A Shabbat service like none other

Temple Emanu-El congregants visit Israel

Posted

It was a cool, windy, early-January Friday night in Jerusalem, where several members of Temple Emanu-El took part in a unique Shabbat service at one of Judaism’s most holy sites: the Western Wall.

At one point, Rabbi Daniel Bar-Nahum, who led the service, stopped momentarily and asked the congregants if they wished to pause and move the prayer inside, where it was warm.

“Everybody just unanimously said, ‘Keep going,’” recalled Sara Diamond, who made the trip with her husband, Ben, and their three sons. “We knew how special it was.”

The service was a spontaneous one, made possible by a recently built egalitarian area at the wall, which allows men and women to pray together. Traditionally, prayer there is controlled by Orthodox rabbis, who uphold strict gender segregation and adherence to traditional prayer ritual. But because of the cold, the group had nearly the entire space to itself.

“It never dawned on me that I would be able to have a service there for my entire congregation,” said Bar-Nahum, the synagogue’s spiritual leader since 2012. “It was, for me, the most powerful moment of the trip.”

A group of about 15 congregants, including Bar-Nahum, the Diamonds, Cantor Ellen Weinberg, Rona and Bob Kauffman, and two other families who have ties to Temple Emanu-El embarked on the congregational trip on Dec. 25, and returned Jan. 5. It was the synagogue’s first trip to the Holy Land since the late 1970s, said Sara Diamond, who did much of the planning.

The travelers visited many of Israel’s major landmarks and cities, including the Dead Sea, Masada, Yad Vashem — the Holocaust Museum — and Tel Aviv, led by a tour guide who, Ben Diamond said, gave them an impartial overview of Israel’s ancient and modern history as well as the recent political strife. “There was a lot of things I didn’t know that I learned,” said Diamond, who last visited the country 37 years ago. “A lot of misconceptions I had were cleared up.”

Recent conflict in the Middle East — most of which took place last summer — has been covered extensively by the media, but that didn’t stop the group from going. “I don’t subscribe to changing my life because of a fear of terrorism,” Diamond said.

Page 1 / 2