"Are you the only Jew in Utah?"

K, you guys have no idea how excited I was to see that I had 3 comments on my last post!!! Seriously, comments make me happy.

Tonight we went to the Western Wall (aka Wailing Wall) to welcome Shabbat. It was really neat! They literally celebrate the beginning of the Sabbath. Our teacher, before we went, talked about the overwhelming joy that they have to welcome their most holy day. I mean, we really take the Sabbath Day for granted. The Lord, in D&C 59, tells us that fasting is equivalent with rejoicing, and tell you what, the Jewish people really have that whole rejoicing thing down. Everyone was dancing and singing and just so excited to usher in Shabbat.

We first got there and I went up to touch the wall, and you could see all the little pieces of paper tucked into the cracks in the wall that have special petitions on them, and everyone was bobbing and praying. They do that (bobbing), by the way, because of the commandment in the Torah to pray with your whole heart and body, so they engage their whole bodies while praying. It's called davening. It was also really humbling for me to see even people my age and younger completely focused on paying homage and their devotion to God. And I really felt the spirit there. Something that one of my teachers said is that these sites that are sacred to other religions are in fact holy in God's sight because of the reverence that these people show. And I have really felt that. Both at the Western Wall and at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Spirit resides in these places and with these people because they really devote their whole selves to worshipping God and revering these holy sites, even though they don't have the truth that we do. We might even think a little more carefully about the way we feel toward places like the temple, and not feel so commonplace about them.

So we were there for about an hour, and after about 15 minutes I was done with the wall itself, and I wanted to watch some of the celebration. But the women totally weren't even doing anything. All the cool stuff was over on the men's side (which, by the way, was a lot bigger)! So I went back up on the plaza above where the worshippers were so I could watch some of the dancing and singing that was going on. Dude, it was great. There was this guy that looked just like the rabbi from fiddler on the roof, and he was like standing on top of a chair leading all the singing and dancing around him, and then he started saying something and I realized he was British! It was like, what the random? But like, he had all the beard and was wearing the hat and everything. And I could see some of our boys totally right down in there dancing and loving it. The men all have to have their head covered, and they have little cardboard kippas for visitors to wear, but a baseball cap apparently suffices. And one of our guys had turned his baseball cap around and tucked the brim into his collar so it looked more like a kippa. It was great.

So then I looked back over at the women's side and I saw that there was a group that had started dancing and a bunch of other girls from the Center were with them, so I went back down and joined the group. There were a couple of Jewish girls kind of orchestrating, and they were teaching us some songs and we were all kinda dancing around. It was kind of funny, because the group was like, 70% mormon, but we totally got into it and sang (pretending we kinda knew what we were singing...) and danced and everything. It was great. And when we had to go meet up with our teachers, the group kinda dissipated, because we were the majority of the participants. There were a surprising number of Americans, actually. I think a lot of them were there on like, well I've heard of this Jewish organization that will send young Jewish people to the Holy Land for free before they reach a certain age, if they want to go, so I think that's what most of them were there for.

Alright, and last but not least, I must explain my title. At dinner, I was talking with a guy who told me about his dancing experience at the Western Wall. His name is Mike, and he said his cardboard kippa kept falling off, so a Jewish guy came over and was like, "You need one of these!" and gave him his hat to wear, because this guy also had a kippa. So he got to wear this sweet authentic Jewish hat, and then the guy grabbed his hands and started dancing, and after they danced (I know, that sounds really awkward, but hey- women aren't allowed on the men's side and vice versa, they gotta dance with somebody...) the guy was like, "So, where are you from?" and of course Mike said, "Utah," and the guy asked, "So are you like, the only Jew there?" And Mike said, "Uh, almost." Hahaha. Good times.