Shuvoo Sights & Sites

Journeys Through Photo & Word

 

People & Places from the Past and the Present by Ashirah Yosefah

 

Issue No. 4, June 8^th, 2006

 

 

IMAGINE …

Sights & Sounds from Shavuot 2006

 

 

There are times when I so wish that using a camera were permitted on our holy holidays, but it is not, so I will try to recreate in words the amazing vistas that met the eyes of those celebrating Shavuot last week in Jerusalem, especially those of us who participated in the Tikkun Leil Shavuot Torah studies, staying awake until the mid-morning hours on Shavuot day.  The pictures which follow will offer you images to feed your imagination as you transform them in your mind to enhance these tales of Shavuot a week ago.

 

A Torah study inside the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron …

a daily occurrence there, as it was on Leil Shavuot.  In Jerusalem,

the yards outside some synagogues were set up with tables and

night lighting as men studied Torah throughout  the night. 

A beautiful sight for those walking by.

 (© Ashirah Yosefah Photo).

 

Synagogues throughout Jerusalem were packed last Thursday evening as people wedged themselves into every available inch of space to welcome Shavuot.  I had had the best laid plans to slip in an afternoon power nap to ready myself for Tikkun Leil Shavuot, but even the best laid plans sometimes come to naught.  Shavuot was followed by Shabbat this year, so two days of food preparation kept most women busily nap-free on Erev Chag.  Nonetheless, excitement was high in shul, with everyone checking to see where their friends were planning to study through the night ahead.

 

After davening, everyone headed off to transform tables into altars as we shared the first meal of Shavuot with family and friends.  Dairy foods and D’var Torah were abundant at the tables and the home where I was enjoying the meal was bedecked with lavish branches of flowers and greenery everywhere.  The food, conversation and songs were so plentiful that it was just shy of midnight when we said the Birkat haMazon and headed off to our respective Torah study destinations.  Most of us at the table were already running 30 to 60 minutes late for our first shiur (class)!

 

 

Zion Gate (from inside the Walls) at night.  A week ago on Leil Shavuot

this gate was filled with a continual stream of people heading to

Torah studies and making their way to the Kotel

(© Ashirah Yosefah Photo)

 

 

Walking from Baka to Katamon, I found the streets bustling with people making their way, full and happy, to shiurim.   We had not been the only ones to run a bit late at dinner.  Many of us had elaborate itineraries of classes lined up for the night … a spiritual, intellectual and physical marathon of sorts as we walked from one location to the next.  By 2:30am, I was settled into my third shiur of the evening in a room packed to overflowing, literally, with a couple dozen people sitting in the stairwell outside the apartment straining to hear the words of our teacher.  Looking about, my eyelids were not the only ones beginning to droop.  This next hour would be the most difficult, a ‘second wind’ would follow it, but as I scanned the room several heads were nodding despite the abundance of high-carb chocolate cakes and sweets being passed around the room.  Nonetheless, we all fought to stay awake, with the exception of a few multi-second vertical naps.  Our teacher was excellent and we did not want to let her down or miss anything she said.

 

At 3:40 am, we spilled out into the cool night air.  Another shiur was about to begin, but my friend and I were joining other friends who were planning to celebrate their daughter’s Bat Mitzvah down at the Kotel as Shavuot dawn arrived.  Guests made their way to their home and powered up on cookies and Turkish coffee as the excitement rose.  It was time to head to the Kotel!

 

 

This photo was taken by day last year, but on Shavuot,

as dawn drew near, rivers of people were streaming

up the walking path that traverses this hill leading

to Zion Gate.  All had but one thought in mind:

To reach the Kotel to daven the morning prayers

and hear the reading of Megillat Ruth.

(© Ashirah Yosefah Photo)

 

Words truly fail any attempt to describe the feeling one gets as they walk through the streets of Jerusalem in the pre-dawn hours of Shavuot.  Everywhere, from every direction, people are being drawn like a magnet to the Kotel.  Voices are filled with excitement.  Arriving at the base of the hill leading up to Zion Gate, we encounter a traffic jam of people.  The walk path, after all, is only so wide.  The more adventurous decide to scale the side hill as a crow would fly, leaving the rest of us to wait our turn to funnel into the pathway and stream up to Zion Gate, passing through its bullet-pocked arches that remind us of the miraculous victory we celebrate just a couple of weeks ago on Yom Yerushalayim.

 

Zig-zagging through the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, we make our way to Yeshiva Netivat Ariyeh where our hosts had organized a pre-dawn minyan on a second floor balcony directly overlooking not only the Kotel courtyards, but also the Temple Mount.  The site below us took your breath away, more and more so as the morning light began to infuse the sky.  A solid mass of people, shoulder to shoulder, from the Kotel Wall all the way back to and through every entrance.  Whirlpools of black and white hats, suits and talliot swirled rhythmically atop the smooth floor stones, with sparkling silver crowns of Sefer Torah scrolls punctuating the color and movement like majestic treble clefs heading up bars of music.  From infants to the elderly, all were represented.  No one was fatigued anymore.

 

 

 

This amazing photo of daybreak over the Temple Mount was

circulated over the internet a few months ago.  On Shavuot,

as the sun crested the Mount of Olives in the distance, the

Kotel Courtyard was a solid carpet of swirling human

pools of black and white as people davened, most

of whom had spent the night studying Torah.

 

Minyans began around 5:00 am and continued until around 8:30 am, when a glance below from our balcony revealed spaces of stone now visible amidst the crowd as happy Shavuot celebrants made their way home to either meals or sleep.  We made our way to the Diaspora Yeshiva courtyard for yet another simcha, the Bat Mitzvah meal in honor of the young woman we had come together to celebrate.  Despite having been awake a good part of the night, the young woman gave a beautiful speech honoring Torah and her family.  A guest from Metzad, a Rabbi, had brought along his young sons who formed an impromptu choir on cue from their father and filled the courtyard with their clear young voices singing Tehillim and praises of Hashem.  Only in Israel, and especially so in Jerusalem, can one embrace the Appointed Times of Hashem in such manner.

 

By 10:30 am, the night’s festivities had become weighty upon the minds and stamina of most of our group.  I had been awake for 28 hours and was beginning to feel it, but it was not a grievous weight.  Slowly we dispersed, gathering into small groups to accompany each other for the walk to our respective homes.  In not so many hours, Shabbat would arrive and others would be attending Shavuot meals in the afternoon.  Time to recharge the batteries of body and soul and to treasure the Living Waters from On High that we had imbibed throughout the night.  It was Shavuot in Jerusalem.  Baruch Hashem.