All are welcome to welcome Shabbat

Nava Tehila leads an instrumental prayer service late on Friday afternoons at the First Station.

By BARRY DAVIS
guitar song Nava Tehila 521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
guitar song Nava Tehila 521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The trains may no longer be choo-chooing, or even gliding, into the historic First Station complex near the German Colony, but these days there is plenty going on there over the weekend. Besides the novelty of a bustling café/restaurant, and stalls offering various arts and crafts items on Shabbat, Jerusalemites can experience a spiritually uplifting and convivial lead-in to the day of rest, with a late Friday afternoon Kabbalat Shabbat service organized by the Ginot Ha’ir community center.
The event kicks off at 5 p.m. and weaves its merry and interpersonally bonding way through a program of traditional prayer, liturgical songs, nigunim (tunes) and even items from the Israeli Songbook. A variety of instrumentalists support the collective musical endeavor, and members of the general public are encouraged to join in the community singing, and even dance.
Considering the generally held view of life in the capital – especially by many Tel Avivians – of being dominated by the ultra-Orthodox or, at the very least, by the mainstream religiously inclined, the Kabbalat Shabbat event is quite a development. Shaike Ben-Ami, head of the community center, says that there has been earnest left-wing religious activity in Jerusalem for a while.
“The Kabbalat Shabbat program is an attempt to generate an alternative for a common spiritual-cultural domain for Jerusalemites of all stripes in the heart of the city,” he notes. “As a community administration that represents a pluralist community, we are looking to express a common culture of a world of different approaches, and to cultivate a community experience which accommodates a shared spiritual-cultural space, and to imbue the heart of Jerusalem with renewing, vibrant pluralist-Jewish color.”
Rabbi Ruth Gan Kagan certainly goes along with that sentiment. As head of the Nava Tehila community, Kagan leads the First Station event every other Friday. “Things are shifting now [in Judaism] in a fundamental way, just like they did 2,000 years ago around the time of the destruction [of the Second Temple],” she observes.
For Kagan, nothing is set in stone. “You don’t know what the right thing to do is, so you try. Some things will succeed, some things will fail, but when you try, honestly, with a clear heart, this is when you may be able to find the way of the new times.
The contemporary age is not an accident of God. It is something we live in.”
Music is also central to Nava Tehila, and a main feature of the Kabbalat Shabbat slots Kagan oversees.
“When I started Nava Tehila, I said let’s do Kabbalat Shabbat, but let’s do Kabbalat Shabbat in a way that speaks to the Israeli spiritually seeking soul – which means let’s do it with music, let’s do it with guitars and drums. That’s how we started.”
Kagan says the venue of the Kabbalat Shabbat is important. “It is a central place, and it is out in the open. It’s not like going into a synagogue building, which some people may find intimidating, it’s outside.
We thought we’d try doing something for people in their comfort zone. I met with Shaike – we have known each other a long time – and he said he was initiating something that goes beyond the religious divide.
We didn’t think about something which would be comfortable for religious and secular people, we just said it was for anybody. We talk about religious things, like anywhere else, but with a very strong pluralistic vision.”
Kagan had been involved in plenty of all-embracing religious ventures for quite a while before the Kabbalat Shabbat service came along, and says the new location proved to be a winner from the start. “Ginot Ha’ir is a lovely venue but it’s not the kind of place you just bump into, it’s a bit out of the way. But when the railway station opened, we said let’s give it a try. We started our Kabbalat Shabbat three days after the station opened.
We set up in a corner – we thought, how many people will come to this? We thought we’d maybe get 50 or 100. The first time we did it, 150 people came. The next time we did it, we moved into the center [of the complex] because there wasn’t enough room in the corner, and 300 people showed up.”
Some of the participants didn’t exactly plan to join in the pre-Shabbat festivities. “The station is a place where people hang,” Kagan continues. “Some were just on their way from A to B, maybe did their shopping at the shuk [market] and here they were. This is really what Kabbalat Shabbat is.”
The idea is also to get people actively involved in the proceedings. “Yes, we have instrumentalists and we have amplification, but it is not like a concert,” Kagan explains. “We tell everybody they can sing, and they can get up and dance, and they can talk to their neighbors. Part of the pluralistic message is that different groups are going to be meeting up.”
That mass appeal needs to be accommodated and, says Kagan, dictates a free-flowing ethos. She returns to the hit-and-miss theme. “Some things will work and some won’t work, but that’s okay. We don’t know the right way to pray together in a group in which some people are religious and have a little siddur [prayer book], some are secular, and some people are like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here, I didn’t know I was coming to pray.’ It’s a great challenge for us as a group of leaders.”
Besides keeping the participants involved, that eclectic mind-set also helps to maintain Kagan’s interest. “It keeps us on our toes, the whole time,” she notes. “There is always something happening, and there are always surprises.”
Kagan’s slots interchange with the Kabbalat Shabbat program presented by the Hazmana Lepiyut outfit.
“Their model is piyutim [liturgical songs] from all sorts of ethnic origins, and also old Israeli music,” Kagan explains. “Our model is chanting, which is let’s take a phrase and sing it a lot. The Nava Tehila model is basically going over the traditional Kabbalat Shabbat, with the Psalms, and you know we do [the prayers of] “Yedid Nefesh” at the beginning at “Lecha Dodi” at the end.”
Kagan says it is the ambiance, the dynamics of the gathering and the communal endeavor which are the key to a successful spiritually rewarding experience.
“We might not say and sing everything [in the traditional service] – we definitely don’t – but there is a wonderful energy flow. We do that through a lot of singing – traditional things and the music we write ourselves – and that really gets people into the here and now. What we do can be enjoyed by anyone.”