Yom Kippur Round Up

The title of this post is actually rather misleading. After writing it, it occurred to me that it might imply that I'm rounding up Yom Kippur posts from other blogs, instead of what I am actually doing - rounding up my Yom Kippur experience. . . which brings up something that's been bothering me as of late . . . I feel like I've been a rather one sided Blogger lately -putting up my own things, but not interacting with the general JBlogosphere.

I'm thinking about cutting down on picture posts - I'll still have them (fret not my photo friends) - but I'd like to get more out there -and perhaps due to the very fact that Photography is so powerful, that a picture is truly worth a thousand words, I find my thoughts far more limited when I include more then even a few photos.

Anyhow, on to the post.

The night before Yom Kippur we did Kapporos. I'm not squeamish when it comes to shechita (for a more complete writeup on my opinions about animals, eating meat and the like, see here -I actually consider it to be one of my more articulate posts), but that night was something else . . .
When it came time to shecht my chicken, I held the legs while the rabbi held the head. It should be noted that when held properly, the chicken seems to go into some sort of trance, and thus when the actual shechita itself happened, the bird didn't move. But, as the saying goes with a chicken with its head cut off, after the animal does die, the nerves tend to go a little wild . . . Which is fine, as the bird is normally placed in a box or the like for the minute it takes . . . But not to my luck.

As I went to open the box of now deceased birds and put mine in, the rabbis stopped me.

"Wait," He said. "I want to check the knife again [to make sure the shechita was kosher] before you mix that bird in with the others.

So I was stuck with a chicken with it's head cut off . . . in my hands for that critical minute.

For the record, the bird was indeed kosher.

The Mikvah:

There is great emphasis put on going to the Mikvah before Yom Kippur, so before the Great and Awesome day we set off for a local hot springs . . .



On the way we noticed that the road was covered with stones -some of them approaching boulder size.
Figuring it was erosion, a land slide or some other natural phenomenon of falling rocks, we went on . . .
Only to find that about a mile (or less) down the road, there were more rocks.



We soon found out that due to the transportation strikes the previous day, protesters had littered the road with various obstacles; including upturned trees, bits of scrap metal and some very big roots . . . all of this in addition to the cows, pigs, dogs and people that normally walked across the road.

When we finally got to the hot springs, we discovered a couple of things . . .

• We had forgotten our bathing-suites (This after I said to never leave home without one)
• The hot springs were full of a bunch of Peruvian men and boys who spoke no English, didn't understand that we spoken no English, and seemed to think we looked very funny.
• The hot springs weren't so hot, in fact they were down right tepid.
• The tepid springs were brownish reddish brown -and slightly yellow.
  

Outside of the tepid-springs



Scary looking devil dog outside the tepid-springs



Lady on the side of the road


Cows in the ruins


Getting ready for Yom Kippur -close to three hundred Israelis by the meal



Giving out Lekach


Kiddush Levana after Yom Kippur


Saying good-bye to some of our friends:








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