Sukkot

This week, from Sunday to Sunday, is the week-long Jewish holiday called Sukkot. On Wednesday, our classes all got changed so we would have a free morning to walk down to the Western Wall to see the group priesthood blessing. We got there at 8:45, and the blessing was at 9:30. Oh my gosh. This was one of the most interesting, spiritual things I have ever experienced!! There were tens of thousands of people that came to the Western Wall. They were all dressed as expected, and they were also carrying these...leaves? We had no idea what was going on while we were there, but we learned later (in our Judaism class) about how for the holiday they pray while holding a bundle of four "species" of plants to celebrate the harvest. They waved these in the air and whacked them on the ground while reciting their prayers. At 9:30, a single voice spoke on a huge speaker, and those in attendance repeated after him. For just a few minutes, the tourists stopped talking, they stopped snapping photos (well...not all of them. haha. ME), and I turned around to look at the faces of those behind me. I saw how strongly they were feeling the presence of God, just as I was. I almost feel guilty for the photos I captured because they are showing such a deep, personal, spiritual experience. My excuse is that I was using a high zoom of 300mm so none of them knew that I took their photos. And...there are a lot of photos. Look at each of them individually!! I tried to just post the strongest but they're all good together I think.

This news post shows some other photos and talks about the tradition, and about how still 50,000 or so people were there even with the high tensions that have been associated with Jerusalem in the past couple weeks.

 

 

So that was Wednesday. We learned more about Sukkot in class in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and then in our Judaism class. Another part of the holiday we learned about is how the Jewish people will set up their own "sukkahs" on their property to remember the time that Moses spent in the wilderness. The families will eat meals out there (in the least), and will sometimes sleep out there or play games or things like that.  They are required to have two walls, and a roof of leaves or branches. They are meant to be a bit frail--you should be able to see the stars through the roof at night.  The sukkah symbolizes the frailty and transience of life and its dependence on God.

On Friday night, 20 of us got to go out with our Judaism professor to West Jerusalem to attend a synagogue service. We were in a residential area, so we saw a lot of sukkahs set up!! They had them on their apartment balconies. The service was really cool- a lot more singing than I expected. There were maybe 50 women and closer to 100 men.

 

Our professor, Ophir Yardin, has THE CUTEST KIDS. Look at this boy!!!!