October 2004
Hello from Jerusalem,
My daughter called it outrageous. I felt a little intimidated. We were both amazed and delighted by what we had, serendipitously, seen on the Saturday night after Rosh Hashanah at the end of Sabbath.
We are getting accustomed to Jerusalem becoming a ghost town from five or so on Friday evening (Sabbath starts at sundown) until sundown on Saturday night. I remember the morning of our first Saturday here trying to catch a taxi , we walked up and down deserted streets near our home thinking we could probably play a game of chess in the middle of the street if we wanted to. These past three days of Rosh Hashanah observance have been just like that: hardly any cars on the roads, few people walking except in their Saturday Best on their way to worship or perhaps to share a meal with family and friends. In fact, every Saturday since I’ve had access to a car, I’ve used traffic-less Sabbaths to drive around town getting lost, finding my way back, discovering new places, learning routes to here and there.
We left at 8:30 Saturday evening. I was going to take Katie downtown to meet friends. I knew the roads would be busy, but I had no idea how busy. We live a five minute walk from the biggest mall in the Middle East (I’m definitely not bragging) and we’ve seen how the place fills to the gills with people, people, people, especially on Saturday evening. Eager shoppers released from their Sabbath rest descend on the place in droves, consumer locusts eager to devour clothes, electronics, you name it. It’s a plague of Biblical proportions. Tonight, however, traffic was much worse than usual because of a soccer game at the stadium across the street from shopping heaven. You can’t believe how people park. The line down the middle of the road becomes parking for two cars abreast. Soccer fans pull up to curbs sometime one or two wheels up on the curb itself. Two lane roads become one lane roads because of the ad hoc parking and endless traffic.
It felt like all of Jerusalem was glad to be active again. After several long minutes of bumper to bumper inaction, we put that mass of humanity and their cars behind us and made our way into town. Checking with her friends via phone, she learned they would not be at the rendezvous for another 15 minutes, so we drove around.
I continued straight on a downtown city street intending to make a right turn onto another street I already knew well, and was a little surprised to see a No Right Turn sign keep me from it. Looking back, I say hurrah for the little things that urge us from our safe ruts. I knew, or at least suspected, we were headed for an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, because I had taken this same street on one of our Sabbath drives several weeks ago and remember that the street had been blocked. The Orthodox interpret the commandment about resting on the Sabbath very literally in many ways. One, is by neither driving nor wanting other drivers disturbing their rest. I’ve even heard of hapless goyim, ignorant Gentiles like me, who accidentally drive into those neighborhoods on the Sabbath and get their car stoned by irate residents. No kidding.
Tonight, however, there were no stones thrown from which Jesus could have raised Sons of Abraham, but rather a multitude of those very sons (and daughters). Crowded sidewalks overflowed with the Hasidim: tall, short, big, small, old, young, the women wearing black dresses and most of the men wearing long black coats and black fedoras. Others wore the unusual hat Katie and I simply call the Russian. The best way I can describe this odd head gear is like this. Picture a three layer cake maybe 6 inches high and 14, possibly more, inches from side to side. Now imagine that large cake is completely frosted in thick, brown fur. That’s what many of the men were wearing. We’d seen those hats before in ones or twos even worn by Hasidic men at high noon in the glaring hot Middle Eastern sun. Now we were seeing scores and scores. Many of the men also wore black coats made of a shiny material, and some wore tight, white socks that meet the hem of the coat at about mid-shin. It looks like they’re wearing bath robes. And all males from the elderly men to the young boys sported side curls, long locks of hair that grow from their temples, down the sides of their faces where sideburns would be, and continue on for several inches, sometimes loose, often neatly curled. And speaking of hair, almost all the men had beards, some white and venerable, others black and ponderous, still others whispy adolescent wannabes.
We were delighted and amazed and slightly overwhelmed by it all, but there was more to come. I had turned a corner only to be stopped by a traffic jam. When it cleared we saw that the oncoming traffic had been driving around a group of men dancing in the street. They wore whitish, coarse woven robes, hats and side curls, and were dancing a bouncy up and down sort of jig in a loose-knit circle to music that was, well, very Jewish-sounding if you don’t mind me saying so. And if possible, the already overburdened sidewalks bore even more souls at that point, other people watching the dancers celebrate what? Life? God’s goodness in getting them to another New Year? Being able to get out after three inactive days? I think I had slowed to a crawl and maybe had even stopped driving, being so enthralled with the whole scene. A Jerusalem honk from the car behind mine woke me from the near spell I was in, so I drove on.
Along the next several blocks, black-garbed people still thronged the streets. From a traffic safety point of view I was a little concerned. After a month here, I think I’m justified in saying many Jerusalemites do way too much jaywalking. Imagine driving at night on a busy two-lane city street with throngs of black-garbed people randomly cutting across the road. I had to stay alert.
Our little drive had taken barely 10 minutes, yet for Katie and me those moments were timeless. We were suspended briefly in a place thronged with Orthodox Jewish faithful stretching their legs after three days of enforced rest, and also maybe stretching their spirits, imbibing the joy of belonging to a group, of being surrounded by others in that group, free in this place to dress and act and eat and sleep and even dance in the street as their inclinations and their faith leads them, passionately embracing the life God has given them.
