Rushing, rushing, rushing, to be ready for shabbat (which comes in even earlier here in Jerusalem, which no one has been able to explain to me yet...anyone?).
Rushed to the Mister Zol around the corner to get fresh chicken and veggies.
And in my rush I was (still!) confused and then delighted and then amused at myself when the woman working behind the olive counter said, "Shabbat shalom," while hanging me the little plastic containers.
And in my rush I began to feel an annoyance rising as the very cute but very slow little old lady came to a complete stop right in front of me in the exit to the grocery store. Why was she stopping? Because she wanted to pause, to reach up, to kiss the mezuzah.
Gotta go rush some more!
P.S. the Bulbuls are putting on a full-blown nature show at the window, complete with one of them hanging upside down from a vine and alternately flapping wildly and holding its wings tight to its side and making a series of squawks. The other one sits below on the window sill and "pretends not to notice."
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Is Israel, like, in the wrong time zone? Because I have heard other comments about how early the sun sets there in the winter, which doesn't make sense to me either, since it's pretty far south. Like, are the clocks set an hour or two behind where they would be according to local solar time, maybe to be more in sync with Western Europe for business purposes? (In western Russia, it's the opposite, the clocks are too far ahead and the sun rises and sets much later than it should, which drove me crazy when I lived there because in the darkest part of winter the sun doesn't rise until 10am and do you know how much harder that makes it for a non-morning person?)
Interesting! But I think the deal here is Jerusalem specific. Tel Aviv and the rest of the Jewish world start Shabbat 18 minutes before sunset. But J-lem is a full half hour before that. I thought maybe it was because it was considered a walled city and in Jewish law walled cities have some other special customs associated with them, but I haven't been able to get a good answer.
Ah, I see. Interesting. I did check out a time zone map though, and it does look like Israel and its immediate neighbors are GMT+2 when they're really more in line with +3.
The reason we light candles earlier in Jerusalem has to do with the mountains. We used to calculate the sunset according to the disappearance of the rays over the horizon, and ones view of the horizon is effected by being in the mountains. There is a very long discussion of this in our sources, and a good article in http://www.daat.ac.il/DAAT/kitveyet/shana/rabinovits-2.htm but I personally think it was planned that way to drive the Yerushalmim nuts. hugs!
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