YK

Howzit peeps?

Hope you all survived 25 hours of no food or drink and that you all managed to recall/repent all your sins despite the memory erasing powers of alcohol.

I was in the holy city of jerusalem for the day of atonement and it was reasonably awesome. Israel in general on YK is exceptional. It really feels like a day of awe.

Every single shop/business is closed. There is not a single car on the road. All the traffic lights are just flashing yellow the whole time. And obviously there are a million cyclists roving the streets in herds taking advantage that there is one day of the year that they are less likely to be road kill.

It was generally amazing to see a city of 500,000 people (in West j'lem) completely close down. I haven't done any research on this at all but I reckon that this is the only country in the world where that happens.

But apart from my wanderings around the town I severely dislike YK. Basically b/c prayer is seriously not my thing. For this I blame Rambam (see Hilchot Yesodei Hatorah for details). Since the whole day is spent praying it's very close to being the most painful thing ever other than me having to watch commercial tv. Masterchef. *Shudder*

And with that - Gmar Hatima Tova to you all, lets see how long we can keep this 'clean from sin' thing going on for k?