The International Newsletter of Bat Kol Institute, Jerusalem
Vol. IV No. 4, September 2008
Sr Helena O'Donoghue RSM
Chair, Bat Kol Board of Directors
Bat Kol Graduation Ceremony, July 31, 2008
Valedictory Address
Shalom!...erev tov!
It is my great pleasure and honor to have been chosen by you, my colleagues, to give the valedictory address at this special ceremony this evening. I was greatly surprised by this turn of events, but I am more than glad to be spokesperson on behalf of the Bat Kol 08 class. I would like to touch on three themes: Baruch...Shema...Bat Kol.
Baruch/Berakah
One of my favorite words in the English language is ‘bless' or ‘blessing'. I almost always use it at the end of a message-text or email-or at the conclusion of a meeting, or especially with the sign of peace at Eucharist. For Eucharist itself is a blessing and a thanksgiving. The word ‘bless' carries for me all that one can say about the embrace of the Holy One-presence, peace and prosperity-and from which a deep gratitude wells up and overflows. One of the blessings recorded in our book of study this month, Leviticus 26:12, reads, "I will be ever present in your midst," or literally, "I will walk about in your midst." This is an amazing blessing to receive or give, and it moves us in turn to bless God: Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech haolam, and to bless others.
So this evening, we gather with this sense of blessing, of baruch, in our hearts, of gratitude to Yah, and particularly to all who have enabled us to enjoy and benefit from this course. As students we were privileged to have had a very unique, interesting, and stimulating biblical program over the past four weeks. Being drawn into the highly skilled and religious world of Torah study - the peshat and drash - the mysteries, obligations and dilemmas that were part of a faithful Jewish response to the God of Holiness (our God), have deeply challenged us intellectually, culturally and religiously.
Our teachers carefully guided us through key texts of what, to many of us, was something of an obscure Book in the Bible. The context created for us in terms of language (alef, bet, vet, gimmel... haverim!), in terms of the sacred land of desert and fruitfulness, and in terms of the long journey of the Hebrew people, a rich backdrop to a rare opportunity to excavate the meanings of God's word in the ancient times and also in our own era.
We took pause many times on our own small journey to experience the I-Thou encounters of Vayikra, sometimes coming to us through the voice of Moshe, or of a Rabbi, or even of a Susanna or Dulcinea! But always we were encouraged to be in Shema mode, listening for the holy voice of Yah, the Eternal.
All this was made possible for us by the excellent, probing, and scholarly contributions of a wide range of professors and teachers, five of whom were Rabbis and four of them women. This evening we wish to express and record our deep appreciation and gratitude to each of them and to pray an overflowing baruch/berekah on each one.
To the Bat Kol Team, Maureena, Glenn, Jack, Mary, and Marie Andre who like shepherds provided for our every need and also ensured we remained close to the pasturelands of prescribed homework, our admiration and thanks are profound. Looking back to the first days of our four weeks and remembering ourselves as we arrived, we know that without doubt we have changed, we are not the same! This is truly the result of your generous dedication to us, and of our I-Thou encounters with each of you and with the ‘She' who is Bat Kol. It is our hope that this evident change gives you a sense of satisfaction, joy and blessing for a task so well done.
Shema
For ourselves, the student group of ‘08, I think we were a great group! We jelled, we laughed, we groaned, we stuck it out in spite of heat, colds, and mosquitoes! We are happy and grateful. So, as we come to the end in this moment it is opportune to ask ourselves what our gratitude signifies? We have gained, we have grown, we have asked questions, we have shared community, we have known the precious and rich environment of respect, of caring, of diversity, and much more. Specifically we have participated in an exercise of rigorous study which changed or modified our attitudes, diminished our prejudices, and deepened our understanding of the Jewish background and foreground of our Christian faith. Through all of it we have come to the Word of God with a new humility and a new sense of its holiness.
From here on we cannot avoid the ‘oughtness' which Maureena talked about, arising from this fresh encounter with the living dynamic Word of God. We find ourselves moved, called (Vayikra) to apply the methodology and skills we have learned here to our home situations, and called to begin to share more fully the riches and healing available when we study our sacred texts from within their original setting and language. We have savored afresh what is our heritage, our light, and our joy. In true Jewish fashion, we have had a four-week holiday of Shabbat, an ‘eighth Day' in Jerusalem. We have become kidushim and talmudim in some small way. So what does our gratitude signify? In the Gospel Jesus tells us, "From the one to whom much is given, much will be expected." We are among those who have received rich blessings, must we not share those blessings in our own lands? Shema is spoken to each of us!
