The funny thing about living in Israel is that Sabbath is on Saturday instead of Sunday. The Jewish Sabbath is from sunset on Friday nights to sunset on Saturday. This means that on Friday nights, a big chunk of the Jewish community here in the Old City of Jerusalem welcomes in the Sabbath with a huge celebration at the Western Wall, or what many know as the Wailing Wall.
Normally we aren’t allowed to go out to the Old City at night, but our professors made an exception for this event. I’d been to the wall a few days earlier but nothing could have prepared me for the commotion inside the gates. Sadly, we couldn’t bring cameras because the Jews don’t use electricity or electronics during the Sabbath, so using one would have been completely offensive. The few pictures I’m posting were taken a few days earlier.
When we walked through Dung Gate (no really, that’s what it’s called) I could see thousands of people packed into the plaza. The men mostly wore white shirts and black coats with either a yarmulke on their heads or sometimes a giant furry Russian-looking one. Many were ultra-Orthodox with their beads and long curls of hair hanging near their ears. The women mostly wore black pencil skirts.
Surprisingly, most of the people were only about 18 years old and they seemed to be students at some of the Jewish schools in the city. Along with them were hundreds of Jewish soldiers (also only about 18 years old) who each had their own machine gun strapped to their back. No big deal.
The pure energy of the plaza was palpable. People sang and danced to Hebrew songs, circling up with their arms around each other and then dancing through the court. Every few minutes, a train of Jewish boys would pass by singing and dancing. Even the birds swooped in and out of everyone as if they wanted in on the fun as well.
The wall itself is divided into two sections. One side is only for men, and the other considerably smaller side is for women. I worked my way through the crowds of praying women to touch the wall and offer my own little prayer of thanks that I got to be part of this spectacular event. I could see the cracks completely stuffed with little scraps of colorful paper on which people had written notes and prayers.
I then peaked over the divider at the men’s side. It was one big sea of yarmulkes and fedoras bouncing and swaying with the cheerful songs and prayers. It was easy to spot the guys in our group with their straw hats and green or blue shirts among the swarm of black and white.
If I thought this was exciting, however, I had no idea what I was in for. After I’d seen enough of the men’s side (don’t worry, it’s not against the rules or anything to look over there) I turned around to check out the rest of the plaza. I spotted a few people from my group not far away dancing and clapping in a circle with the young Jewish soldiers. When I asked them what was going on, one girl said, “I don’t know. They told us to join in, and they have guns, so we joined!”
Yeah, good thinking.
Not wanting to be left out of the fun, I managed my way into the circle as well. Looking around, I noticed none of the Jewish girls were in the circle, so I was afraid it might be improper, but they were pulling us in so join I did. Pretty soon, they started singing the only song we learned in my Hebrew class two days earlier. Basically, you sing “Shabbat Shalom” (Peaceful Sabbath) over and over again, but we all felt pretty cool that we knew a Hebrew song. Then they all turned to us and asked us what we wanted to sing next.
“Uh, that’s all we know.”
I have to ask myself how many times each day these people must shake their heads and say, “Dumb Americans.” At least we know, right? After a few more minutes of us pretending to sing along but really just saying, “Hava Nagila nah nah yeah watermelon,” and a few “lie lie lie’s” the soldiers consulted with each other in Hebrew.
Suddenly, one of them jumped up, anxious, and told us all to spread out and make a big circle. He tossed his machine gun to a friend the same way one of us would say, “Here, hold my camera,” and then ran around the circle gesturing us all to wave our arms and yell before he ran to the middle and back-flipped. Cheers erupted and the boys began chanting the Hebrew equivalent to our English game “Ride That Pony.”
If you’ve never played this game before, (first of all, shame on you) then I should explain. Basically everyone stands in a circle singing while one person dances around freestyle in the middle. Then the middle person picks one person in the circle and does a little shimmy with them (not actually touching, mind you) to the front, the back and the side. Then it’s that person’s turn to dance in the middle.
And so the fun began. The boys danced as we clapped, picking other soldiers to go next. As we jumped and sang, one of the boy’s cold black guns banged against my arm. It jostled me back to reality for a second, and I was silently praying the safety was on Ol’ Betsy, if you know what I mean. As I watched this game go on, I was relieved they hadn’t picked me, but at the same time secretly hoped they would.
Suddenly, my heart nearly jumped out my throat as the dancing boy stopped right in front of me with everybody watching, and I knew my fate was inevitable. Coincidentally, this was also the exact moment a bunch of the boys in our group (who have continuously been told by our professors to “watch the girls’ butts!”) returned from the men’s side of the wall.
Just in time to see me shimmy it up with a Jewish kid.
Really, I had no choice. I did the only thing I could. I broke out of the safety of my friends and started jumping around in the middle of the circle, flailing my arms like a fool.
And that’s when it hit me. There I was at the Western Wall in the ancient city of Jerusalem, completely surrounded about four people deep by dozens of yelling Jewish soldiers with machine guns.
And I was dancing.
