“Shabbat Shalom!” This has become a common phrase amongst my
team over the past few weeks. What is Shabbat? Great question! I had no clue myself. The quick answer is Shabbat is the seventh day of the
Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. There are many elements that go into
Shabbat…lighting of candles, prayers, blessings, washing of hands, discussion
of the Torah (and in our case the New Testament), eating and resting. A typical Shabbat has 3 meals; Friday
evening, Saturday lunch and Saturday dinner.
In Arad we
were able to participate in the Friday night meal with everything basically
provided for us. In Jerusalem Holland,
Leslie and I had the opportunity to plan, shop for and cook all of the meals
for Shabbat. Not too difficult one would
think…after all, it is only 3 meals. On
the contrary! Each meal needs to have
certain elements…challah (a loaf of braided bread), multiple spreads for the
challah, a light soup, a main course and a dessert. The three meals are set up similar to a
wedding feast. On Friday night it is the
“appetizer” meal focusing on the spreads.
Saturday lunch is the hearty part that “sticks to your ribs” and
Saturday evening is the dessert, ending Shabbat with a fancy dessert. We had to keep this in mind when we were
planning our meals.
Another
thing we had to do was make sure nothing was dairy. Jewish culture prohibits meat and dairy to be
consumed within 3 hours of each other (with some exception) and you have to use
separate cooking utensils, pots and pans, and dishes for dairy and meat. To make things easier for us, our host told
us to just have nothing dairy. Quick-can
you think of any desserts that aren’t dairy?
Yeah, it took us awhile too. One
of the final things (there was many things but these are the most interesting)
we learned was that all of the cooking had to be finished by 4:00pm on
Friday. No burner could be lit, no microwave
could be turned on, no oven could be used, and no crockpot was owned…what a
challenge!
morning the girls all got up early and headed to the shuk (aka the outdoor
marketplace). After a near jail
experience on the bus, we arrived, backpacks strapped on, extra bags in hand, a
huge blue rolling suitcase with the bottom broken through and the wheels
basically off and our list of food in hand.
We received lots of stares as we shopped…mainly because of the huge blue
bag and not because we were American girls shopping for Shabbat I’m sure…perhaps
it was both. 3 hours later we arrive
home after finding everything we needed, haggling with different shop owners,
and packing them into every spare inch of bag space. We then had less than 4 hours to complete all
of our meals. With only a few minutes to
spare we finished. I never thought
cooking could feel like such an accomplishment!
It’s so cool that we have had the opportunity to not only
learn about Jewish culture but to experience it firsthand, down to the
shopping! Jewish life is definitely
different than any lifestyle I’ve encountered and I am so appreciative of the
fact that I understand a little bit more of daily life.