Bat Kol
Now on a slightly different note, and wearing a different hat... Recently I was elected to the Chair of the Board of Bat Kol, Daughter of a Voice. The Board holds overall responsibility of the life, development, and mission of the project which was so prophetically started 25 years ago by Maureena. I am very happy and honored to be in this role, and I mean to give it my best effort. I am convinced that Bat Kol, with its core vision, content, and methodology, is a unique gift to the Christian community at this time. This week, having been to Yad Vashem, we have agonized over the results of our conscious or unconscious contempt for the Jewish faith and its people. I see Bat Kol as a grace, a small token of atonement, a way of making righteousness; and perhaps one day through her we might dare to hope that we would be numbered among the ‘righteous ones' who were alert to the Shema of Adonai.
We would all agree that the enlightened inspiration which gave rise to this program, following Nostra Aetate all those years ago, is just as needed today, if not more so. A great deal has been achieved over the years, mainly through the dedicated voluntary work of Maureena and her Congregation, the Sisters of Sion, and of her many supporters, especially Jack and Glenn. At this stage about 300 students have taken the course we have. What a wonderful resource and well of expertise!
In this transition time we recognize that Bat Kol's structures will need strengthening in order to continue to provide the services in Jerusalem and worldwide. In that process some of the organizational burden will thankfully be lifted from Maureena and Jack, but the voluntary nature of the program will inevitably be diminished as we seek to ensure its future. That transition will require that we move to a more stable and expanded funding situation, enabling the different dimensions of academic content, administration and development to be adequately served. Our creative and sympathetic imaginations will be called into play in these circumstances!
Today, as we begin the next 25 years, there is need for those of us who have gained from this program to consider Vayikra, to consider whether we might be called to engage with Bat Kol in some way in order to support her growth and development into the future. So my question to you this evening is this: "Does it matter to you that Bat Kol would thrive?" If it does, let us remember and not forget the ‘eighth day' we have enjoyed in July of 2008.
Finally, as Chair, I congratulate each and every one of the students on your excellent participation, contributions, and achievement and wish you a fulsome Berakah (God walking about in your midst) in the months and years ahead. Likewise on behalf of the Board and students, I express my admiration and sincere thanks to Maureena, Glenn, and Jack for their teaching, encouragement, and challenge; to Mary whose attention to every detail smoothed our way and who is leaving having given four years full time to Bat Kol, and to Marie Andre for her willingness to put her shoulder to the plow at this time.
May we all continue our "travelling, travelling, travelling on," and in the journey come ever nearer to our gracious and compassionate God with every Shabbat.
BAT KOL PRAYERS
Morning prayer was organized and led by a student on the days that begun in the classroom. Angela West from Wales, United Kingdom, prepared the following for 29 July 2008.
"This is my friend, Jan Fuchs, who died a few weeks ago aged 96. I only knew him in the last years of his life, but in that time I gained a deep respect for him. Though he had many tragedies and deep disappointments in his life, he remained open to life and to people, and he kept his humanity his humour, and his faith. He was born in Czechoslovakia in 1912, and due to the accident of which city he happened to be born, he was able to get Czech emigration papers when the Nazis invaded his country, and then to get onto an agricultural scheme that took him to Denmark. Here again he was lucky. One day, as he was visiting a friend, he was warned by a complete stranger not to return home as the Nazi round up of Jews was about to begin. He was told instead to go to a pre-arranged pick up point where he and other Danish Jews were taken in a fleet of little fishing boats, chartered by the Danish resistance, and brought to neutral Sweden and to safety.
But as you know after yesterday, most Jews of Europe of that time did not receive that sort of redeeming assistance from their Christian neighbours. Jan's own father died, like thousands of other Jews, in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Recently, my husband and I were touring in Eastern Europe and I wanted to learn more about Jewish life that once flourished so vibrantly in these parts. Very little trace of it remains. The Nazis destroyed the Jewish communities with extraordinary thoroughness, killing all inhabitants, tearing down the synagogues, even blowing up the cemeteries.
