A city that comes to a semi-standstill for 24 hours.
Like Sundays in the United States that once were impacted by Christian-based “blue laws,” the pace of life in Jerusalem changes dramatically on Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath.
Preparations start on Friday mid-afternoons, when businesses start closing and preparations are made for an evening of worship. Restaurants turn off their ovens. Buses stop running.
For many in this most religious of cities, Friday evening means walking to the Western Wall, the most sacred of all Jewish locations. On Friday evenings, the plaza in front of the 2,000-year-old wall is crowded with Observant Jewish men in black hats and suits. Praying. Singing. Dancing.
Regardless of faith, you can join them if you cover your head with a hat, cap or yarmulke. You can walk up to the wall to pray at it, touch it or just look at it. You can, that is, if you’re a male. Women and girls are restricted to a separate area.
For restaurants that aren’t kosher, the Sabbath is business as usual. But, for observant Jews, cooking is forbidden. So kosher restaurants, many of which are among the finest in Israel’s largest city, close on Friday and don’t reopen until Saturday evening.
Hotel guests still can get a hot meal in some kosher hotels, but the food will have been prepared earlier. Even the fresh-squeezed glass of orange juice with your cold Saturday morning breakfast will not be so freshly squeezed. It will have been squeezed the afternoon before.
In buildings, there are special Shabbat elevators that operate automatically because pushing an elevator button — like riding in a car — is considered a form of work forbidden on the Sabbath. The doors open and pause automatically at each floor and you can spend a large part of your evening getting from the lobby to the top of some of the country’s taller hotels. But, even for non-Jews, there is a blessing to be had on the Sabbath. They turn off the elevator music.
While all of this might be regarded as curious or, at least, an inconvenience by non-Jews, keeping the Sabbath in this city is a matter of faith.
As it has been written, “More than Israel has kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept Israel.”
Contact this columnist at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.
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