The Real Jerusalem Day

As anyone who watched any news to day either national Israeli or international, including the BBC and CNN, you will have seen that Israel had some snow today.
The amount of snow amounted to about less than 5 inches, but resulted in schools being closed, public transport being stopped and other chaos causing decisions.

I tried to work at home, but due to PC problems, I had to go into the office, but the taxi company would not send a cab to my house, because of the weather! (Eventually I was able to get in, get the PC problem fixed so I can work at home tomorrow if the same thing happens)

What does result in a snow day is that the focus of Southern Israel (and anywhere close that does not have snow) is Jerusalem. Whilst driving to work we passed bus loads of people, cars parked all next to one of the main parks to take part in the annual snowman competition.They come from all over the country (on the way home again we passed a truck with logos from the Ashdod port on it)

Winograd was released today. The report on the state of the war, a criticism of the policies and handling of the war(I will write more about that once I have read more) although the main story of the day was the snow.

So, my point is this:

Yom Yerushalayim celebrates the unification of Jerusalem, which, under current political plans may be un-unified, and relatively few people from outside the city come to celebrate the festival.

It's not a day off; it's not a public holiday. No special dispensation is given to this day. Anyone who wants to celebrate it has to take one of their personal vacation days to come and join in the joyous occasion.
Today, on a day with horrible weather, when schools are cancelled, when public transport is suspended, and getting to work is next-to impossible, they come from all over the south – religious, irreligious, families, groups, friends – they all come to Jerusalem to celebrate the snow.