The scene was completely surreal: A crying cantor beseeching the Lord in Yiddish-accented Hebrew to hear his prayers; high-octane loudspeakers amplifying the cry throughout lower Manhattan; tens of thousands of black-coated ultra-Orthodox Jews earnestly repeating the Psalms in the freezing cold; some of New York’s finest, duly exasperated; and the looks of astonishment on the faces of unsuspecting tourists who thought they were simply walking the alleyways near Wall Street when they encountered a sight that may be commonplace in Bnei Brak but seemed utterly fantastic in the heart of New York.
Some 50,000 ultra-Orthodox believers pushed themselves onto Water Street near the East River on Sunday afternoon, heeding the call to attend the “Great Prayer Assembly” aimed at bolstering “our embattled brethren” who are fighting the new Israel Defense Forces draft law which is due to come to a Knesset vote soon. They came in buses from Brooklyn, on the subway from Queens, on ferries from Staten Island, in cars from Manhattan and in convoys from Muncie, New York, in the north,to Lakewood, New Jersey, in the south.
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