Erev Shabbat

I raged. I wept. I prayed. I asked God, "Why?"
Then I mopped.

Yesterday, 21 year-old Tuvia Weissman was stabbed to death buying dessert at his neighborhood grocery. Shopping with his wife and baby, he and another shopper were attacked because they were Jews by teenage Palestinian terrorists.

How am I supposed to react? What am I to do with my rage and sorrow?
So after praying, I mopped. Shabbat is coming, and regardless of what happened yesterday, must be observed.

When I went out on my Shabbat errands, I saw a city full of people doing the same: picking up challah and flowers, greeting friends at the shuk, enjoying a half day of blissful sunshine. The coffee shops were and markets were full, the playgrounds filled with children and families. The joyous hustle and bustle that proceeds Shabbat in the city of David stops for no one.

Until 2:00pm when the shops close and families go home to prepare.  Now it's quiet and I, too, have come home - הביתה;-to write, to muse, to prepare for the Shabbat Shalom we wish for Israel and the world.

Shabbat

And peace begins to descend over Jerusalem.
A week of hustling in a new city, a new language, a new culture. Seeking housing, banking (don't get me started on trying to transfer money here), buses, connections: all those small battles have left me weary and in need of the peace promised by Shabbat.

When you live here, you begin to take the Shabbat cycle for granted. "You mean every city doesn't revolve around the day of rest? Chicagoans, Latvians, Chinese don't gleefully race about Friday morning doing Shabbat prep?



The 'Shabbat shalom!' greetings that begin  Thursday? The bakery tables loaded with challah and shabbat delicacies? The Saudis, the Vietnamese, the Irish do not have this? The Scots, the Dutch, the Minnesotans don't ease peaceably into the start of Shabbat as buses and noises and hub-bub stops?"

No. It only happens here. It is lovely to sit at a sunny window overlooking this beautiful, eternal city; to be a part of my people in the one and only Jewish country in the world; and, to ease peaceably and blissfully into the peace of Shabbat.