By Katie Rice-Guter
This trip has been spent exploring many facets of Jewish life and life in Israel, and I found that celebrating Shabbat in Jerusalem had a special resonance for me. We woke up on Saturday and had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel before splitting into groups to visit a variety of synagogues, traversing the city on foot. Our bus driver went home to his family for Shabbat, and we walked the whole day — more than 20,000 steps for me!
This weekend was the first time I observed Shabbat so traditionally. Paul Sorenson and I chose to visit Shira Hadasha, a progressive Orthodox congregation that shares some similarities with an egalitarian home-based minyan in St. Louis that we both attend. Nonetheless, the experience at Shira Hadasha was very new to me: I rarely attend Saturday services and this was the first time I’ve been to Orthodox services or to services all in Hebrew, without transliteration in the prayerbook.
As someone who became connected to Judaism later in life, through my husband Lev Guter, I love attending Kabbalat Shabbat services at Temple Israel with him, holding hands, sharing one prayerbook between the two of us. So I wasn’t sure how I would feel attending a gender-segregated shul. Shira Hadasha — which has separate seating for men and women divided by a sheer, retractable mechitza curtain — is actually on the vanguard of Israeli modern Orthodox practice. I saw that women read Torah alongside men and had other prominent leadership roles in services. And I was surprised to find that, even though I had to sit by myself instead of near my friend Paul, I really enjoyed spending time in the company of the women and children of the congregation. There was a tremendous warmth in the way the women supported each other — holding each other’s babies, and, for me, graciously pointing out page numbers when I got lost. It felt so much more welcoming and familiar than I would have expected.
After services, mid-day, several of us returned together to the Kotel, the Western Wall, to pray with a bit more solitude and quiet than we’d had on Friday night. There was so much beauty there on Friday, with the full moon rising in the east over the Kotel and groups of women (including female soldiers, Orthodox women and babies, and enthusiastic tourists) singing and dancing together in undulating concentric circles, sharing each other’s joy. On Saturday afternoon, in contrast, the plaza was nearly silent. I had plenty of time to place my hands on the wall, place a note in a crevice, and say some favorite Hebrew prayers and some impromptu prayers that have been on my heart.
We returned to the hotel right at sunset and learned that Mindee had coordinated a special surprise for us to end Shabbat. Rick Recht, a contemporary Jewish musician based in St. Louis, had pre-recorded a havdalah service for Mindee to play for us. Guided by his voice and acoustic guitar accompaniment, we ten Rubinites and Mindee stood in a circle and sang along by the light of a havdalah candle. The end of Shabbat marked the end of our day of rest and a return to the rapid and immersive pace of this incredible trip.