It was sunrise in NYC on Yom Kippur. The night before we went to Kol Nidrei Yom Kippur services at “Occupy Wall Street.” With the loud sounds of drumming from the little Zuccotti Park, five hundred to a thousand Jews participated in a Kol Nidrei service, led by four young people in a building plaza across the street with the big red cube sculpture.
As there was no electricity for microphones, and megaphones were forbidden by the New York Police Department, the leaders/rabbis stood in the center with everyone either seated on the plaza or standing around them. Like other speeches at Occupy Wall Street, the Kol Nidre speaker shouted out phrases for others to repeat.
A synagogue lent us a hundred prayer books, insufficient for the crowd, but many had downloaded and printed it or used their mobile devices to follow the service online. Though a range of ages were present, our congregation was mostly young. It was wonderfully political: in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, peace between Israel and the Palestinians, antiwar, antigreed.
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