Selichot tour
Photo: Tom Bar Ilan
All-night prayers for forgiveness keeping up the locals
Selichot tours through the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City before the High Holy Days are interfering with the residents' sleep.
All-night prayers for forgiveness, called Selichot, whose supplicants traverse the Old City of Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter, are infuriating the residents who just want to sleep.
Every year, leading up to the High Holy Days, the residents of the Jewish Quarter and some other neighborhoods in the capital complain about the noise that accompanies these "Selichot tours."
Shoshana Se-Lavan, who heads the Old City's Jewish Quarter community, said to Ynet that "after a number of nights without sleep, I've just been ill the past week, bedridden and unable to go to work."
Selichot tour in Jerusalem (Photo: Eli Mandelbaum)
She did make sure to say that she appreciated tourists: "After the intifadas and terrorist attacks, we're happy that people are coming to visit, but from year to year, the numbers are growing."
She explained that the residents were asking that that these financially beneficial tours take place between 7pm and 11pm. "As for everyone who still wants to come afterwards, we ask that they go quietly in the streets, turn off their telephones and certainly not use megaphones or drums, which lots of groups do," Se-Lavan elaborated.
She posited that doing otherwise is hypocritical "because rabbis also come who certainly know that stealing sleep is forbidden by Jewish law. You can't give back stolen sleep, and there's no logic in asking for forgiveness when you're harming residents on the way."
Se-Lavan stated that she has repeatedly asked tour guides and the Jerusalem Municipality for some sort of relief. In response, Mayor Nir Barkat initiated a route that leads to the Western Wall without bothering Jewish Quarter residents, but many tour guides apparently don't follow it.
In addition to the roving supplicants, restaurants in the quarter remain open in the month before Rosh Hashanah until early in the morning, contributing to light and sound pollution in addition to the smells of cooking.
Se-Lavan did not believe that her choosing to live in such tourist-rich area is justification for the annoyance. She says that she tells those who level such accusations, "You're the ones who chose to walk through a residential neighborhood." She continued that the enforcement of noise disturbance ordinances was insufficient.
The Jerusalem Municipality commented that a meeting had taken place amongst law enforcement authorities and residents. Their solution was to post ushers along the popular routes to ease frictions amongst business owners, residents, visitors and tour guides and "strike a balance."
