When you remember your home in Jerusalem, you think about how your soul was alive and so, so happy

IT’S

all you think about the entire Yom Tov. It consumes you.

Chol Hamoed is the worst. On Chol Hamoed you think about the pulsating streets of Jerusalem, the warmth and sunshine of summer’s last hurrah, the noise, oh, the beautiful noise. But you are in England now, not Jerusalem, so you take your car in search of something, anything, that might clue you in to the fact that it’s Succos.

Finally you find it, five blocks away, but it’s 11:30 p.m., and all you get to hear are the dying strains of a shul Simchas Beis Hashoeivah, so you drive home through the dark, downcast roads of Manchester, where you’re spending the chag, and you think, forget it, Manchester will never be Jerusalem.

You get home and curl into your covers, and allow your tears to leak into your pillow. You miss it so, so much.