The Hunger Games: Yom Kippur Style

(My apologies in advance, this is a rather long blog post...I'm trying to distract myself from thinking about food.)

Today marks the holiest day of Judaism and I am humbled to spend it in the holiest place of Judaism; Jerusalem. This holiday has been a very awe-inspiring and hunger-filled holiday for me. It is incredible to watch how Yom Kippur is celebrated in Jerusalem. Never have I ever seen a whole city just stop everything and shut down completely. There was absolutely nothing open. "24/7" shops were closed. Stoplights were shut off. Cars were non-existant. The only thing that could be seen was a wave of white. Thousands of people all wearing white, walking through the streets of Jerusalem in celebration of Yom Kippur. It was a sight that you could only see in Jerusalem and a scene that must be experienced. Words cannot describe how weird and incredible Yom Kippur in Jerusalem is.

Yesterday afternoon was a bit of a disaster attempting to eat enough to get me through Yom Kippur. I was originally going to go shopping and make food before the Holiday, but I woke up a little too late and all the stores were closed already. So we went onto plan B which was a pizza place right next to us. When we got there and that was closed, we started freaking out a little bit. When you live with 6 other guys, no matter how much food you buy, it disappears faster than my leftovers back home when I put it in the fridge (I'm still mad at you dad for eating that cookie). Anyway, we had almost no food in our apartment so I quickly cooked up the little food that we had which included rice, frozen peas and carrots, and eggs. I ended up have a pre-feast meal of undercooked rice, veggies, and some eggs. It was pretty good for a spur of the moment meal.

Once Yom Kippur started, a couple of my friends and I walked to the Kotel. While we were on the way to the Kotel, I had one of the first moments where I didn't feel like a tourist in Jerusalem. On our way to there, we passed a group of American high school kids. They were lost and asked us for directions to a synagogue. Surprisingly, I immediately knew what synagogue they were talking about and I gave them directions on how to get there. That's when I realized that I wasn't just another tourist in Israel, I'm a student here. I live in Israel now. 

When we finally got to the Kotel, it was another incredible sight. Everyone was dressed in white having small services, all with their Torahs. I ended up joining a Spanish service full of kids from South America. It was confusing trying to juggle speaking English, Spanish, and Hebrew but it was nice to speak all three languages within 20 seconds of each other. As I've said before, I'm starting to realize what Judaism truly is. It brings us together. People from all different countries, backgrounds, and cultures, all coming together as one identity to celebrate the holiest day at the holiest sight in Judaism. It was a great experience and made me realize even more what Israel means and what being Jewish truly means.

After sitting in that service for about 30 minutes, I decided to leave because it was getting too hard to hear the service. I couldn't find any of my friends so I decided to just walk to the reform service nearby alone. After a very peaceful walk, a walk where I was in the middle of the road and could count the number of moving cars I saw on one hand, I showed up to the reform service. It is a very nice service and the Rabbi there knows my grandpa so the services are very similar to my services back home. I spent about an hour there and then once those ended, I walked back home. At about 9:00 that same night, a big group of Year Coursers, all wearing white, a tradition in Israel, (it is said that you wear white to be like angels and that we will never be closer to angels than on Yom Kippur) left Beit Ar El and walked around for a couple hours. We walked through the middle of normally busy streets, where all you could see were people dressed in white. It was like a scene from a movie. No cars were around, just people walking around everywhere, all dressed in white. It was an eerie sight but an incredible sight at the same time.

Today, I've spent most of my day with friends, playing games, talking about food, having an "alternative lunch", dreaming about food, and salivating over food we can't have for another couple hours. I think it goes without saying, I'm hungry. But it does make it a lot easier the fact that we have almost no food in our kitchen anymore. I'm heading back to the Kotel again in a few minutes so I'll wrap up this blog post. Hope everyone back home is having a good Yom Kippur and I miss all my family and friends!