Israel Prayer Journal #16-Yom Kippur

Let me share about my experiences during Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  Yom Kippur is the most holy day in the Jewish calendar.  It took place this past Friday evening through Saturday evening.  It marks the one day of the year during the Old Testament period when the high priest of Israel would enter the Most Holy Place of the Temple to offer the blood of a sacrifice before God’s presence.  You can read about it in Leviticus 16.  On Yom Kippur, even most secular Israeli Jews will attend synagogue, though this might be the only time they attend synagogue all year.  According to Judaism, it is on Yom Kippur that God seals a person’s fate for the new year.  That is why the ten days preceding Yom Kippur are days of repentance, so that each Jew can repent of their sins and try to “persuade” God to give them a good fate this year.  The day is spent in the synagogue with five prayer services.  Jews are supposed to refrain from five things on this day: eating and drinking (one is supposed to fast for 25 hours), wearing leather shoes, bathing or washing, anointing oneself with perfume, and sexual relations.  Also, one is strictly forbidden from driving or engaging in other Sabbath-prohibited activities, such as cooking, turning on lights, walking beyond a prescribed distance, and so forth. 

Friday afternoon (hours before Yom Kippur started), my friend, Ben, and I walked from the student village to the Old City (2 miles; 40 minutes) to see what was going on down there.  We stopped in an Arab bookstore and had lunch in East Jerusalem along the way.  Then we traveled through Damascus Gate down al-Wad Street to the Western Wall (Kotel) Plaza.  I was shocked to discover virtually no Jews there.  I figured that most of them would be at synagogue or home making preparations, but I didn’t expect to find so few people there.  We sat down at the Western Wall for a while, then decided to head back after it became apparent that nothing “interesting” would be happening anytime soon. 

So, we started walking the 2 miles/40 minutes back to the student village.  Along the way, we discovered something fascinating: the police were driving around and setting up barricades along all the roads leading into the major highway that connects the Mount Scopus area with downtown Jerusalem!  I knew that no one was “supposed” to drive on Yom Kippur, but I had also read that it wasn’t technically against Israeli law to do so.  However, here before my very eyes I was witnessing the Israeli police “enforcing” this religious custom on the entire population (Jews, Arabs, and foreigners) of Jerusalem.  It gave me some interesting things to think about in the discussion of separation between “church” (religion) and state. 

When we got back to the student village, I went out again on foot to examine the surrounding neighborhoods to see what other interesting things were going on for the holiday.  I came across a nearby synagogue and discovered it completely packed with people.  Tons of people were there celebrating the holiday, including some fellow students I recognized.  Also of interest, I discovered that with the roads blocked off and no traffic around, all the small children were out in the middle of the roads playing on bikes, riding down the hills in the middle of the streets.  It was amusing.

My Friend, Ben, in the middle of the highway!

I had barely returned to my dorm when my friend, Ben, called again.  “Austen, I’m bored…  Want to go back to the Old City with me?” was his question.  We had already walked 4 miles and 80 minutes to and from the Old City today, but, hey, why not do it again?  So we headed out again.  It was only 6:45pm, but it was already quite dark out due to the time change this past week.  On our way downtown this time, we walked down the middle of Highway 60—the main road that connects the Mount Scopus area with downtown Jerusalem!  Since there was no traffic, it was quite an adventure.  We took photos of each other standing in the middle of intersections.  To make a long story short, we ended up walking to the Damascus Gate area, then all the way up Jaffa Street to the Central Bus Station, then walked across the big “David’s Harp” Bridge (both on the pedestrian path and on the Light Rail Train tracks) (by the way, the bridge was built by the same guy and in a similar style to the Sundial Bridge in Northern California), then all the way back to our student village.  We had to stop several times along the way and rest for a few minutes, because this trip (not counting the 4 miles we walked earlier) was a whopping 9.4 miles roundtrip!!!  We both were dog tired when we got back!  I think that’s the furthest I’ve ever walked in a day (although I’ve never kept track of how far we walked in a day during my tours of Israel J), and my legs were dead.  It was a LONG way, but it was such a memorable experience—walking that far, in the middle of normally-busy roads, on Yom Kippur. 

It was interesting to see that, for the most part, only tourists were out walking during the evening.  There were several Orthodox Jews walking around after synagogue services, but Jerusalem felt quite abandoned.  The only traffic on the road was an occasional ambulance or police car doing patrols.  What a weird thing to see in a city of nearly 780,000 people!  Security was noticeable.  Every 5 minutes a police vehicle would drive down the street.  We also saw a troop of about 20 young, fully armed Israeli police officers, equipped with helmets, automatic rifles, and batons walking in formation down the highway past the main Arab neighborhoods early in the evening.  And Israel’s borders (including West Bank crossings) and airspace were all closed for the duration of Yom Kippur.  I can understand Israel’s concern.  Conditions in the region are volatile; things are not business-as-usual because of the uniqueness of the holiday; the population’s guard is down because of the solemnity of the holiday; and, most importantly, it was on precisely this holy day in 1973 when several of Israel’s neighbors surprise attacked and nearly defeated Israel during the Yom Kippur War.  Israel has never forgotten that tragedy. 

