The crowds of young people streaming to Jerusalem's Old Katamon neighborhood on Simhat Torah filled the synagogues and spilled out into the streets, waiting for the prayers to end and the dancing with the Torah scrolls to begin.

"It's a well known phenomenon," Shalhevet Rubin explains. "Unmarried Orthodox people come from all over the country especially for this holiday. They come to see and be seen." Rubin says it started a few years back with "the amazing atmosphere here, the magic in the air and the sanctity of the holiday, and with time it became a social event, too. Kind of like Woodstock for the young Orthodox."

This is the third time Rubin, a lawyer from Tel Aviv, has come to Jerusalem for Simhat Torah. "Miracles do happen, especially on holidays," she says, although time to get acquainted is short.

	Advertisement

Gali Groman, 31, a graphic artist from Givat Shmuel, near Ramat Gan, says the young people go to two specific synagogues, Yakar and Ohel Nehamah. "They are like the hottest bars in town," Groman explains.

Groman and Rubin agree that in Jerusalem the lines between the kinds of Jewish observance are finer than elsewhere in the country. Some people wear their kippah on their heads, others in their heart.

Groman, however, says something about this crowd has gotten out of proportion. "Some girls are getting too dressed up, spending a lot of money on a new dress. There's even a feeling of pressure sometimes, as if this holiday is the one and only chance to meet a potential groom, and if you're not ready you'll miss the train."

Yoni, from Kiryat Motzkin, is also critical. "In religious eyes, this is a holiday to rejoice in finishing the reading of the Torah. But here religious joy has become secondary to a social event for unattached men and women."

Still, the phenomenon is expanding. Hotels in the area are full, as are apartments in Old Katamon belonging to relatives and friends.

"A holiday atmosphere is not necessarily the time to sit and study," Ariel Farkash, a surgeon from Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, says. "This encounter, with everyone dressed in their holiday best, the shared meals, and walking around the neighborhood, puts people in a holiday mood," he says.

"True, many people come with the goal of looking [for a match]," 33-year-old Ariel says, "and sometimes instead of dancing with the Torah they stand around and talk, but in the end the goal is for everyone to rejoice and celebrate. And here it's more interesting among the young people than with their parents."

The cool breeze signaling fall is on the way, the old stone buildings, and the preponderence of English-speakers who have conquered Old Katamon in recent years impart an air of a city abroad. This feeling might also be part of the magic the event works on these modern-day pilgrims.

Reut Hazan, a 26-year-old doctoral student in microbiology, is very excited to be here for the first time on Simhat Torah. "In New York Simhat Torah is a big happening for successful Jews, everybody dressed expensively. It's the same thing here, but on a smaller scale," Hazan says.

The combined holiday of Shmini Atzeret and Simhat Torah, celebrating the conclusion of the Torah reading cycle and the beginning of the rainy season, has produced yet another tradition of new beginnings. Perhaps phone numbers exchanged will mean that some of this year's celebrants are on the cusp of another new beginning - as a couple.