The most special day of the week. I have been to many places around the world, but I never had that special feeling as I do in Israel on Friday.
Friday is the day before Saturday - the Jewish holy day.
Usually you can feel Friday is arriving on Thursday night, when all the supermarkets are packed with shoppers trying to buy all their need for Shabesh (Friday night) dinner, it looks like a war zone, but for families.
Children and parents are charging on the products selves trying to buy as many things as they can, so that they won’t stay hungry on Saturday (a day that all the supermarkets are closed).
The fun things, shopping on Thursday, are the free taste samples that are being delivered to the shoppers so that they will buy those products. Eventually, you are spending 3 hours in the supermarket, eating free samples (this way you don’t have to make dinner at home) buying all the stuff that you need and most likely things you don’t need and every body happy.
Not only the supermarkets are like one big festival, the shopping malls are just the same - full of happy shoppers (or just people who want to be some where with air-condition).
Finally, it’s Friday.
Since almost every body has the day off, there are only three things you might do
1. Clean your house and cook for Shabesh dinner.
2. Spend you entire day in the supermarket because you forgot to buy your products yesterday
3. The lucky ones are sitting in coffee shops or going to the beach.
When Friday arrives, you can feel it in the air, besides all the shopping commotion, there are all those soldiers, the ones that got out for the weekend, that trying to catch the bus home, all the traffic jams and busy people running all over just to be on time before Shabesh.
Finally, at 2 or 3 o’clock you can feel the atmosphere starting to relax - every thing is coming down, people went home for their naps and there is almost no body in the streets.
At around 4 o’clock the streets are so quit, one might think there are no people living in here.
Slowly, the holy Shabesh is crawling inside and every body making theirs last arrangements for dinner - showers, nice cloths. Every body is relaxed, and smiling. You can actually feel this in the air. In some places, in Israel, there is still a siren announcing the Shabesh entry.
I think that, small things like that, makes Israel different from any other country I know.
posted by rebecca @ 8:42 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home