Early Morning

Camila, Steph, me

This morning we left the Jerusalem Center on foot at 4:30am to go to the Western Wall to observe the Jewish Celebration of Shavuot. It is the Jewish holiday that commemorates the anniversary of the day that God gave the Torah to the entire nation of Israel who were assembled at Mount Sinai. Jews stay up all night reading the Torah.

Shavuot is directly related to Passover... as Wikipedia says, "On Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God." Our professor told us to go to the wall and see the celebration... rumor had it at sunrise there would be singing/wailing/shouting to celebrate that the passover "passed".

When we got to the wall there were thousands of people there reading the Torah. They were near the wall, underneath on the men's side reading the Torah, in the big space on the other side of the partition, on balconies overlooking the wall... everywhere. We waited until about 6am... nothing happened. We asked a Jewish girl what was going to happen and she said, "Now we go home and eat and sleep!" hahaha

Needless to say we were a little angry that we got up so early, because NOTHING was going on! :) thus... the faces.

It was really great to see so many people there, though. I love the Jewish culture.