yes, I guess I am. That's one advantage to wearing a non-functioning watch. Oh, by the way, I kicked butt. And played Geography with two future Brandeisians: a soccer-team/ceramics-class connection and a Legacy Keshet connection.

Becca and I woke up at 7 and left at quarter after to walk to Shirah Chadashah (on Emek Refaim). It took us about 80 minutes, which looking back at it now seems like a crazy thing to have done on Yom Kippur in the desert. But aside for one mulish mistake and another Jerusalem-street mistake I navigated just fine and I think we took a few shortcuts. The bicyclists were out in force. Biking in Jerusalem has got to be incredibly fun--in one direction. We met the other direction first, though, and they looked ready to fall off. I explained about the cars driving on the roads in Israel on Yom Kippur: only ambulances and police cars, etc. drive. But how do the drivers get to work? Easy. Just take red tape and tape yourself a red Magen David on the sides of your car. It's the make-your-own-ambulance way.

There were two regular cars.

They looked very out of place.

Shul was very nice, as expected. No nice kiddush, though, in the middle. I sat next to a guy from Nativ. There were a few other YC-ers who'd had the foresight to get a hostel room closer by. (But they didn't get a nice walk across a deserted city.) Michael Oren said that he was talking to Danny on the phone and cut his finger worse than he'd ever done before and had to go to the hospital before shul.

After a few hours' sleep and confusion over whether we'd changed out clocks back an hour, Becca and I walked to the Kotel where we planned to meet a few dozen other people. Some stayed in the Old City and some were planning to walk across right before Minchah. The first minyan I went to, which was one of the closest to the entrance, was unintelligible, and even the assurances of the 18-year-old Haredi that for Neilah the Sha"tz would slow down couldn't convince me to stick around. As I've observed before, the left- and wall-sides of the plaza are Black Hats and the back is for Sephardim and Kippah Srugah gets the rest. So ver by the mechitzah was my type of minyan where I re-met the Nativ guy and got some more songs in before the end of the end.

State-sponsored kiddush of dryish muffins and really really good green (kiwi mango something? Becca, what was it?) juice ended the fast but not quite in the style...so we walked back to Emek for a shawarma. And then because we hadn't walked enough (mine spread out, his in two hours in the afternoon), Elan and I walked back to the hostel.