On Saturday (the actual day of Yom Kippur) my friend Ben and I walked back to the Old City despite our tired legs from the previous day’s walk.  We, again, walked the entire way down the middle of the main highway.  It seemed like no one quite cared what we did today, so my friend and I walked through the “closed” underground car tunnel that connects the Jaffa Gate with Damascus Gate areas.  We weren’t the only ones enjoying the lack of traffic.  A few kids were riding skateboards and bikes through the tunnel as well.  There were also some women pushing strollers up the middle of the street.  We visited the Western Wall and discovered that quite a few people had actually spent the night down there, some with blankets and pillows, even.  We bought some cheap food from the open Arab places, and I helped a middle-aged Arab man who dropped a sack of pomegranates in the road pick up his runaway fruit.  He was laughing about it and thanked me profusely in Arabic for my help. 

Two interesting events of Saturday that I witnessed were related.  A secular Jewish man was walking down the road past a group of very young Orthodox Jewish children.  The man clearly was not observing the holiday (or the Sabbath, for that matter) in the same manner as these children’s parents were.  As he passed, one Orthodox boy threw something that shattered on the ground immediately behind him.  I can’t be sure if the kid threw it at him purposefully or if it was just a coincidence.  The man wheeled around and began yelling at them in Hebrew.  Many kids ran away and a few older kids ran to the children’s aid when they heard the shouting.  I didn’t catch much of the conversation.  If I understood correctly, though, at one point I thought though I heard the man yell, “Am I an Arab?!”  If it was intentional on the boy’s part, then this again highlights the rift between secular and religious Jews in Israel.  The secular man clearly thought that although their religious practices were different, he should be more respected by these children and not accosted as though he were a non-Jew.  I was sad to see the children treat him this way, and I was also sad to hear the man’s question.  No one—Jew or Arab—should be treated badly just because they have a different ethnicity or practice than someone else.

The second incident happened on our way back.  A man (tourist, I suspect) began taking pictures of a group of ultra-Orthodox Jewish teenage boys sitting outside their synagogue.  They began yelling at him, “Shabbos! Shabbos!” [=Shabbat].  (You’re not supposed to take pictures on Shabbat.)  He continued taking photos provocatively.  A secular Jewish passerby defended the man by yelling at the youths.  About six of the youths eventually crossed the street to argue with the photographer as he continued to take their photos despite their disapproval.  A verbal argument ensued.  The photographer was very insensitive and rude about the whole ordeal.  He could have been more respectful and refrained from upsetting them.  Instead, he photographed them for a third time as they walked away from him.  It was interesting to see how both the religious and the secular view the Sabbath.  This was a demonstration in miniature of the animosity here between the Orthodox and the secular.

Lastly, let me just mention that I did attend the kapparot ritual on Thursday night.  This is the ritual I discussed in my last update where religious Jews take a chicken, say a blessing on it as they hold it above their heads, symbolically transfer their sins to it, then have it slaughtered as a “sacrifice.”  One of my female Jewish friends and I went downtown looking for the place where it is performed.  We wandered around without success for a while, so I finally stopped and in a mixture of Hebrew and English asked an ultra-Orthodox man sitting near the Mahane Yehudah Shuk entrance who had a sign that read something about kapparot.  He directed us down the street.  There we discovered the “Kapparot Market.”  The ritual works pretty much the way I described it in my last update.  Let me just say that it is a better object lesson on paper than in real life.  I was actually rather disturbed by it, both by the unpleasantness of watching an animal die (I realize the original intent of the sacrifices was to be a powerful reminder of how vile sin is—so vile that it takes the death of something to atone for it; but, still…) and by the rather irreverent, factory-style operation of the ritual.  The business-oriented attitude of the workers, disturbing sounds, frenzy, disgusting smell, casual treatment of the animals, general shady-ness of the locale, and lack of more specific devotion to God really turned me off from the entire thing. 

I appreciate the symbolism of the ritual, but I am not a proponent of it now that I’ve seen it.  It really made me thankful that Jesus the Messiah brought an end to the sacrificial system by offering the Final and Perfect Sacrifice for sin.  It also made me realize how much we fallen human beings corrupt God’s original intentions.  God originally intended the sacrifices to be done in a way to bridge the gap between sinful man and holy God.  But people ruined the practice of it.  Looking through history I realized how much God must have disdained the irreverent, disingenuous sacrifices that people offered as they externally sought to “obey” God’s commandments while their heart was not in it (see Isaiah 1:11-17).  I’m not saying that those who did the kapparot ritual on Thursday were disingenuous.  I’m sure there were Jews there that night who were genuinely worshiping God as best as they knew how through the kapparot ritual.  I’m just saying that I felt that the overall atmosphere in which it was performed may have been the kind of thing that led Jesus to overturn the tables in the Temple (Mark 11:15-17) when He saw how poorly and business-like the people were treating worship of God.  Maybe I’m just too much of an outsider to pass judgment.  I just didn’t care for it too much…

Despite that fact, please join me in praying that God would soon bring peace to Israel.  May the Jewish and Arab peoples soon come to find that atonement with God is already possible through Jesus the Messiah.