Slichot

Okay. A lot has happened since...since I last blahged.

I'm gonna split it up.

Here it goes.

Wednesday I had ulpan like any other day. I have this problem: I sketch people with beards in my Ulpan workbook and they subconsciously end up coming out like my hairy Ulpan teacher. I hope he doesn't notice.

That's besides the point.

After coming home from Ulpan, we were summoned to meet our group at 8 on a coach bus destined for Jerusalem. The ride there was lengthy on account of the traffic. We ended up getting there around 9 PM. We met this tour guide who had no idea what he was talking about. We went to visit King David's "grave"and he told us a story that went like this:

"King David was a rich man. He saw a woman named Batsheva who he wanted to take as his own. But she was married. So he sent Batsheva's husband, who was at war, to come home from battle to sleep with his wife because David felt bad, and the husband said NO because his men were at war, he wasn't going to get sex. So David sent the husband to the front of the line of troops so he would get killed off. Is this a myth? Maybe. It shows that nobody is perfect."

I had no idea what he was saying. It could have been kinda inspiring...like being in the Old City on the holiest night of the Jewish Calendar.

It gets crazier.

Our guide decides it would be an experience to take us to the Western Wall on Slichot (Slichot, literally means pardon or forgive, are prayers for forgiveness. They are mentioned in the Mishnah as prayers before fast days).

Our guide tells us that it is the craziest day at the Wall of the year.

Our guide does not tell us when and where to meet.

Our guide does not tell us that the crowds will be so swollen with angry Israelis, so packed with sweaty Haredim without deodorant, so stiflingly vacuum-packed with noise and infinite chaos.

I think, this program is called the Israel Experience. I'm here to experience Israel. I'm gonna dive into the crowd.

It's not long until I think...I'm gonna die.

As soon as I make it down the steps to enter the Kotel, I am sandwiched between bodies, each heading opposite directions. I felt like a grain of sand between two tectonic plates. On a movie screen was a projection of the Chief Rabbi of the Wall chanting Slichot prayers. I couldn't tell what he was really saying (I think he had a stroke). I was about to break down. I hadn't signed up for this (It was already 1:30 AM). I wanted my orange down quilt on my bed in my clammy Tel Aviv apartment. I tried to change directions and head for the stairs. I was squished against an empty tollbooth next to a bearded man with terrible B.O. The crowds were so smooshed like they were constipated. I ended up opening up the window of the toll booth and siting on the sill of it. People were pressing up against it. The tollbooth was moving. Like it was a phantom. A Phantom Tollbooth.

I made it to the stairs to the way back to the menorah (I had texted a friend where and when to meet). When I reached the first step, a Hasidic man shouted, "KAPAROS! KAPAROS!" Kapparot is an ancient and mystical custom connected to Yom Kippur. It is often performed on Slichot. The ceremony involves taking a chicken (a white rooster for a male, a hen for a female) and waving it over one's head while reciting this prayer: "This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. This chicken will go to its death while I will enter and proceed to a good long life, and peace." Then the chicken is slaughtered and it (or its cash value) is given to the poor.

This Hasidic man, calling to me to have a chicken swung over my head, made some sense to me. I felt drawn to it. Maybe because I had already been through the large-scale Jewish version of a rush-hour train in Tokyo, I figured what could be crazier?...what the hell, I'll do this. Or maybe because I felt so impure from being sweated and breathed and stepped on, groped, grabbed, and yelled at, I wanted a lowlife chicken to suck all that bad energy out of me. I suffered in this crowd. Now you, mama hen...it's your time to suffer.

I bought a sachlab ( warm rose pudding with nuts, coconut, cinnamon, and cardamom) and a sesame beigel (a oblong loop of sesame bread with tiny packets of za'atar spice wrapped in butcher paper for dipping in) to cool my inflamed emotions. I slept the whole bus ride home and got home at 4:30 AM. I slept for 4 hours and it was back to Ulpan to draw more curious pictures of my hairy teacher.

P.S. The pictures are of the crowds at the Kotel, and of the man that swung that poor hen over my head. The video is me when I escaped the crowds and was enjoying the jamming of some Yeshiva boys' band.