When Gibraltar was the Promised Land
Trip Start
Aug 17, 2008
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8
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Trip End
Aug 25, 2008
Gibraltar,
Gibraltar
Friday, August 22, 2008
The group of Russian Jews thought the addition of a British military garrison with a tiny tourist beach resort was an odd place for a Jewish study and identity tour. But in a few hours on the Rock of Gibraltar, we quickly convinced them that our arrival in Gibraltar on Friday afternoon to prepare for Shabbat was brilliant.
The group had a two hour tour of the Rock's limited tourist sites-a few cool military buildings, great views of the Straits of Gibraltar, and the infamous apes of Gibraltar, cute but so aggressive that they will jump on you and take a bag right off of your shoulder
Non-Traditional Text Study
. The town is a two street strip of duty free shopping and unimpressive British pubs. It begged the questions, "What were we doing here?" I already knew the answer (one of the privileges of being the trip educator).I stayed behind to prepare for Shabbat with Nadya, who was helping me lead our Shabbat group that was putting on a simple Friday evening Kabbalat Shabbat service, creating Saturday morning activities, organizing optional afternoon studying, and leading Havdallah. Remember that this is a group of Russian Jewish immigrants, who had little exposure to Judaism as a religion, and if they did have exposure to Judaism it was generally an Orthodox Judaism, what most Russian Jews see as the only "authentic" form of Judaism. Davai's Gibraltar Shabbat would be an amazing pastiche of the Orthodox and the very unorthodox. Pluralistic, post-denominatinal Judaism at its finest.
So why were we in Gibraltar? Nadya had been in Spain last September, studying in a Flamenco school in Seville. She happened to be there for the high holidays, and she had heard that to find Jewish community in Spain, one had to actually leave Spain and go to Gibraltar. She spent three days with the Gibraltar Jewish community, made up of about 1000 mostly traditional Sefardic Jews (out of a general population of about 30,000)
View from the Roof of the Hotel
. On Friday afternoon, as we sat in the main square preparing for Shabbat we saw no fewer than 15 obviously Orthodox Jews wandering the streets of the city preparing for their Shabbats. We had tried to arrange Shabbat lunch home visits for our group in advance, but it turns out that many Gibraltar Jews leave the Rock during the month of August for holiday. But if this was the reduced community, it was still impressive, even moving, especially after having traveled for five days in places where "Jewish" meant an old building and a text study, not living Jewish community.Our Shabbat leadership group convened at 7pm to set up, choreograph, prepare, learn, and get in the mood. We began at 8pm as the sun began to drop over the horizon, as we launched what one participant - a formerly observant woman - said was the most moving Shabbat experience she had had in many years,.
Shabbat was by no means traditional, although David Lawrence, our tour company operator, had worked with the local kosher caterer, Sam, to prepare traditional kosher Shabbat food-from salads and chicken on Friday night, to Shabbes lunch and seudah shlishit the next evening at 6pm. Sam had arranged for us to use the Garrison Library for our day of Shabbat ritual. The building, an 18th century house that was once Lord Nelson's place of residence, is now one of the oldest libraries and military archives in the British empire and has on display Napoleon's letters from Elba and Nelson's telescope, among other treasures
Gibraltar synagogue
. We were surrounded by hundred-year old leather bound volumes, rich wood shelves, and beautiful ceilings, and in back, a gorgeous courtyard with date palms that would be our home for the next day. Our formerly frum (observant) participant led the candle lighting blessing. She had wanted to teach the group that Jewish women light the candles, while I had encouraged a more expansive understanding of the candle lighting, so we compromised by having everyone who wanted to do so (men included) light a candle. We had singing, accompanied by guitar (something we will come back to), Lcha dodi, that included an introduction to Kabbalistic mysticism that had its origins in medieval Spain, Barchu, Shma, and Amidah. We then went inside for Kiddush, handwashing, motzi, and delicious food...lots of it, that kept coming late into the night. After dinner, about ten of us took a bottle of vodka out on the main plaza and I held a "vodka tish," an evening of learning, conversation, and self-revelation that outlasted me as I went upstairs at 1:30am.
After having seen many of the Orthodox members of the local community wandering the streets and meeting a few while buying Shabbat supplies at one of several kosher groceries, we were joined for our Shabbat meals by a newly-arrived local Sefardic family (husband, wife and their five kids) that had just moved to Gibraltar and had not yet kashered their kitchen
Havdallah
. In need of a place to partake of kosher Shabbat meals, Sam, our caterer, invited them to come dine with us. Honoring the tradition of welcoming guests on Shabbat, we were happy to have them, even if they set themselves at a table a bit apart from the group. The patriarch of the family, a patent-lawyer who was coincidentally originally from Chicago (the same city as our group) seemed perfectly comfortable being surrounded by our not-so-traditional Shabbat observance, presumably familiar with American traditions of pluralistic Judaism. His wife, however, appeared visibly uncomfortable the moment our song leader, Misha, pulled out the guitar and begin leading us in rousing renditions of "od yavo shalom aleinu" and classic Shabbat songs. Although guitars are now not only mainstream but expected in more liberal Jewish circles, traditional Jews still shun the playing of musical instruments on Shabbat., For Shabbat morning, our group had created three options: going to one of the two local Sefardic synagogues, doing a Torah study with my husband and Esther, the formerly frum woman, by the hotel pool (which sits on a beautiful roof deck overlooking the city), or going on a hike to the top of Gibraltar and studying Kabbalah and the Zohar with me. Our group, about 15 strong, was surprised at the rigor of the hike, which went more or less straight up the mountain. We found a great look out overlooking the harbor and pulled out our texts, a section of Zohar that deals with creation
1-Havdallah
. None of our hikers had experience with Kabbalah, so we started by defining mysticism, talked about why text is at the center of Jewish mysticism, asked why the Zohar might have been produced in medieval Spain, and then broke up into hevruta. And then the monkeys came.We had seen several of the beasts lurking in the trees as we hiked, but as we sat studying, several of them came up to us and stole the show. Our uninvited guests didn't prevent us from having a great hevruta about how light created humanity, as we sat under the blazing Mediterranean sun. We hiked down, cleaned up, went to lunch and had afternoon free time. I led a more in depth Zohar text study and then a group of fifteen people was taken to the local yoga studio by one of our participants, who teaches yoga, as we were led in an afternoon yoga class-a perfect way to loosen up for the evening. David Lawrence also taught us Qi Gong, as our very unorthodox Shabbat observance moved into the evening. Three women from Kiev led our Havdallah observance as we closed what everyone agreed was the most meaningful experience of the trip.
In retrospect the experience of seeing empty synagogues opened the group up to having a real Shabbat experience. In their closing circles that Saturday night, at which they were asked to talk about something they gained from the trip and what they might do when they got back, several people mentioned Shabbat as an experience they had gained
Closing Circle
. Closing circle also proved to reveal how effective the trip had been in prompting deep self-reflection, all through a framework of Jewish history and Jewish text study. The overwhelming consensus was that there had been too much touring churches and not enough Jewish study. There was also a deep appreciation for having learned about the diversity of the Jewish experience across time and place. They learned about Sefardic Jews, about medieval philosophy, and, most interestingly, several commented that "we are so grateful to learn that Jewish life doesn't just happen in Israel. It happened and is still happening here." And for me, our Russian Jews are coming away from this trip knowing that Jewish life happens wherever they are.
