Source: The Boston Globe
On October 10, 2000, The Boston Globe published an article entitled, "On Yom Kippur, A Local Vigil for Israelis; Jews in Cambridge Mourn for Victims, Make Plea for Peace." It reported that "More than 500 members of the Jewish communities of Harvard University and Cambridge shivered through an afternoon vigil in Harvard Yard. They read psalms and sang O'seh Shalom Bim'romav - 'Maker of Peace on High' - in a communal prayer for peace in the Middle East, just as war seemed about to ravage Israel and Palestine once again. The public event was a most unusual interruption to a Day of Atonement, when Jews traditionally fast and pray in the seclusion of synagogues rather than in front of television cameras. But this was no usual Yom Kippur. As crowds were singing at the vigil, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was holding crisis talks in Israel. Locally, many Jews said it was a singularly intense experience to pray through a day of decision, as Israel and its neighbors teetered between war and peace."