Stewart: High Holy Days

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One of the reasons I wanted to come to Israel for a year was to experience the entire cycle of Jewish holidays. Since this is a Jewish country and the majority of the citizens are Jews, the Jewish holidays are the national holidays. I wanted to see how the holidays are celebrated here. And I wanted to know what it feels like to be in a place where my holidays are the national holidays.

We recently concluded the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the day of atonement when Jews square themselves with God and their fellow humans. Here I’m going to write about Yom Kippur in Haifa.

In the States, Jews typically spend Yom Kippur fasting and praying. The surrounding culture, however, pays no mind and life goes on as usual. It’s not like that in Israel. Life comes to a standstill—well, sort of. On the eve of Yom Kippur, we walked to the synagogue to attend services (Kol Nidre). The sun had not yet set, but traffic had thinned markedly already. By the time services were over, it was dark. The holiday had begun. What a change. I first noticed how quiet it was. The streets were deserted. Traffic noise has become such a part of the background that we’ve ceased to hear it. Until it’s gone, that is. (The closest experience I’ve had in the States is on Christmas morning, but even then there’s still some traffic.) So here we are walking home. It’s dark. Vision is normally our primary sense, but in darkness other senses are accentuated, particularly hearing. And it’s eerily quiet. Now I’ve been in quiet places before. Mountains. Desert. But never in the middle of a large city. In fact, something’s wrong if it this quiet. It lent a surreal quality to the experience.

I wrote that life comes to a standstill—sort of. It wasn’t actually all that quiet. You have to understand that driving in Israel is an intense experience. Everyone’s always in a hurry. People are impatient, they drive fast, they’re aggressive, and they use their horns a lot. Pedestrians beware. (The traffic lights are different here from in the States. In the States, a red light turns green, and then you go. Here, when it’s time for a red light to change, the yellow light briefly comes on so that both lights are on simultaneously. Then it switches to green. The red and yellow combination is the signal for drivers to honk their horns and begin moving.) So here you have a situation where all the cars are suddenly gone. It’s an unstable condition, a vacuum. What happens? Kids take over the streets. It’s dark and the streets are crowded with kids whizzing by on bicycles, scooters, skateboards—whatever has wheels. Adults are out too, strolling down the middle of the street. Families bike by, touring through the neighborhoods. Groups of teenagers gather on the corner, acting cool. It’s as though there’s all this pent up activity, suppressed and frustrated for a whole year, and it suddenly all comes out this one night. It’s a real carnival atmosphere.

OK, so that’s Yom Kippur eve in Haifa. This custom—taking over the streets—is relatively new and somewhat controversial. As I said, Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year, and there are people who object to this kind of frivolity. To them, it detracts from the religious experience. Tel Aviv and Haifa are relatively secular cities, and this custom has caught on in both places. Jerusalem is much more conservative, and I’m told the practice much less widespread.

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