Last day of Sukkoth

David's Street closed off

This evening the jewish feast of Tabernacles comes to an end. By noon traffic trickled to a minimum, the trams and buses stopped working, roads were blocked off to prevent traffic. Even streets in the Old City were blocked off. Pedestrian traffic were channeled one way from Jaffa Gate to the Wailing Wall and David's street is exit only to Jaffa Gate. This caused a lot of inconvenience and confusion as many christian tourists wanted to go to the Holy Sepulchre through David's Street only to find it closed. Police told them to take the long detour going to the Wailing Wall with the jews then turning back to the Suq (market) to get to the Holy Sepulchre. Actually there is a shorter route through the Greek or Latin patriarchates but the alleys are bit too difficult to explain to tourists.

Sunrise today

Yesterday thousands of zionitst protestants walked the annual Jerusalem March. The chinese contingent was quite big ... chinese dressed in strange chinese-inspired costumes, carrying chinese flags and even men carrying a replica of the Ark of the Convenant. It's all a carnival or these theologically lacking protestants; their knowledge of Judaism is superficial and based on outward expressions. And orthodox jews frown on these parades because they consider the protestants making a mockery of their religion ... and worse ... a threat because they believe these protestants are here to convert their faithful to christianity. So while these protestants marchers revel and dance thinking they are supporting and are appreciated by the jews, in reality the rabbis are trying to block this parade every year.

Well I've been very busy with some editing work. Managed to finish the last one now ... while everyone else is eating dinner. I'm too tired to eat anything. In fact I ate nothing since yesterday night. I had a cup of lemon honey this morning and that's it. Maybe I should sleep now. Too tired for anything else. Sukkoth after all is over.