Celebrating Yom Ha-atzma'ut
We were in downtown Jerusalem last night to celebrate Yom Ha-Atzma'ut along with what seemed like a very high percentage of Jerusalem's residents. A very large portion of the city center was closed to auto traffic, and all the streets were quite packed with people late into the night; even small children and parents pushing baby carriages seemed to be roaming about past midnight. Lots of people were wearing Israeli flags in some way or another - generally, either as skirts or as capes. I was surprised to see even some number of seemingly Haredi ("ultra-orthodox") Jews there, which was surprising given the general Haredi disapproval of Yom Ha-Atzma'ut (and the general Haredi ambivalence about the State of Israel). Overall, it was nice to see a good cross-section of Israeli Jews coming together to celebrate, and I love being reminded of how incredibly diverse Israelis are.
Our evening featured attending David Broza concert in Zion Square (at the center of the downtown area), running into lots of familiar faces, and trying to avoid the small children wielding inflatable plastic baseball bats and hammers decorated with Israeli flags and the spray foam which, for some unfathomable reason, seem to have become popular tools for merrymaking on Yom Ha-Atzma'ut. We also enjoyed folk-dancing, juggling, and fireworks. Here are some pictures from the evening:
Today, we joined the cantorial school class for a barbecue (the most standard feature of Yom Ha-Atzma'ut here).
This evening, we joined a massive public sing-a-long ("shirah b'tzibur" - singing classic Israeli songs, mostly 1950's folk songs which we didn't really know the words to; the fact that they projected the words onto the side of a building wasn't so helpful, since the projector was not so powerful and the building not so easy to project onto). And we enjoyed some good Israeli food (falafel and pita and houmous and other salads) as well.
(Regarding "good Israeli food": yesterday's Ha'aretz featured a very interesting full-length article on the role of pita and houmous as an Israeli national symbol. Among the relevant statistics: at this very moment there is a container of houmous in more than 95 percent of the homes in Israel.)
Our evening featured attending David Broza concert in Zion Square (at the center of the downtown area), running into lots of familiar faces, and trying to avoid the small children wielding inflatable plastic baseball bats and hammers decorated with Israeli flags and the spray foam which, for some unfathomable reason, seem to have become popular tools for merrymaking on Yom Ha-Atzma'ut. We also enjoyed folk-dancing, juggling, and fireworks. Here are some pictures from the evening:
Today, we joined the cantorial school class for a barbecue (the most standard feature of Yom Ha-Atzma'ut here).
This evening, we joined a massive public sing-a-long ("shirah b'tzibur" - singing classic Israeli songs, mostly 1950's folk songs which we didn't really know the words to; the fact that they projected the words onto the side of a building wasn't so helpful, since the projector was not so powerful and the building not so easy to project onto). And we enjoyed some good Israeli food (falafel and pita and houmous and other salads) as well.
(Regarding "good Israeli food": yesterday's Ha'aretz featured a very interesting full-length article on the role of pita and houmous as an Israeli national symbol. Among the relevant statistics: at this very moment there is a container of houmous in more than 95 percent of the homes in Israel.)
posted by Geoff at 10:20 PM
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