STOP 3 | Israel: A Shabbat experience, Shabbat Shalom. Take Life with a Smile!

This post is dedicated to all the people who are looking for Peace. May You find your Peace, May Peace find You!

Shiri (see STOP 3 | Israel: Exploring the Jewish Jerusalem + the Room of the Last Supper) showed me the address of my Shabbat dinner and then I walked with her towards Jaffa Gate. I still had 1h, so I spent some time just outside of the gates of the Old City to rest. I then wore my Kippah, in sign of respect to the Jewish community and I walked towards the house.

Unfortunately there won't be any additional pictures, as I could not take any, in respect to Shabbat. During Shabbat there are things that are not possible to do:

• 39_Melachot
• Everything work-related
• Cooking
• [...]
• Rabbinically prohibited activities of Shabbat
• Money
• Electricity
• [...]

I will try to capture everything below, what I can recall, but first things first: Jennifer was the amazing woman who hosted me, together with her husband. It was completely random, Shiri organized it via a network of friends, active in the touristic field. But this activity was not touristic at all: according to what I discovered later, Jennifer is pretty famous for the amazing Shabbat dinners she and her husband organize every Friday night; I asked if I needed to pay something (I wanted to repay somehow), but she said No: she just added that it was going to be a bigger dinner with more than 15 people, either Jewish or (Jewish) orthodox.

When I reached the door, there was a guy fiercely knocking at the door, as the door was locked. There was the doorbell in front of him, but he was not using that. I stayed on one side of the small street, without doing anything, waiting for him to get in. The man kinda climbed the wall to knock at the window and then I remembered: use of electricity is not allowed on Shabbat. Thanks god I didn't do anything and I didn't reach the house alone, what a bad entrance, probably.

Simcha - the official cook, as well as Jennifer's husband - opened the door and welcomed me in. Jennifer is a really talkative person, and I was amazed by her energy and spirit: I really felt welcomed. Her husband is the (amazing, great, excellent) cook of the family. Jennifer asked me what I was doing in Israel and I mentioned I was attending an archaeologic dig at Park Tzafit; she looked at me mentioning casually that a (distant) cousin of her was doing the same: "Her name is Shani", she said. I stared at her, with a question mark face, trying to recall if we had more more people going by Shani in our group (we had multiple Shira for instance); also Shani, is the short version of Shoshana, and another abbreviation may be Shoshi, so I didn't connect the dots immediately. She mentioned the last name and I opened up in an expression of surprise. If you look at "STOP 3 | Israel: What do Archeologists do? (1)", you can spot the names of my supervisors: Shira and Shani, that was her!!! It reminded me the Six Degrees of separations theory. But also how could that be possible?! #takelifeasticomes.

Dinner started around 9 and finished around 11:30PM. We were indeed 16 people, some newly married couples (or about to be). Some people recently moved to Israel, some guys from South Africa that came to Israel to study a particular type of Torah.

We washed our hands three times per hand, saying some prayers that the men was walked into the house with me said for me and I repeated. Some other people say such prayers in their minds and they usually cannot talk after the wash...indeed I asked a question to a guy and he muttered something weird: his friend just explained to me that they cannot talk during this ritual. Luca, you genius! 😓

After this, we drank what I later realized - with the help of Hannah from my Archaeological Square - was probably Manischewitz (or similar), with a ritual - Kiddush - carried over by Simcha. The most beautiful thing is that we passed each other all the drinks one by one, and the plates later. This would never happened at an Italian or Sicilian dinner :)

Every now and then, Simcha started singing prayer songs and I tried to follow with a booklet containing English phonetic transcription: everyone sang along, I tried to mutter something but then decided to shut up, not to ruin the atmosphere. 😅

We had hummus, moussaka and other appetizers with the home-cooked bread by Simcha. We got a really great soup, before digging ourself into the main dishes, made by beef, quiche, vegetables, potatoes, rice and so on and so forth. Jennifer was slightly disappointed that we didn't eat too much quiche. I loved that, but at the same time, I didn't want to exaggerate with food. At the end, we had a brownie-like dessert.

Between the meals, we introduced each other to the table, by answering 4 questions:

1. Our Name and Last Name (everyone was fascinated by my last name, probably I should exploit it more :D)
2. Where are we from?
3. What are we doing in Israel?
4. If the world can listen to you, what would you say?

The answer to my 4th question was: Take Life with a Smile: I firmly believe that if humans would start smiling more, their life will be materially happier (and there might be even scientific proofs for this)!

What I discovered (I checked with my friend Avi as well later) is that many of the people in the room, including Jennifer, had done Aliyah: the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the Land of Israel historically, which today includes the modern State of Israel. Also defined as "the act of going up"—that is, towards Jerusalem—"making aliyah" by moving to the Land of Israel is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism. The opposite action, emigration from the "Land of Israel", is referred to in Hebrew as yerida ("descent"). The State of Israel's Law of Return gives Jews, their children, and their grandchildren automatic rights regarding residency and Israeli citizenship.

As I wrote to Jennifer, I was amazed by their spirit, their energy, their cheerfulness. Feeling the sense of union and harmony was really magical, despite I am not officially part of their community: I felt kinda part of an extended family. This is what Religions should be about, across the world: isn't this the spirt that every God, Prophet, Rabbi, Pope, Imam, etc would like humans abide by?

After dessert, I walked back to my hostel, trying not to pick my phone immediately in front of the house. I had walked that street back and fort a couple of times to make sure I would be able to do it without Google Maps. I also removed the Kippah, while walking back. Some guys at dinner saw me and asked me if I was Jewish or Moroccan (due to my last name). I confirmed I was not, I just wanted to understand the Jewish culture from the inside.

It has been an amazing experience! Thanks Jennifer ☺