By Marney Blom
The current fall feasts’ season is a celebratory time in Israel, but on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar – Yom Kippur – the entire country grinds to a halt.
The stark contrast between Jerusalem’s normally bustling streets and the ghost town-like feel it exuded on Yom Kippur was startling. Cafes and restaurants closed, public transport ceased and even the stock market took a hiatus as Jewish Israelis honoured an ancient biblical commandment to fast and pray.
Religious, and even many secular Jewish Israelis observe Yom Kippur, although their observances have changed since biblical times when practices centred around the Jewish temple. Then, according to Hebrew Scriptures, their sins were forgiven through animal sacrifice and the presentation of blood in the holy of holies, which was the inner sanctuary of the temple.
Christ prophesied that the temple would be destroyed after His crucifixion, and the Romans fulfilled His words about 2000 years ago.
Western Wall-based Aish HaTorah senior lecturer Rabbi Ken Spiro said that without a temple, the practices around Yom Kippur changed dramatically. “The ritual has transformed itself into… repentance and shuva and return and getting spiritually more or less rejuvenated and having the slate wiped clean.”
However, Jewish connection to the Temple Mount has remained unshaken. Jerusalem resident Asaph Bronfeld said Yom Kippur was now a day of prayer, but in the past it was about temple worship. “We are very sad that we can’t do it today.”
Today on Yom Kippur Jewish people flock to the Western retaining wall of the Temple Mount to pray. Rabbi Spiro said Jewish people worldwide prayed toward Israel; Israel prayed toward Jerusalem; Jerusalem prayed toward the old city; and the old city prayed toward the Temple Mount.
However, it is illegal for Jewish people to pray at Temple Mount itself, and revived peace talks have called into question whether Jewish people will even be allowed to step foot at the Western Wall for future Yom Kippur observances.
The land falls east of the city’s 1967 borders, which means that Jerusalem’s entire old city, including the Temple Mount and Western Wall, will reside in a sovereign Arab state if the demands of the Palestinian Authority are met.
Co CEO of the Israel-Palestine Center of Research and Information and former ambassador to Washington under Yasser Arafat’s PLO Hanna Siniora said the only solution acceptable to the Palestinian people was for Israel to evacuate the land it occupied in 1967.
“That means East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza strip. This part of mandatory historical Palestine will eventually become the state of Palestine.”
For Jewish Israelis, the current peace process and the ongoing battle to maintain sovereignty over their capital took a backseat to Yom Kippur. Instead, they reconnected with an ancient mandate and a biblical promise of a future day – a messianic age – when war would cease and a lasting peace would become the hallmark of their eternal capital.
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