But a few ancient cemeteries remain and we tried to visit some of them. It was often difficult - sometimes there was no signpost, no map reference, no path, no fence or gate - just a few broken gravestones with Hebrew inscription sinking slowly into the earth. In one urban cemetery, a monument commemorating a pogrom was covered with the remains of someone's barbecue. In Ukraine, some of the monuments were spray painted, or daubed with graffiti.
It made me sad to see how neglected they were, especially when Christian cemeteries in Poland are so lovingly tended. But I do not want to imply that this is a specially Polish or Ukrainian problem. An appropriate remembering of those times is, I think, an unsolved problem for all of the nations of Christian Europe, including the British.
‘Blest are the persecuted' says the beatitude, and I think of our visit to L'vov where hundreds and thousands of Jews were murdered in a two-year period: I once knew one of them who survived. Was it blessed, I wonder, to be burned alive in your synagogue, fall into the hands of torturers specially trained to ensure you had a slow lingering death, to watch your children being slaughtered before you or used for target practice? Those who suffered in this way were not Christians, but weren't they also family for us, the brothers and sisters of Jesus: for their ancestors were Torah observant Jews, as Jesus was: surely then they were our kinsfolk, for whom we should not hold hatred in our hearts.
Being confronted with all this fills me with a certain kind of shame: it's not that I feel personally guilty, even though I think it's unlikely that I would have done better since I am not in the or least courageous: but I am conscious that I, like the perpetrators, the collaborators and the bystanders, belong to the body of the baptised, a body which for hundreds of years handed on an anti-Jewish slander, otherwise known as the Preaching of Contempt. And as you may have gathered yesterday, most historians see this slander as a major contributing factor to the Shoah.
So the question that troubles me is this: don't we as Christians have a duty to our dead neighbours as well as our living ones? If God was ready to destroy Israel for the sin of the Golden calf, what can we expect for the sin of trying to destroy Israel? Have we as a community ever in fact repented for this sin of contaminating our own lands with the blood of God's beloved?
I don't know how these questions could be answered but I have been encouraged by the witness of a French priest Fr. Patrick Dubois. He has made it his task to identify, with the help of still living Ukrainian witnesses, the mass Jewish graves in that country and to exhume the remains there in order to give them a proper burial. For me at least, works of atonement of this sort should be part of our religious practice, a mitzvah for European Christians in the world after the Shoah, a way that we can offer ‘tikkun olam.'"
* * * * *
In this special anniversary year Bat Kol graduated 26 students from its Jerusalem July session. Click on the "News" tab (upper left hand corner of this web page) to find a brief news article and more photographs of the Graduation Ceremony that took place in the Basilica of the Ecce Homo Convent on the Via Dolorosa on the 31 July 2008. The graduates were asked to write a paragraph on some aspect of the program that they would find helpful in their ministry.
CANADA /Cambridge. Anne Martin "The privilege of participating in this summer's Bat Kol has included the privilege of studying with a number of wise, generous, and gentle-spirited rabbis. Being in Jerusalem studying Leviticus with such men and women has made Bat Kol's intention of studying the scriptures from a Jewish perspective real and tremendously enriching. The challenges put forward by the rabbis to enter into the texts through the Oral Torah, through Midrash, through such commentators as Rashi, through a careful and questioning reading of each word of the text, through havrutah, through the poetry and beauty of the Hebrew language, have been invaluable. The rabbis offered me an opportunity to move more deeply into relationship with the texts as I have learned to see and hear in new ways while at the same time I felt they respected and blessed the personal perspectives and context I brought to them. Here in Jerusalem, here is Israel and Palestine, hearing and studying the word has made the word live in new ways deepening my Christian roots much more firmly."
CANADA /Toronto. Meg Lavin 30,000 blessings... "One of our teachers, Rabbi Aaron Zinger said that we should acknowledge the blessings of God in our everyday experience. The ‘everydayness' of normal mysticism can quite easily accumulate "one hundred blessings," he said. I could, however, easily accumulate an abundance of blessings in my one month in Israel with Bat Kol. The study, the land, the people... it will take me a lifetime to fully understand and personally appropriate the deep gratitude that I felt there and the blessings that I have received. All I can do at this moment is put these 1000 blessings into two words: ‘Bat Kol.' You will be forever in my heart, mind, body and soul until we meet again, Shalom."
