'Tis the Season in Israel

The month of October has only around 12 work days. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Succoth, and Simchat Torah all land in October this year. You can say Chag Sameach (Happy Holiday) any day for a month. Even secular Tel Aviv shows its latent Jewish nature several times this month.

Most noteworthy was last week during Yom Kippur. I wrote last year of the most noticeable sounds of the busy streets of Tel Aviv: the leaves of the few trees lining the streets rustling in the breeze on a Tuesday morning. During Shabbat, there are few cars in the city but there are plenty of taxis. On Erev Yom Kippur, after the last meal before the fast, the streets are full. They are not full of cars but of children on roller skates and bicycles. I do not know if it is a law or just a custom but the city celebrates the flashback to simpler times before the farting of the buses and the whine of the mopeds. Only the streetlights and lights in the buildings remind you of the current era. I cooked the last meal with my friend, Eva, an immigrant from Hungary. Like after a large fresh snowfall where mechanized vehicles can’t dislodge to steal the purity of the snow blanket, people stroll in the middle of the streets and even the highways without fear of injury. Some even bring chairs out to sit and chat in the middle of the normally bustling streets and boulevards. It is a major city where you can tell you little children to go out and play in the streets unaccompanied. There were packs of two dozen skateboarding kids. There is so little violent crime here but this reminded me of being set free to run around my neighborhood where I grew up on North Carolina. I understand kids don’t do that anymore.

Eva and I wanted to walk to the highway and feel what it was like to stroll on an emptied one. We walked through the immigrant neighborhood past the park that was packed with Philipino workers, African refugees, drug addicts, hookers, and a few Arab families. I am very much at home in this area from the volunteering at the refugee shelters. I ran into one of the leaders that I knew from Darfur. He was amazed and baffled by the sudden silence of the streets. I told him it would be that way until after sundown the following day. I told him it was sort a Jewish version of Ramadan.

The next day, I managed to spend an hour in a local old synagogue near my home in Neve Tsedek. These are the oldest synagogues in Tel Aviv. Last year I stood outside of this one along with the women and children of the families and waiting to hear the shofar blown to signal the end of Yom Kippur. This year, I went in and joined the group of men. I recognized and received a mutual nod from the owner of Nana Bar, the trendy Restaurant just a few steps from my door. It was an Orthodox and I think Ashkenazi service. I was thrilled to be able to follow. The bima was in the center of the room and I sat right behind the Rabbi, able to see exactly what page of the book we were on. The synagogue is small for modern standards and holds only about 30. It is the holiday where we acknowledge our sins, praise and beg G-d to allow us to live another year. Men were prostrated at several times during the service and the new melodies to sort of familiar songs and chants were enchanting. I wanted to only stay for a few hours and then return home to sit and watch a rented moving. Yet, I was captivated by the sincerity and passion of the men in the room and the caught up in the power of the group. I somehow felt to be a contributing member of the energy of the room. Only near the end did I notice the latticework on top of a wall that separated the men from the women. The women’s room was much smaller. There was also a place for children behind the Torahs because every so often one would stroll out, run figure eights, and disappear back behind the Torahs.

I was able to break the fast with a family that has adopted me as one of their own. There are three sisters that moved here from Madrid. I am friends with them and the husband of one of them. Their parents were in from Madrid and they made the break-fast in the Sephardic tradition of all sweets.

Immediately after Yom Kippur, the sukkahs start going up all over. Most restaurants with outdoor seating create one. They are on balconies, patios, and wherever one can fit one. These are the traditional huts representative of how the Jews lived as nomads wondering around the Sinai without a GPS. It is a tradition to eat your meals and even sleep in the sukkah (hut). The sides are often latticework or fabric. The roof must me made of branches where you can see through to the stars. Here, the roofs are often made of date palm branches. My brother in-law Russ first taught me the word for the roof and the decorations hanging from it in Hebrew: Schoch (It makes you want to spit after saying the word). Sukkahs are everywhere and are kept up for a week. One of my neighbors keeps his next to his ground floor apartment, sleeps in it and eats all his meals there. He already has 5 kids and his wife is pregnant with the next. Every time I walk by he tries to lure me in and feed me.

We still have Simchat Torah next week and a day and one half of vacation. This is when the Torah is finished being read and is begun to be re-read from the beginning. It’s nice to find that, underneath the secular fast-moving city of Tel Aviv, that there are ancient traditions drilled into the culture.