Jerusalem Day 2 - Shabbat Shalom
Shabbat Shalom, vänner! It's nine in the morning and after a small breakfast - you'll soon discover why I wasn't very hungry - I now give myself half an hour for a blog about yesterday. That will never suffice for all my experiences, but the other half an hour I'll need for packing and other stuff as today is going to be a busy day again.
In one word: yesterday was about Judaism. After breakfast, we got a lecture by the director of the STI about how this fantastic little place came into existence. I will not summarize the entire history, but the orgins lie in the Swedish movement that in the 19th and early 20th century desired to spread the Gospel among the Jewish People. (Which was far from only a Swedish thing to do; many Christians felt the urgent need to 'save' the Jews, sadly but true.) They founded an institute for this in Vienna and played maybe a somewhat disputable role during WW2 - on one hand saving (baptized) Jews, but not making too much of a stand against Nazism. After the War, the Swedes decided to move their missionary field to Jerusalem, but soon discovered that it was actually better to start a dialogue with Jews (and Muslims) that to try to convert them. Since the 1950s, the STI, owned by the Swedish Church, has been in Jerusalem. The very first students arrived here by boat - imagine their trip!
After that, we got a lecture by Rabbi Bill Berk. Or rather, he let us discuss the weekly Torah portion in a traditional way, i.e. in groups of two. The text was Leviticus 19, which led to a very interesting discussion about holiness. (Berk: "There's Torah portions that deal with lepracy. It's not my thing.") He said a lot more interesting things too, but I'll move on.
The afternoon was spent on a discussion of the Shabbat synagogue service and the rituals surrounding a Shabbat meal. Not all of it was new to me (some part definitely was), but a good repetition in any case.
Later in the afternoon, we all left to different synagogues in town (ours was about 45 minutes walking away) to attend the Shabbat service. Our synagogue was an interesting case. We first ended up upstairs, where in a smaller room a woman and a man were placing chairs next to each other and where they placed a separating curtain between the men and women section. They explained that there would be two services at the same time! They, the ones upstairs, described themselves as more lively and - without any negative words - told that downstairs was more solemn and meditative. Me and two other girls decided to start downstairs and as it got very crowded we decided not to try to get upstairs later, but the guys did. They liked the singing and dancing (!) a lot! Downstairs it was indeed more meditative, even if there was a lot of nice singing. I got a siddur-book with all the text in Hebrew, but with their speed and my crappy level of Hebrew it was impossible to follow along more than three or four words without losing track. Sometimes I heard a few familiar words - baruch-ata-Adonai-Eloheinu was about the longest sequence.
After that, we were awaited by the family where we (me and the two guys) would be invited for Shabbat dinner. More here later - I have to get to my class on Muslim-Christian relations. Now for something completely different...
------- and then it was almost 10 PM when I continued -------
So about the Shabbat dinner. Me, Thomas and Scott were welcomed at the home of an American-Jewish couple that had emigrated from the US more than fourty years ago. They had eight (!) children, but for the meal only one daughter-in-law was present with three little children. She was a Mexican Jew, so the oldest children spoke an amazing mix of Ivriet, Spanish and English...
Jewish rituals are - as almost any rituals, in my honest opinion - fascinating to see. What always strikes me is how much the solemn and the 'relaxed' can be mixed in Judaism. When the (grand)father was saying a blessing and one of the grandson made funny noises, the former would happily blink or even interrupt and make a little joke with the little one. I'm not sure every Christian grandfather would be so tolerating during after-dinner bible reading... ;-)
We were treated on an exquisite four-course meal with fish, soup, chicken (fortunately the host was vegetarian too, so I didn't feel too much like a bother) and fruit crumble. No dairy products included, obviously.
Eating dinner with complete strangers seemed in advance a bit challenging to me, but the hosts did all to make us feel at home. We talked about many different topics and even the earlier-mentioned text on holiness was discussed shortly.
There were many more impressions (also from the synagogue), but this will have to do...
Last but not least: in the synagogue we were asked several times whether we already had a place to eat dinner and even if we told that we would meet our hosts right there, we were ensured that in case the hosts wouldn't show up, they could always host us instead. I think we can learn something from this hospitality, but I'm still thinking about how to give it a good form. I mean - just to go on the street and invite complete strangers for dinner might not completely work in Swedish society. Maybe we should start with inviting strangers for fika instead?
