Ruminations upon Friday February 28, 2025 in Auckland, New Zealand (Cruise)
We boarded our cruise ship on Friday afternoon a few hours before Shabbat began. After getting settled into our cabins we explored the ship. We were elated to discover a sign telling us there would be a Shabbat service at 5:30PM. It was two hours before Shabbat started, but we were happy to participate anyway.
We showed up promptly at 5:30 to discover an amphitheater room set up with a table of challot and wine in the center along with kippot and small booklets. The booklets included a few of the tefillot/prayers from Kabbalat Shabbat/prayer for welcoming the Sabbath. A small group of fellow cruise mates were already sitting in the theater seats waiting for someone to lead. We waited to see what would happen.
A woman stood up and suggested we take turns reading the different tefillot/prayers. It was clear that few of the participants knew enough to read the prayers aloud in Hebrew. Almost everyone opted to read in English. After taking turns, we sang some of the songs for Friday night services and then someone else said kiddush/blessing over the wine and motzi/blessing over the bread.
Throughout the short service, the boys continuously threw side glances at Chaim and me. They wondered why the service was so different from what they had come to expect after months of visiting Orthodox synagogues, all with similar services to one another. Despite their confusion, they participated beautifully. At the end, Eitan helped lead Acheinu/Our Brothers (a song Jewish communities have sung for decades to keep in mind fellow Jews suffering from oppression and persecution; since October 7, 2023 we have been singing it for the hostages who are still being held by Hamas to this day) as a prayer for the hostages.
The boys were the only children in the room and obviously impressed the other adults with their Jewish knowledge. They demonstrated a strong ability to adapt to a new experience when it was novel to their own lived experiences. Chaim and I couldn’t have asked for a better lesson in pluralism. Together, our family acknowledged the discomfort we felt when the services felt strange and different. We also recognized the importance of coming together as a Jewish community regardless of that discomfort.
Shabbat dinner included pre-packaged kosher meals from the kitchen that were okay, to put it nicely. The boys behaved really well at dinner. So much so that other passengers kept approaching us throughout the evening and well into the next day to compliment their “beautiful behavior.” They were so proud of themselves. Maybe, just maybe, they were learning to adapt to different spaces.
