Jerusalem hotels, restaurants, attractions, tours & events. Helping since 2008

The holiday season comes to a close this week. While the until Friday is still Sukkot and then Simchat Torah on Saturday, with its two nights of crazed circle dancing, come Sunday, the party, at least on the Jewish calendar, is over for a while. But that's no reason to dray around. Thankfully, Jerusalemites are not slaves to the calendar and can keep the good times rolling even if their ancestors might not have. The sukkahs can come down another time. For now, its party time.

• Thursday night is the last night of the intermediate days (Chol Hamoed) of Sukkot (and itself the beginning of a minor inner-holiday holiday called Hoshana Rabbah, better known as the day of much bundle shaking.) You can shake your own bundle down to Kraft Stadium for the RockAmi festival, which brings together the Moshav Band and a number of other stars of the Israeli-Anglo music scene for a night of Jewish jamming.

• Get out of town Friday and check out the annual Abu Ghosh festival of vocal music, world renowned for attracting top talent in a quancient (quaint + ancient, natch) setting. While you're there, get yourself some world-renowned hummus and visit a tribute to another world-renowned vocal music star.

• Saturday is Simchat Torah, when Orthodox Jews celebrate finishing another reading of the Torah by dancing around with it in circle after circle after circle, fueled by no small amount of liquor (and joy). And just because one good hora deserves another, Saturday night will see another extra-curricular round of dancing known as Hakafot Sheini, literally "Round Two." Join in the fun on a number of Jerusalem streets or the Western Wall. Or if you've hora-ed enough, Tomer Yosef and Beno Handler will have you jumping with their new project Trampoline (essentially Balkan Beat Box) at the Yellow Submarine.

• The Israel Football League may not have started up yet, (preseason begins soon), but Stardust is just one bar that has your NFL gridiron fix on the big screen in the meantime.

• While America will be celebrating (or protesting) Christopher Columbus' narrowing of the gap between Old World and New on Monday, in Jerusalem you can check out a different kind of closing gap, namely an art exhibit by that name that recently opened up at the Zik Gallery at the Yellow Submarine.

• You're right if you think that until now this roundup has been all about the men. Estrogen up your life a little bit the production of "Alma and Ruth" at the Jerusalem Theater, about a mother and daughter and coping with Israeli society.

• How often do you ever stop and think about the Biblical tale of the flood. We mean really think. Well, even if you answered often (which we are pretty sure you didn't), you probably don't give it as much thought as Rabbi Menachem Leibtag, who will give a lecture on its religious significance at the Bible Lands Museum on Wednesday.

Speaking of floods, we've got a deluge of event listings at our main events page. No ark required.