Shabbat with Livnot = BEST SHABBAT EVER!

Making Challah!

Amir in the Kitchen

So, Thursday night after a long morning of building walls on top of the citadel, it was Shabbat prep time!  In order to prep for Shabbat, we had to learn a bunch of songs and cook a bunch of food for Shabbat dinner.  1/2 of us sand songs and the other half of us took care of the food.  I volunteered to bake the cake (of course!!).  Arielle and Lauren took care of the Challah, which turned out absolutely amazing.

Shayna made the mistake of leaving me in charge of the chocolate cake.  A) me and chocolate = bad idea.  B) trust me with anyone = bad idea as well.  So, the cake making went pretty well although some of the batter was sacrificed to my stomach.  In any event, I made the cake mix, put the cake mix in the pans... and then accidentally dropped my spoon in the cake mix!  Shayna and I decided that it would be best to just leave it in the cake mix.  :)

This is what happens when Erin and
Shayna meet chocolate
cake batter!

Meanwhile, the other half of the group entertained us by learning new songs for shabbat.  After a few hours of cooking and prepping, we headed off to bed.

Michael covered in Challah 

The next morning we woke up early to get ready for Shabbat.  We got out the challah dough and proceeded to make challah for everyone to enjoy.  We each got a chunk of dough and the creativity began.

While most of the group was busy learning how to braid a beautiful challah, yours truly decided that braiding is for sissies.  I have loftier goals.  First, I decided that I wanted to make a lizard.  He turned out pretty sweet, although he admittedly looks a bit more like a salamander... but that is not important.  For my second attempt at an awesome challah, I made Chazillah.  I think the picture speaks for itself, but for those who are a bit slow on the uptake, Chazillah is the jewish challah version of Godzilla.

Whitney's baby Challah

The two Challahs I made

Lizard/Salamader Challah

CHAZILLAH!!!

This took about 5 minutes

After preparing our challahs for baking, we readied ourselves to go to the artists colony in Tzfat.  We met a really cool potter who had some very interesting theories about clay and working with it as a medium.  We all enjoyed it very much.  I wish I could remember specifics of what he said, but its been a couple of weeks now and all I really remember is being impressed by his philosophies.

After meeting with him we went on to meet with one of the more interesting people that we met.  His name was Abraham and he talked to us about how "cool" being Jewish can be and his journey through Judaism.  He talked about how he changed his name (from his american name to his hebrew name that he was given at birth) and how much meaning can be taken from ones name.  He is an artist that does work with various elements of Kaballistic teachings.  As I said, very fascinating guy.

After we met with him we had a few hours to wander around before shabbat.  I bought a necklace with a dove holding an olive branch with "שלום" written in the wings.  Then we got all dressed up and went upstairs to welcome shabbat.  After a little bit of singing together and lighting the candles we went out to synogauge.  We had several choices of places to attend and we decided that we wanted to go to a place that had a lot of dancing.  As we were walking with our Banot Sherut we discovered that the local Yeshiva group was holding services outside.  They were singing and dancing and we decided to stay there.  At this point, it started raining.  Then it started pouring.  We danced and we sang together (but separate - the guys were together and the girls were together) in the pouring rain and I can truly say I have never enjoyed services as much as I did that night.

Following that we went back and enjoyed the large meal that we had cooked the night before.  We had challah (my poor Chazillah had his body systematically destroyed...), hummus, salads, soup, chicken and everything else that belongs on the shabbat table.  After eating way too much we had MORE when we did an oneg shabbat.  We drank a few beers, had some wine and played a game that involved complementing each other (sounds cheesy but was really nice).  As the night wore on we got into deep discussions about many things with the group, the banot sherut and a few other people that stayed with Livnot for Shabbat.

The next day we slept in and when we finally got up, Amir and I went to shabbat lunch at one of the artists houses in Tzfat together.  The family that we went to had 4 young children and had been living in Tzfat for about 10 years (if I remember correctly).  They had been living in Israel for 13 years, were both from the U.S. and had met in Jerusalem.  They were wonderful and served us a very nice lunch and they helped me to solidify my words of wisdom (aka WOW) that I presented at dinner.

My WOW speech was about fear and how we have to be able to overcome our fears and not let them dictate our lives.  I enjoyed coming up with my WOW and was able to reflect on a lot of things that have happened in my life.  I talked about how we need to recognize the reality of a situation when we are fearful and realize what exactly it is that we are afraid of.  Is it discomfort, pain, death, etc?  Most of the time, it is not death.... it is simply discomfort and when we are able to evaluate it in a logical manner, we realize that it is not a permanent situation and there is nothing to be scared of.  The example that I used in my WOW was of Jacob and his struggle with an angel.  He had stolen his brothers blessing and had fled for fear of what his brother would do to him should he return.  He took several wives and had children and still had not returned to his homeland.  He decided to return to his brother and face the consequences and after helping his family to ford a river with their supplies, he struggled with the angel.  While struggling with the angel he was injured but managed to hold on and to overcome the angel and he was given the name "ישראל".

What I took out of the story was that the struggle that he had with the angel was an internal struggle.  He struggled with the reality of his situation and his fear of returning home and facing the consequences.   In fighting with the angel (or internally, whatever you believe) he realized that he had to face his brother to be able to move on with his life.  He could spend the rest of his life running from his brother with his family and being fearful for his and their safety should his brother find them and be angry, or he could go and humbly confront his brother, knowing that his might mean death for him.  He chose to confront his brother and deal with the consequences and it turns out that when he arrived and his brother saw him he greeted him with open arms, embraced him and kissed him.

Personally, I have had issues with fear in the past and while I will continue to be fearful of things from time to time, I will not let fear run my life.  You can expend a lot of energy avoiding things that you are fearful of and delaying the inevitable or you can look at a situation realistically and make the decision... is this really something to be scared of?  And, if you decide that it is, is it really something that I am willing to run from forever?  I used to be scared of spiders, so I got a pet spider.  I still dont like spiders... but I am not scared of them anymore.  If they are climbing on me, I want them off, but I realize that I am not going to die if there is a spider on/near me, even if I would really prefer that they not be!!

In any event, as shabbat came to a close we sang a bunch of shabbat songs, did birkat hamazon and decided not to go to Rosh Pina for our free night and to sleep and relax instead, looking forward to what was in store for us on Sunday!