Sukkot!

Well, it's been some time, but I'm finally writing another post! It has been a pretty cool couple of weeks. This past week was the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which was really cool to be around.  We got to be a part of some of their festivities, which were a blast. The first one we went to was on the last day of Sukkot, at the whacking of the willows. I don't know all about it, but Sukkot is about praying for rain to start the fall harvest season. So, on the last day, the tradition is they all get together and whack willow branches on the ground as a way of calling down rain. It may sound odd, but its worked for thousands of years!

   The really fun part of Sukkot was the Sukkot Torah ceremony. Each year, all Jews read the entire Torah, and it ends this week. So, they celebrate starting it over again. It was a ton of fun, because it was basically just a dance. We went to this big hall, and they had a live band up front, and a ton of people there. They sang this really long song, who's lyrics consisted primarily of "lie, lie, lie lie lie" (or maybe it was "lye lye lye"). The really interesting part, which I don't think I've ever seen before, was they separated the men and women. For a dance! So the girls were out in a courtyard doing their thing, and all the men were inside with a huge group. We started in a circle holding hands and the circle moving around, but so many people got added to it so people would break off and go inside and make a smaller circle. After about 15 min of that, that song stopped and we did another one where instead of a big circle, we were in lines with our arms around each others shoulders, and would move back and forth, three steps forward and three back.  All with really fun, upbeat music sung in Hebrew. I really wished I could have sung along! I really felt the spirit of unity that it brought to the room and with the people. I really think we need something like that in the LDS church. Next stake priesthood meeting will be a giant dance circle like that. Who's in?

     Another fun exposure to Jewish culture was on Friday night, the beginning of the Sabbath, we went to a Jewish synagogue for their services. It was pretty cool, someone would get up and read from a prayer book in Hebrew, and started singing it, and everyone else had prayer books (in Hebrew of course) and would sing along with it. Unfortunately, there wasn't written music, so we just kind of had to listen and figure out how to sing along. It was fun!

    Well, there's a lot of really cool people here, and it's a lot of fun. Plenty of opportunity to play music and have fun. Last weekend we went out to Tel Aviv, a city on the coast, and went to the beach! It was fun, but boy did I get sunburned. I don't think I've been this burned in years. So all week I've barely been able to put a backpack on.

     The funnest part of this week was going to a concert! We went to matisyahu, and it was awesome! They had a really cool opener, called Shaback Samech, an israeli rap/hip-hop group. It was really cool, and even cooler because it was in Israel! I loved it.

Well, thats about it, if you have any questions let me know!

Pictures... yeah theyre not uploading for some reason. Everyone thinks its ok to skype at the same time, so our 5mbps internet for the whole center gets eaten up very quickly- but I'll try to do so soon. Love y'all!