Sneaking into Shul

There's a synagogue in our Rami Levy supermarket, Sha'ar Binyamin. During afternoon and evening there are always calls on the loudspeaker inviting people aka men to doven (pray) Mincha and Ma'ariv, the afternoon and evening prayers. There's no women's section, no mechitza. But periodically, when I need a place to either say Tihillim, (Psalms) or Mincha I sneak in when it's empty.

And that's what I did yesterday. Before signing into work at Yafiz, I realized that, as I had gotten to work by tremp, hitchhiking, I hadn't said them.

Psalms in the Station, Only in Israel

The other day when I rushed into the Jerusalem Central Bus Station to get the bus home, somebody thrust something in my face. I replied with a gut reaction of "no." Then a split second later I noticed that a great variety of people, men and women, young and old were standing still reading from T'hillim booklets, the type from the sets which split the 150 into usually 28 equal-size portions.

I didn't go back to get one, because I was afraid I'd miss the bus, but I did take a couple of pictures.

Unlike Israel's south Jerusalem has been pretty much untouched by the war. But we're all one country and one people. And that's why people in the Central Bus Station were saying T'hillim, Psalms.