Shabbat Shalom

Saturday, the 12^th of Feb.

Shabbat, the holy day here, is really good.  Things start to slow down around noon on Friday and by mid-afternoon the street is fairly quiet.  By sundown the streets are virtually deserted, at least compared to the normal bustle.  It stays that way until sundown on Saturday.  It has started me thinking about the way America handles its rest.  We don’t really take a break.  The weekend is just as busy, if not busier.  Everybody just switches what they’re busy with. 

That’s not the case here.  The country comes to a virtual standstill for Shabbat.  In fact, there’s a big mall several blocks away that turns into a big market on Friday with people selling pre-cooked meals so that you can honor Shabbat by not cooking.  It’s probably a lot more honoring to the Lord and a lot more restful than the way we do it.

I walked about 20 minutes to church this morning.  I attended the services of the Adonai Roi Congregation.  Adonai roi means God our shepherd and the full name of the church in Hebrew is the first part of Psalm 23.  The services were in Hebrew with translation through earpieces like you see at the UN assemblies.  (That'll make you feel important haha.)  It was a bit more charismatic than I’m used to but was good.  The service started at 10:30 and the preacher hadn’t even started his sermon at 12:20 haha.  The songs in Hebrew are beautiful.  I’m going to try to find a CD of the hymns and post them for people to take a listen.

Oh and a little bit of humor for you at my expense.  The orthodox Jews wear dark suits 24/7.  Black pants, black coat, white shirt.  All the time.  So I figured that if those guys wore that to the beach then church, even for the non-orthodox, would be fairly formal.  So I rocked a full-on suit.  Pinstripes, bowtie and everything.  Nope.  There were people there wearing PJ pants.  So if the white kid didn't stick out enough anyways, I certainly did then.  Definitely made me stand-up and introduce myself in the middle of the service since I was so obviously a visitor.  Right on.

[I've now caught up to exactly one week behind.  By the end of this week I'll be back to posting in real-time.]