In one word: yesterday was about Judaism. After breakfast, we got a lecture by the director of the STI about how this fantastic little place came into existence. I will not summarize the entire history, but the orgins lie in the Swedish movement that in the 19th and early 20th century desired to spread the Gospel among the Jewish People. (Which was far from only a Swedish thing to do; many Christians felt the urgent need to 'save' the Jews, sadly but true.) They founded an institute for this in Vienna and played maybe a somewhat disputable role during WW2 - on one hand saving (baptized) Jews, but not making too much of a stand against Nazism. After the War, the Swedes decided to move their missionary field to Jerusalem, but soon discovered that it was actually better to start a dialogue with Jews (and Muslims) that to try to convert them. Since the 1950s, the STI, owned by the Swedish Church, has been in Jerusalem. The very first students arrived here by boat - imagine their trip!
After that, we got a lecture by Rabbi Bill Berk. Or rather, he let us discuss the weekly Torah portion in a traditional way, i.e. in groups of two. The text was Leviticus 19, which led to a very interesting discussion about holiness. (Berk: "There's Torah portions that deal with lepracy. It's not my thing.") He said a lot more interesting things too, but I'll move on.
The afternoon was spent on a discussion of the Shabbat synagogue service and the rituals surrounding a Shabbat meal. Not all of it was new to me (some part definitely was), but a good repetition in any case.
Later in the afternoon, we all left to different synagogues in town (ours was about 45 minutes walking away) to attend the Shabbat service. Our synagogue was an interesting case. We first ended up upstairs, where in a smaller room a woman and a man were placing chairs next to each other and where they placed a separating curtain between the men and women section. They explained that there would be two services at the same time! They, the ones upstairs, described themselves as more lively and - without any negative words - told that downstairs was more solemn and meditative. Me and two other girls decided to start downstairs and as it got very crowded we decided not to try to get upstairs later, but the guys did. They liked the singing and dancing (!) a lot! Downstairs it was indeed more meditative, even if there was a lot of nice singing. I got a siddur-book with all the text in Hebrew, but with their speed and my crappy level of Hebrew it was impossible to follow along more than three or four words without losing track. Sometimes I heard a few familiar words - baruch-ata-Adonai-Eloheinu was about the longest sequence.
After that, we were awaited by the family where we (me and the two guys) would be invited for Shabbat dinner. More here later - I have to get to my class on Muslim-Christian relations. Now for something completely different...
------- and then it was almost 10 PM when I continued -------
So about the Shabbat dinner. Me, Thomas and Scott were welcomed at the home of an American-Jewish couple that had emigrated from the US more than fourty years ago. They had eight (!) children, but for the meal only one daughter-in-law was present with three little children. She was a Mexican Jew, so the oldest children spoke an amazing mix of Ivriet, Spanish and English...
Jewish rituals are - as almost any rituals, in my honest opinion - fascinating to see. What always strikes me is how much the solemn and the 'relaxed' can be mixed in Judaism. When the (grand)father was saying a blessing and one of the grandson made funny noises, the former would happily blink or even interrupt and make a little joke with the little one. I'm not sure every Christian grandfather would be so tolerating during after-dinner bible reading... ;-)
We were treated on an exquisite four-course meal with fish, soup, chicken (fortunately the host was vegetarian too, so I didn't feel too much like a bother) and fruit crumble. No dairy products included, obviously.
Eating dinner with complete strangers seemed in advance a bit challenging to me, but the hosts did all to make us feel at home. We talked about many different topics and even the earlier-mentioned text on holiness was discussed shortly.
There were many more impressions (also from the synagogue), but this will have to do...
Last but not least: in the synagogue we were asked several times whether we already had a place to eat dinner and even if we told that we would meet our hosts right there, we were ensured that in case the hosts wouldn't show up, they could always host us instead. I think we can learn something from this hospitality, but I'm still thinking about how to give it a good form. I mean - just to go on the street and invite complete strangers for dinner might not completely work in Swedish society. Maybe we should start with inviting strangers for fika instead?
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