An Inspiring Event and Yair Lapid

Erev Yom Kippur at the Kotel - Photo credit: Arutz Sheva

We were joined by hundreds, if not thousands, of people heading slowly toward the kotel, most of them young and by outward appearance not overly observant. Walking alongside us was a very pregnant young woman accompanied by a friend; neither of them dressed in a manner that would have suggested any fealty to the minimal halachic standards of tzniut.

As we strode slowly because of the crowds, we heard the friend ask: “Are you going to fast on Kippur?” The woman replied that she was not sure, she was in her 36th week and it might be dangerous, whereupon her friend responded: “You can’t make such a decision on your own! Ask a rav what you should do!” 

Slightly ahead of us, a young boy with his head uncovered walked with his mother who we had no reason to assume was in any way religious. She was leaning down to him and told him that when they reached the kotel they would recite hatarat nedarim which she then preceded to explain… 

I was struck – although not surprised – by the fact that the majority of the Sefardi audience knew both the words and the tune of the selichah of “chatanu l’fanechah” and enthusiastically joined in. Many in the crowd were teenagers and they were no less familiar nor were they in any way reluctant to be seen in public prayer.

After the presentation we went up to the roof to listen to selichot… When the chazan began to sing the familiar piyut of “aneinu”, the entire crowd joined in. Although my grandmother claimed that my veins are filled with ice water, tears came to my eyes when I heard the thundering “y’hei shmei rabbah” at the end of selichot.

Can there be a greater segulah to merit Divine grace in the coming year than to have been a voice in a assembly of “rivevot amcha beit Yisroel” accepting the yoke of heaven? 

A news item on Erev Yom Kippur reported that 75% of the Jewish population in Eretz Yisrael fasts. Even if that figure is off the mark by a third, we’re talking about three million people who find reason to fulfill a mitzvah that is far from easy. Maybe it is fear, perhaps its source is superstition. No matter; if I were Yair Lapid I would find the statistic far more threatening than the chareidi birth rate.