An Evening at the Sea of Galilee

The Sunday a week ago I had my first opportunity to get up to the Sea of Galilee on an overnight trip. Our ultimate destination was Tel Dan, which is one the main cultic sites I'll be studying this year and which is actually another forty-five minutes north of Galilee. (Tel Dan is about 3.5 hrs. from Jerusalem). Since we didn't leave Jerusalem till 3 pm on Sunday, we decided to spend the night in a hostel by the Sea and get to Dan first thing Monday morning.

I was traveling with David Ilan, who directing my project this year at Hebrew Union College, and the main purpose of the trip was for David to give a tour of Tel Dan to all the new rabbinical students at HUC. There are four HUCs -- one in Cincinnati, one in LA, one in NY and of course one in Jerusalem -- but all students, no matter which of the four they attend, have to spend their first year at the Jerusalem campus.


These sixty rabbinical students had arrived at Galilee earlier in the day and gone rafting along the headwaters of the Jordan River. They returned shortly after David and I arrived, and I met the three guys with whom I'd be sharing a room. One was from Columbia, SC, and was wearing an Atlanta Braves hat, so I knew I would like him. The other two were also very friendly: one from rural Illinois and the other from the SF Bay. The latter had most recently lived in Oakland and was familiar with the East Bay Conservation Corps, which was my placement agency in JVC.


I chatted with them until dinner. After dinner the entire group sang the Birkat ha-Mazon ("the blessing of the meal"), and then their director announced that they would be assembling for evening prayer at the shore of the Kinneret (the Hebrew word for the Sea of Galilee) and then small group discussions.


I asked my new friends if they would mind if I came along for the evening prayer, and they were happy to have me join them. We walked the twenty yards to the seashore and set our plastic chairs in the circle of students that was already forming. Close enough to hear the water lapping on the shore, we began with a call to prayer: each of us stood facing Jerusalem, bent our knees and bowed as prayers were recited in Hebrew. Then we took our seats, and the prayer leaders led in alternating Hebrew prayers from the siddur (Jewish prayer book), which I was able to follow on my Columbia friend's text and stanzas from a poem by the poet Rahel. The prayer lasted for maybe 30 minutes.

Afterwards the group broke into three groups according to how long one has been in Israel. Naturally, I invited myself to join the "fresh off the boat" group. The leader of this group was a Jewish man, who was originally from Rhodesia and came to Israel in the 1950's, shortly after its statehood. He gave a brief talk about the origins of Zionism in the context of 19th century European nationalism and then described his own experiences living among the early kibbutzim in Israel.


I was really struck by how much he emphasized the importance of community in those first kibbutzim with the implication that it has largely been lost in the development of the Jewish state. And if this "anakhnu" ("we-ness") has been lost in Israel, how much more so for Jews living in the United States. The year these students spend in Jerusalem is designed, I think, as an antidote to the individualism that is creeping into the Jewish community. If they can develop in these future religious leaders a Jewish identity that is steeped in communal experience, there is hope for the congregations over which they will preside.

After the conversation groups broke up, folks lingered around chatting, but I went back to my room and to bed. The next day we got up to Tel Dan first thing in the morning and had a great time walking around the site, which is surrounded by a beautiful natural reserve. But that'll have to wait for another post.