Sabbath at the Western Wall
Visit Jerusalem on Sabbath It is a must do for every traveler. Once such a boutade is written, I proceed to explain it.
Visiting Jerusalem on the Sabbath is like seeing the Marathon in New York, Holy Week in Seville, or Paris during Fashion Week. These are times when the city is more her than ever . I have not explained anything, but I have added another nice boutade.
** Jerusalem is one of the most amazing cities in the world**. And this is literal. Seeing the Western Wall on a Friday night seems like a hallucination to the amateur traveler. The city, center of three religions: Jewish, Christian and Muslim, is charged with density and emotion at all times , but on the Jewish day of rest, Jerusalem is a lot of Jerusalem.
The Sabbath is the time of the week from just before sunset on Friday to after sunset on Saturday, in theory when three stars appear. In total it lasts about 25 hours . In the Jewish religion it is the great moment of worship and weekly celebration. This is when Jerusalem is most interesting. For those who observe the Sabbath because it is their great moment, for those who don't, because of how much the city changes in substance and form.
Life, during the Sabbath, is done in hotels, not on the streets
The Sabbath has two principles: to honor through rituals and pleasurable acts and refrain from prohibited activities. And this is where most hotels come in. I was in Jerusalem on a Sabbath and still, from time to time, I wallow in the memory.
During the Sabbath there is an elevator for interns . It stops at all floors because pressing the button violates one of the precepts of the Sabbath . Of course, it was the elevator that I took, wrong. In a 19-story hotel. It took me twenty minutes to get to my room.
Pleasure is important on the Sabbath. For example, he eats a lot and you enjoy doing it inside and outside the home. Everything that is eaten on Friday has been heated before the Sabbath, because you cannot turn off or light a fire or light switches. It's easy to see how a hotel's Saturday breakfast changes from a Tuesday to a Friday. For example, no toast or pre-cooked eggs. If they exist, they have been boiled in a special stove since before the Sabbath. On Saturday you eat cold almost out of habit . Many hotels take care to have their menus supervised by the Jerusalem rabbinate to certify that they are 100% kosher.
The Sabbath menu consists of vegetables, fish and meat
Be careful if someone thinks of having dinner out on Friday: not everything is open. In fact, surely the chosen site is closed. It is better to have dinner at the hotel l and catch the energy of that day. The ** Mamilla **, the most famous boutique hotel in the city, offers a special cold menu that day on their terrace. It is made up of vegetables, fish and meat which sounds delicious, like all food in Israel. The Saturday lunch-brunch of the **King David**, another of the city's great hotels is famous for its liveliness. Almost all hotels in Jerusalem observe the Sabbath. There are few exceptions Among the luxury ones, the most relevant is the American Colony. This is a mythical hotel among politicians and journalists and in it, on Fridays, everyone can turn lights on and off and skip floors in the elevator.
In profane eyes, like mine, during that day the hotels seem more alive and the city more dead . It is common for families to book hotel rooms and sleep there on Friday night. It is the busiest time of the week. You can't drive, so in serious Jerusalem, there are hardly any cars on the streets. Good time to walk down the middle of the street.
Candles are important. Hotels offer the possibility for each client to turn on their own. The lighting also changes in the common areas and that's nice. The rooms have a curious lighting system. If someone wants to go to the business center to print the boarding pass: maybe the computers are off . The keys to the rooms are, in many hotels, manual and the revolving doors do not work that day.
The Sabbath also approves and applauds the sex between those two sunsets. And what better place than a hotel to practice it. Sabbath Shalom!
Brunches at the King David Hotel are famous for their lively
Sabbath Shalom!