After being in the US for almost 3 months, we returned to Tzfat two weeks before Rosh HaShana.The weather was warm (90) and sunny, and the town in the middle of preparations for Holy Days. The stores were selling everything that is needed for holidays: symbolic foods, decorations for the table, book stores had outside displays of Machzorim (prayer books for Holidays) in various Nusachim (orders of prayer.) Many people were making travel arrangements.  Usually for most Holidays we go the big Breslov Shul, which gathers more then 500 people, but on Rosh Ha Shana it was going to be closed Almost all of the male congregants travel to Uman in Ukraine to the grave of Rabbi Nachman. Those Breslov Hasidim that were not traveling to Uman, were making arrangements to go to Meron a few miles away from Tzfat for Rosh Ha Shana – a second preferred place –  to celebrate at the location of the grave of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. Other people were making plans to go to other places in Israel to be with their Rabbis – to Boston Rebbe in Harnov section of Jerusalem, to Lelov Rebbe in Bnei Brack, etc. 

With this exodus, a few days before the Holiday the town seemed to be empty of people, but then, right before the Rosh Ha Shana it got full again with those who regard Tzfat as the best place to be for that Holiday, people from many other cities and towns in Israel. They fill the hotels and the shuls.

We decided to go to a small shul called Beirav, one of the places we like to go on Shabbat because the service is always full of melodies and songs – a very old shul, made of hewn stones, with a beautiful wooden ark, and mechitza (divider) in the middle.  The sitting arrangements are very simple, consisting of rickety plastic chairs. Before the prayer started, the small stone building got completely full, and we felt lucky that we called in advance, and we each got a plastic chair assigned to us: Eber in the mens section and I in the women section. The crowd was very diverse: yeshiva students, Hasidim, sephardim, non-religious Israelis; families from New York, people from various other locations in Israel; all different ages. Not everybody had a place to sit, but a lot of the time during the service, people get up from their chairs and start dancing and clapping. The people who led the service did it with a lot of songs, drawing everybody into singing the melodies conveying the seriousness and solemnity of the day, but also hope and faith. When we walked on the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Ha Shanah with Yitzchak, one of the leaders of the congregation to the Tashlich service, he told us that he was once hired to lead a service for a large congregation in Vienna, but when he arrived, it turned out that the custom there was not to sing prayers but merely to read them, and he could not do that, because the prayer for him is always a melody.

The morning service lasted more then 5 hours, but there was a break in the middle for Kiddush, which was set outside of the shul,  in a narrow Maginei Tzfat alley. The Kiddush was very simple, with wine, honey cakes, juice and some fruit, and it gave the opportunity for people who came from different locations in Israel to talk and feel close to each other.

For the Tashlich service, which requires being near a body of water to symbolically throw away our sins from the previous year, many people in Tzfat go to the Metsuda –  remains of an ancient crusader fortress, located high on the top of the mountain that forms the center of Tzfat, hundreds of feet higher than the rest of of the town. From there on a clear day one can see the entire sea of Gallilee, but even though we unfortunately could not see it because of the haze there was a very large crowd of people from many local shuls in a Holiday mood praying and singing the service. 

The second day of Rosh HaShana was even more enjoyable, as after the first day everybody was even more eager to pray and hear the shofar blows. Between the prayers there was a talk by Israeli young man who came for the Holiday from the town near Tel Aviv. He shared the story of his personal redemption from darkness that led him to total faith and Jewish observance. It was a simple story(in Hebrew), but so appropriate for that day of new beginnings.

It was our first time in Israel for Rosh Ha Shana, and it felt almost unreal and amazing to be in the place of Holiness, light and harmony, which is in such a contrast with most of the world, and to feel the unity of all the different people praying together for the revelation of G-d’s truth and light for the whole world.

We wish all our friends and readers a most happy, sweet, healthy, prosperous year, full of joy and spiritual accomplishments.