By Shayna Roth
Friday night tefillot in Tzfat was, for me, an experience of realizing authenticity and unity of Jewish practice. As always on our shabbatons, our cohort was provided numerous options for shuls to attend for Kabbalat Shabbat and ma’ariv services. The fellows split off into a few different groups heading in different directions, and I was with the majority of girls, headed to a Breslov shul which we had heard was going to have very spirited singing and davening. The shul was large and absolutely beautiful, but the nature of the service immediately surprised a lot of us; we were expecting the separated women’s balcony, but we were not anticipating being expected to pray silently to ourselves while the loud, mumbling noises from the men’s section below overwhelmed the room. While we appreciated the new experience this shul provided, there was a general consensus of wanting to try another one in effort to have a more personally meaningful davening experience where we could feel apart of what was going on.
We ended up at a Carlebach shul, which was so crowded that there was an overflow of people out the doors on both the men and women’s sides, down the entrance stairs, and onto the narrow stone street. It was interesting to see how the shul was separated on the inside, with a mechitzah down the middle and even different doors for entry, yet the overflow caused the separation to be less strict as there is, after all, no mechitza outside, and people simply resumed davening as normal regardless of their proximity to each other. By the time we found a place to stand, we had completely missed Kabbalat Shabbat and the beginning of ma’ariv, unfortunately leaving little time and space for us to deeply engage in prayer. Yet, internalizing our surroundings at that moment made the experience so powerful--standing, under the stars, in the middle of a street about the width of a single car, huddled together with linked arms, surrounded by a crowd of strangers also eager to welcome in shabbat, as light raindrops fell down on us. This moment was so unique and so important for understanding unity of Jewish people at the core. I am sure this was a religiously powerful moment for many people, as we were at a prayer service, but for me it was not powerful religiously but powerful solely in the realness of the experience. We felt as if we were truly apart of the moment, and as ourselves rather than as outsiders visiting another’s community. It was incredible to feel like we were all there together, with intentions and purposes that were similar in so many ways yet so different at the same time. This experience was a reminder of the significance of Jewish gathering and rituals beyond the standard word recitation we often associate with friday night services.
