The above is a picture of the major highway leading into Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. It's a really impressive, kind of delightful thing.

But of course there's a flip side.

The hematologist we were shadowing on Tuesday was on call over the holidays. On Yom Kippur day one of his lymphoma patients had an emergency. He got in his car and made his way towards the hospital, a 20 minute drive from his house. Unfortunately, exiting his neighborhood requires driving down the street on which his synagogue is located. As he attempted to drive through, a mob of people surrounded his car. He rolled down the window and calmly explained that he was a doctor on his way to handle a life-and-death emergency involving one of his patients at the hospital. The crowd began to throw rocks at his car and continue to block the road. Eventually he turned around and went home.

Apparently they do the same thing to ambulances.

And these aren't even the super-religious, it happens here in Beer Sheva which barely has a chasidic community.

I can't even describe how personally insulting I find this.
I understand believing strongly that everyone should respect the high holidays. I understand the government closing all the stores. I understand buses and trains and taxis not running. I understand roping off the streets near synagogues.

But I cannot think of anything more contra to the spirit of the holiday than going out of your way to cause harm to others who just don't happen to share the same belief as you. And an ambulance? I mean, come on.

A car driving through your neighborhood does absolutely nothing to ruin your Yom Kippur. It means nothing to you. Yet instead of focusing on, I don't know, prayer maybe, your own spiritual journey, you're seriously going to leave your home or synagogue to break the windows of ambulances and try to injure the people who are on their way to save the lives of a member of your community.

Another interesting holiday occurrence is a slight peak of premature deliveries. Pregnant religious women are emphatically forbidden to fast because of the risk of the stress causing early labor. Some of them do anyway. A lot of them will go into labor and try to wait until the end of the holiday to go to the hospital.

There's also always a major blood shortage over the holidays. The blood collection centers are shut down by law (all government organizations close except the hospital itself) and by the 4th or 5th day there's a major blood shortage.

According to our chief doctor, the government won't allow anyone to do a study on a possible increase in preventable deaths around the time of the holidays because the government needs the vote of the religious community and would clearly lose it if they sponsored a study proving that religious observance causes death. (in the doctor's words, "the religious people don't want to hear that religion causes death").

What an interesting universe it is.