By Larry Gordon

The traffic on the Armenian Archbishop Patriarchate Street was at a standstill on Friday afternoon. This is the main thoroughfare in the Old City of Jerusalem and it was crowded with Sukkos guests and locals, mostly yeshiva families pushing baby strollers coming from and going to the Kotel.

We shuffled along the street with everyone else, trying to stick as close to the ancient stone walls as possible in an effort to avoid contact with the autos–though due to their immobility they were not posing much of a threat anyway.

One is almost forced to wonder why, with the city teeming with people, the powers-that-be restrict the flow of cars on a day like this. If you are not a resident of the Old City of Jerusalem or a taxi driver, it’s a little crazy to drive your car into this part of the city.

So I was thinking as we were moving along on Friday in “bumper-to-bumper” people traffic that perhaps East Jerusalem should somehow be turned into a pedestrian mall of sorts. But then again that would be tampering with the status quo of the city, which some might consider a violation of international law, warranting the convening of a special session of the UN Security Council. We don’t really want that, so we just deal with the human and car traffic as it is.

It was a grand Shabbos chol ha’moed in Jerusalem. The streets are alive, the stores and hotels are busy. In addition to the ascension of Jews like us from around the world, there was a noticeable gathering and confluence of Christians from around the world looking to spend this time of year here in this most lovely and holiest of cities. On the busy Ben Yehuda Street on Saturday night, there is a group of young people playing and singing upbeat tunes in Hebrew. A sign nearby says they are from Germany and that they stand in solidarity with the people of Israel.

Further up to King George Street there is a group singing choir-style, also in Hebrew. They are from China and they too are Christians here in Israel to celebrate the chag in their own way. Today there are 100 million evangelical Christians in China; the rate of tourism from China to Israel has grown dramatically over the last few years. It has reinvigorated the tourist industry in the face of occasional acts of terror. That kind of news does not keep the Chinese away from Israel. Their news media may not even report these types of incidents, so what you don’t know you just don’t know.

Back in our Diaspora communities, well, in New York anyway, one of the most frequent inquiries is about Rosh Hashanah and what time of day the davening was completed in the shul you attend. I don’t know if that is asked here as well, but there is another indigenous question you hear being discussed and that emanates from just about every direction. And that is the matter of whether you are observing one or two days of yom tov.

Observing one or two days of the chag here in Israel is not a matter of personal preference or how you might be feeling on that second day. If you are a male over bar mitzvah, there is the matter of whether or not you are required to don tefillin on what is the last day of yom tov outside of Israel. If you are not halachically required to observe that second day of the chag in conventional Diaspora fashion, then you might be required to wear your tefillin at Shacharis. So you see it’s not just a matter of checking your e-mails or driving a car.

Actually, I observed an incident here on Hoshanna Rabbah that I found interesting. We were in shul in one of the hotels here on Sunday morning. A friend from New York sauntered in a little late with his tefillin on. We were completing Hallel and he was still focused on an earlier section of the davening. One of the men sitting at a table at the front of the shul was motioning for my friend in his tefillin to leave the room, or the shul, as it was at the time.

We both did not know what his concern was or what he was trying to accomplish. At that point the man pushed back his chair and headed in our direction. He addressed my friend, saying that if he wants to wear tefillin he should do so in his hotel room or apartment. He said it was minhag Yerushalayim that tefillin is not worn in public, that is in shul on chol ha’moed.

My friend shot back, saying that it was his custom to wear tefillin. The man became more indignant and stated that wearing tefillin in Jerusalem on chol ha’moed was “a bizayon,” an affront and an insult to Jerusalem.

And the next day I observed something similar when we went to the Tzemach Tzedek shul in the Old City. Having been born and raised in Crown Heights, it was our custom to eat in the sukkah on Shemini Atzeres. Some of our neighbors had already left the sukkah the night before, but we were still in there for lunch the next day regardless of the weather conditions. That’s just the way we did it. But then at the Chabad shul on the chag I noticed that the men were making Kiddush and eating indoors. That was, I thought, un-Chabad-like. When I inquired I was once again told that unlike the custom in the Diaspora, this was a minhag Yerushalayim.

Apparently it does not pay to fight or question that powerful custom. But make no mistake–there are many people maintaining their custom of observing two days of yom tov nevertheless. On Monday night, I met a grandfather who lives in New York walking hand in hand with his grandson, also from New York. The zaide, who keeps one day, was going to buy pizza for the grandson, who keeps two days. So how does that work? Perhaps a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy would be best in this case.

Familiar faces are everywhere on Sukkos here in Jerusalem and that is such a wonderful thing to be a part of.

In a sense, though, Israel is under siege as is, unfortunately, usual. But you would not know that from walking the streets here. There is an upbeat spirit and confidence in the air. You know Israel is truly happening over a chag when you have to shuffle along the narrow streets in the Old City and even have to interface with the car-clogged streets near the Machane Yehuda Market.

But if there was one event which represented the entirety of the unified diversity that exists here, it was the experience of last Monday night when yom tov was over for most, but not for those keeping two days. Because of the chag, the option exists here to prepay in some restaurants, where, like the rest of the country, it’s business as usual after the combined Shemini Atzeres/Simchas Torah celebration.

We were in a restaurant in Jerusalem that was filling up quickly. At one table in front of us, a young man was saying Havdallah. Right behind us was another family with grandparents and younger children, and one of the men was making the yom tov Kiddush.

Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here