Hi everyone! I hope you all had a meaningful yom kippur.
My yom kippur was really good. I went to a small sephardic egalitarian minyin for kol nidri. The minyin was not something I’m used too, and I didn’t enjoy it very much. Fortunately, when we were walking home, I saw my friend from camp who lives here and we talked for a while.
Something really amazing about yom kippur in Jerusalem is that there are no cars on the streets. Except for the occasional police car or ambulance, the streets only have people. Because of this, lots of kids ride their bikes and scooters and it is a really fun experience.
Then, for yom kippur day, we went to Zion. Even though I don’t love Zion, I don’t hate it and it will probably be our main shul this year. We had very nice services but it was very long. There was a break that was only an hour so we just stayed at shul. The only way I survived shul was of course, my books. Whenever I needed a break from davening, I just pulled out my book.
Something interesting about tefilot yesterday was that people kept passing around plants to smell. Apparently, you are supposed to smell things on yom Kippor in order to make brachot because you can’t make brachot on food.
On our way home from break fast, we already saw and heard people building their sukkot. That was the first warning that sukkot is near. You guys better start building your sukkot!
-Alexandra