Shabat Shalom

I have to leave Israel next week. It hurts.

I finally decided - after years of thinking about it and trying to find a way out - to join the Jewish ranks.

I'm too much part of it now - or it's too much part of me - to just walk away. And Jerusalem for me is as nectar to a hummingbird. I need to suck it up.

My family know this of me, and are incredibly supportive. Even my little niece Rowie wrote: Yay, you're gonna be a Jew!!!

A fairly startled Ze'ev asked me why I'd want to become Jewish, and whether I'm in my right mind, and whether it's purely because I want to live in Israel. I'm shaking my head at him and not finding a way to tell it.

"Shabbat in Jerusalem" should be all I need to say, but it isn't, because even Ze'ev doesn't know what that means. So OK I will tell y'all about Shabbat in Jerusalem.

Shabbat begins when the woman of the household is ready for it. That means, she's cleaned up the house and she's cooked enough food to get through the next 24 hours without firing up the oven again. Her work done, she relaxes, she lights two candles, blesses God for making that requirement of her, eats salted bread (blessing God for allowing her to eat the fruit of the earth) and drinks wine (blessing God for allowing her to drink the fruit of the vine).

'baruch' - literally, blessing - probably doesn't translate well to Christian or other non-Jewish cultures. For the record, it's pretty much 'thanking', only different.

The next thing is the shofar being blown. In Jerusalem's Nachlaot neighbourhood technology's moved beyond this; we have a two-minute siren to announce the beginning of Shabbat, one hour before sundown, every Friday. But then everything stops. If someone was playing a CD it stops. If someone had the TV on loud, it stops. Sure people still do these things, but on Shabbat they will turn down the sound so as not to disturb the fly on the wall. That'll be the practising Jewish fly on the wall...

Unless you've lived it, you won't know how wonderful it is to only hear the sounds of voices. Human voices, cat voices, bird voices, dog voices - but all unfiltered.

I have an unfortunate talent or sickness: I hear/see digitalized sound in blocks. That means I find it very uncomfortable to watch TV or listen to the radio unless I'm totally absorbed in the content. And overhearing everyone else's shit that way is downright painful - too distant to become absorbed even if I wanted it, but close enough to disrupt my pitifully weak psyche. I grow irritable and have to do breathing exercises to retain any sense of equilibrium. So for me, Shabbat in Jerusalem is a total release. I don't have to worry about digitalized sound. I don't have to 'translate' it. I can just relax - and on Shabbat, after the siren, after the male voice choir efforts from the synagogue next door (beautiful in a formalized kinda way), I will only hear the sounds of friends and family eating and laughing together, and then the next day the sound of children playing and men praying. Me, I hear it and I feel it, that huge gap between Shabbos and the empty day.

So now even Ze'ev knows where I'm coming from...

Shabat Shalom (may the peace of the Sabbath be yours), and please don't take that lightly!