On a hot Thursday night, the hall's already mobbed an hour before show time. Waitresses snake between patrons sitting at candlelit, round tables. A selector at the door checks to see if there's still room for latecomers, and extra chairs are brought in. Twenty- and 30-something couples and groups of friends anxiously wait for the star of the evening to take the stage.
Tel Aviv dance club? Nope. Jerusalem jazz spot? Not quite. Welcome to Petah Tikva's Cafe Midrash, a self-described "spiritual bar-cafe," where the tables are surrounded by walls full of religious texts, a holy ark and a memorial plaque, and tonight's star performer is a rabbi who does card tricks, cracks jokes and leads his secular audience to spiritual places most have never been before.
While everyone may not know your name here, there are plenty of regulars, and the team behind the establishment is glad you came, as the secular stop in for a cup of nourishment for the soul, a shot of enlightenment through exploring Jewish texts and a chaser of Torah-based advice that could even help them make things right with their significant others.
Tonight's star of the evening, Rabbi Yitzhak Fanger, who has rapidly created Thursday night fever here, is a Herzliya boy who once, according to an interview in Hamodia, called for running over anyone religious, and was a world Reiki master before giving up a million dollar career for the sake of touching other until now nonbelieving Jewish souls. Even Cafe Midrash - which opened three years ago in the smaller, original cafe, where liquor bottles on shelves stand past a divider, set up to provide privacy for a men's class being held when we show up - evolved from something else.
Starting out as a Minha minyan for employees in the mostly industrial area eight years ago, its dynamic founder Rabbi Binyamin Shachar and his almost all volunteer staff established the Psagot Center for Lectures and Gatherings, and began offering classes on various aspects of Judaism. "To our amazement and joy, people started bringing one and then another" to hear charismatic lecturers like Fanger, with funding from "private contributors," notes Shachar in his office, the crowd still filing into the larger hall now used for study during the day and events like this one at night.
IT WAS three years ago that "people who were coming said there was a large slice of people who would never come to hear a Torah lesson because of stereotypes and fears and all kinds of prejudice, but if the concept was based on a night out - and everyone wants a night out once in a while - and if we can add to it some added value of spiritual content, that could be a catalyzer that would bring them," Shachar says.
The center, which focuses on "the individual's spiritual side," as its Web site declares, also offers more advanced men's and women's study programs. The cafe hosts other nightly events, from separate-sex study of texts to mixed ones on relationships, one on graphology and a mixed one led by Shachar Wednesday nights on "developing your personality," and "dealing with difficulties" all billed as "based on the wisdom of Judaism and our sages." On order are grilled cheese sandwiches, pizzas, salads, baguettes, hot cakes, alcoholic drinks, coffee and more.
Shachar laughs at how a coffee house or beer hall, once forbidden to Jews by the rabbis, has become a center for spiritual growth and the teaching of mitzvot. While such places are off limits to observant Jews if they're meant to just pass the time away, he says, "I've never seen anyone leave our place of entertainment without some kind of internal enlightenment. He feels good, and generally thanks us. I don't drink beer myself, but if God created it in the world, it must also have a spiritual purpose."
The formula is obviously working. A look around reveals men and women dressed for a night out, Tel Aviv style, in the height of "sport elegant," hair well attended to. Shachar describes his clientele as mostly having "no connection to anything Jewish, kibbutzniks, people who come for the good time out." A note left by five women aged 25 to 30 who attended recently read: "This is our first Torah class ever," he notes proudly.
The evening is strictly for secular Israelis, Shachar says, explaining that the observant have other alternatives for learning and that the fear is the secular clientele will be put off by having observant Jews present. Plus, he says, there's just not enough space for the throngs coming, particularly Thursday nights.
"They have everything in terms of material goods, but they're looking for some spirituality in their lives. They feel a need for it, but the existing framework until now was too threatening for them," says Shachar. "But if we succeed in creating a framework that's not threatening... I've seen people searching and they want a package that will be attractive, but also authentic. That is an authentic product in a new package... we're something a little new that isn't that well-known elsewhere."
The effort here is to light a spiritual "spark," without any form of coercion, he insists, adding: "I'm surprised every week by the power of this. I myself didn't understand how far things would develop."
THE NORMS, Fraziers and Cliffs, or their Israeli equivalents, are as proud to be here as Shachar is to have them. Comments from customers while they wait for the evening to begin indicate they're hungry for much more than what's on the menu, and find it at Cafe Midrash.
Eva Eliasoff, 25, from Petah Tikva, who now attends the Psagot women's classes regularly, had just returned from Thailand about a year ago when she found a flyer about the place in her mailbox. "I came to the cafe and fell in love," Eliasoff, who's from a nonreligious home, says.
"Today's generation likes to go to pubs, clubs, to play pool, bowling or other forms of entertainment, another dance - but it's empty. You come home with an empty feeling inside and you can't explain it to yourself." Instead, she started coming to hear Fanger, Shachar and others talk "with a sense of humor and with a good group and a cup of coffee and cake, where actually the real food, for me, was not the toast but the spiritual food we got. Suddenly I realized that I was thirsty for something spiritual that I wasn't getting."
