Hag Sameach

Sitting on the main street in Ramla, Hertzl, on Friday night.

What a great time to be in Israel. On and off through the early parts of September, it was rumored that on Erev Yom Kippur, it is illegal to drive in the state of Israel. I'm not sure how much truth there is in that statement, or if perhaps everyone just bands together and not operating their vehicles is a choice they make, but this past Friday night, there wasn't a car to be found, lest you include those of the police or medics. The streets however, were far from empty.

A blurry but accurate shot of the throng of
people at the Rotary on Yoseftal on Friday night.

If you look out the window of my apartment (which happens to take up a good portion of the wall), you will see the street, and one of the thousands of rotaries they have in Ramla alone. During Erev Kippur (Israeli's drop the Yom), that rotary was a blinding flash of white. White T-shirts, white skirts, white pants, white heels, white yarmulkes. Thousands of people were in the streets, of all ages. The rotary was a gathering spot for teenagers, elders; there were children on bikes, on scooters; mothers pushing baby's - it was a the site of all sites to watch the sea of white travel down the middle of the street, un-alarmed, un-inhibited. This march continued until the wee-hours of the morning, and then the town slept, and was quiet for a just a minute, until the madness started up again the following day, and didn't end until the shofar blew on Saturday night at sundown, signaling the end of Yom Kippur, of the fast, and of a memorable Shabbat.

Cleaning up Palmahim Beach.

Because of all of the holidays, we have had short work weeks. This particular week was only three days, and kicked off with "Clean Up Israel". On Sunday, a sherut picked eight of us up and took us too Palmahim, a beach located on a Kibbutz about 25 minutes from Ramla. There, we were given t - shirts, hats, and trash bags, and we were sent on a mission to better the beach, which was, inevitably, filled with trash and was being used as the local sherutim (bathroom) a lot of the time. It was hard, long work in the sun and the heat, but it was rewarding. At the end of the day, we got to take a dip in the Mediterranean, and randomly met a woman on the beach who works for Clean Up Israel, who informed us that there is an effort to better the beaches and cities of Israel happening as we spoke, and that we could be a part of it. Hopefully, we will be in touch with her and can get involved with Israel-wide clean up efforts.

 Of course, another holiday follows Kippur's tail. Sukkot is starting soon, giving us more days of rest and celebration. It is incredible to go to sleep the eve of the closing of Yom Kippur and wake up the next morning to see Sukkah's dressing the streets, man made structures that seemingly rose from the ground overnight. Both Oranim Ramla groups banded together after the Palmahim beach clean up to construct our own Sukkah at the house, decorating it with balloons and banners, eating burrakahs, jam squares (courtesy of your's truly!), hummus and pita, pasta salad, and causing mayhem for a few hours, creating our fair share of ballagan (mess).

In the next few days, I will be doing a lot of traveling. In an attempt to see Israel at its best during Sukkot, I will be joining my roommates for a short vacation in Haifa, and then making my way to Jerusalem to spend Shabbat with Rachel and Harris. I can't wait to see some of the Sukkahs across the country. (Because blogger is being strange, it won't let me caption the above photo - It is me, being a ham ballagan [hot mess] inside the Ramla Sukkah.)