There's a parade outside my window

I was sitting in the kitchen doing not a whole lot when all of a sudden loudspeakers started blaring loud Mizrachi (North African style) religious music. I looked out the window to find to my surprise that there was a parade right below me. One of the local synagogues (the Morrocan one from the look of things) is getting a new Sefer Torah (Torah, or Old Testament, scroll). They are traditionally received with a parade of people dancing and singing, though I suspect the truck with the HUGELY LOUD loudspeakers is a modern innovation...

I'd wondered what was happening when I got home and saw police blocking off the main commercial street behind me and a guy wandering around with a tv camera, but I didn't expect to find a parade right under my window.

I don't particularly care for the style of music, but it's certainly an "authentic cultural experience", and anyway it's always fun to see a parade, whatever the reason.

Excuse the shaky video, I'm 9 floors up and was too lazy to go upstairs to the roof (patio) to film so I filmed out the kitchen window over my laundry lines.



A few minutes after I took that video, I went across the street to get Itai from his friend's and on our way back we discovered that the parade had returned and parked right in front of our house (blocking traffic in the parking lot completely too). I'm sorry I didn't have my camera with me, because not only did was the Torah itself in a beautiful silver and velvet round case in the Sephardi style, but the loudspeaker van was not to be believed. Turns out it was a trailer decked out especially for these Torah scroll parades (complete with the cellphone number to call to rent it), but it had not one, not two, not three, but ELEVEN disco balls strung on top (!), together with a collection of spinning colored lights that would have put Studio 54 to shame. It was really something unbelievable... How did I notice all this you might wonder? Easy. I couldn't drag the kids away so we stood there watching them stand around and do nothing (while they played ear-splittingly loud music and I tried to keep a hold on one set of keys, one real cellphone, one toy cellphone, one page of stickers, a large water bottle, a soccer ball, and a 40 pound kid who only wanted to be lifted up) for another half-hour, so I had lots of time to notice all these little details.