Once upon a time in Jerusalem, and this time Yom Kippur in Jerusalem.
The unique atmosphere of Yom Kippur was preceded by the build-up that started even before Rosh Hashanah with the beginning of forgiveness.
During the night shift, groups marched to the synagogues to say their prayers.
In the old neighborhoods, the synagogue collector would go between the houses knock on the shutters and windows, and call out in a musical voice –
“Slichot, Slichot”
A wide-eyed crowd of worshipers gathered in the synagogue for a prayer of forgiveness, with a steaming cup of tea from the samovar and with Jerusalem songs and tunes, which none is more beautiful than them.
Hymns emanated from the windows of the synagogue – O hear your pauper,
The Lord of forgiveness, and a hidden competition for the lungs and the most vital voice in the Aneinu prayer,
The one who held his breath longer than his friend got to complete the sentence.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, in a special Jerusalem atmosphere, a blanket of silence and holiness fell over the city.
A tourist or an alien who landed in the city at noon before the break meal could know that it was a different and holy day, just from the color of the sky, the atmosphere, and the silence that enveloped everything.
After the intermission meal, everyone gathered in the synagogues to pray each vow, and then, as if in a magic headquarters, all the people flocked to the regional meeting points as if to the sounds of a magical flute that could not be heard.
For us, it was Denia Square, in the Beit Hakerem neighborhood.
Thousands of people in white clothes came to the square after the prayer, and there you could meet everyone you hadn’t met all year and everyone you didn’t want to meet all year.
Hundreds of people in white, children and parents, the entire road that was busy all year round, became a large empty lot for one day.
The children turned the statue in Denia Square, which was covered with dots that resembled water drops on the boat-shaped statue that still stands in the square to this day, into a slide, and tore the white holiday clothes, and angered their parents.
People also came to the area from other neighborhoods from the west of the city, Bait Vagan, Kiryat Yuval, Kiryat Moshe, and more.
The criminals, who all year long were busy with their day’s work on the border of the law and sometimes beyond it, suddenly wore white canvas shoes, with extreme care,
A format that was perfected later and became a white cap during the extension of detention.
The source started there.
Little by little, the young people in the square began to gather in groups that began their journey on foot to the Western Wall,
Anyone who knows Jerusalem knows that the road is long and stretches for quite a few kilometers.
At the Western Wall plaza, you met all the young people, from the whole city, who had flocked to the Western Wall, from the Gilo neighborhood to Ramat Eshkol and Ramot.
The swarms of people returned to their neighborhoods in the middle of the night and turned in the morning.
At the end of the fast and after the blowing of the shofar, each family gathered together with its customs and foods –
The Spaniards with bread and olive oil and thyme, and a drink that is served one day a year – Pipitada,
which is made from melon seeds that are disrupted in the sun, ground, placed in a diaper with water and sugar, and to this day are the ultimate taste of Passover,
A glass of life and harira soup at our Moroccan brothers, chowder that has been in the oven all holiday at other ethnic groups, tomato soup with thick noodles, and other annual foods for each ethnic group,
And bland food like the rest of the year at our brothers from the Ashkenaz community.
It was our Yom Kippur in Jerusalem, with a special atmosphere of holiness in the air once a year, bicycles next to canvas shoes, a scapegoat next to disguised cradles, and our only god.
Unique days, distant and magical, will never return.
Shabbat Shalom to all, far and near, from Jerusalem.
unknown photographer