CANADA /Toronto. Michele Rizoli "I will certainly be unpacking all the things I have learned from Bat Kol for years to come. Maureena suggests that we are wrong if we think we can read the Hebrew Scriptures and know what the Jewish people believe without access to the tradition of nterpretation. One key insight has been to learn about the Jewish approach to reading scripture as a dynamic and layered process. The concepts of peshat, drash, and remez will be invaluable tools. My imagination is also fed by the physical realities of the land of Israel, adding sensory dimensions and proximity to the Biblical stories. I know that after Bat Kol I will read Scripture in an entirely new way."
CANADA /Toronto. Marilyn Zehr "My father, a Mennonite minister, is a man of few words. When he heard that I was coming to Israel, in his quiet way, he said to me, "You will never read scripture the same way again." That brief comment summarizes so many aspects of my experience. Having first-hand experience of the geography, climate, flora and fauna, and many other aspects of the land means that I cannot and will no longer gloss over location designations in the text. They are integral to the story. As well, Jesus was a Jew among Rabbis who took seriously the Oral Torah. Every sentence and action is infused with a real time and place within the history of the land and Judaism. I now understand the depth and significance of my father's words."
CANADA /Winnipeg. Michel Boutilier SJ. "Bat Kol has made me more aware and sensitive to Judaism and to "Jesus the Jew. To teach and preach the Gospel well, one must first understand the text and the context of the Scriptures. Studying the Torah, reflecting on the rabbinic commentaries, interfacing with rabbis have provided me with invaluable tools which I intend to use in teaching and preaching."
CANADA /Winnipeg. Gwen-Ellen Dankewich Bat Kol's new paradigm will make scripture study much easier to introduce to others in my parish. I am grateful for a deeper sensitivity to the ‘preaching of contempt.' What I found delightful were new insights into the Jewish understanding of their texts and their method of interpretation. And, of course, the Hebrew language and music, what a blessing the month has been."
CANADA /Winnipeg. Margaret Kellermann McCulloch "The Bat Kol program gave me a wonderful opportunity to interacts with people from many different cultures and religious backgrounds. We studied the Torah together and experienced the wisdom and love of God within the Scriptures."
CANADA /Winnipeg. Camille Légaré c.s.v. "I greatly appreciated the means taken to make us more familiar with the context in which the Scriptures came to life and was written. The approach was more than strictly academic. Thanks to the variety of excursions from Galilee to the Negev we were given a feeling for the land. We saw and we were given detailed explanations of numerous sites, which brought them to life from yesterday to today. The books we were given and the list of suggested titles which were made available on the shelves in the classroom as suggested sources for future purchases were helpful and inspiring."
CHINA/ Shaan'xi Province. Xiaozhe Hu "I am delighted to be here in the Holy Land together with the Bat Kol group, which brought me a number of blessings and insights. I am sure that this encounter and experience will have a great influence on my future ministry."
KENYA/Nairobi (now on sabbatical in Jerusalem). Sr Elizabeth Busbach The Bat Kol study group of 2008 was a very privileged one: the solemn opening ceremony of our study program was the festive celebration of 25 years of Bat Kol's The Daughter of a Voice! Sr. Maureena had heard the voice, the voice of Vatican II in the document "Nostra Aetate," which brought about a radical change in Jewish-Christian relationships. The fruit of her intensive "we will hear and we will do" is Bat Kol Institute, of whom I am proud to be an alumna since 2004. In preparation for our July 2008 program we once again studied "Nostra Aetate" and the documents which followed and the events which are landmarks in Jewish Christian relationships.
On holiday in Germany I was going through these papers, when I heard of a remarkable event there. A Jewish Christian prayer session, already customary for years, took place during the German "Katholikentag" in June. This time it was overshadowed by the newly formulated intercession "for the Jews" in the Tridentine rite to be used on Good Friday. This had aroused disappointment and anger among our Jewish brothers and sisters. Some rabbis cancelled their participation in the event. Fortunately, Rabbi Brandt came and gave the opening address. He was quite frank about the wounds the new Good Friday prayer had inflicted on the Jewish faith community and the question: "Will it all return to the way it was before Vatican II and teshuvah/ metanioa no longer be effective?" This is not his belief; he rather encouraged his listeners to overcome the misunderstandings, which might appear sometimes, by open and respectful dialogue. To great applause by the audience he stated: "There cannot be a ‘turn from the turn (es darf keine Wende von der Wende geben)'". This statement was repeated by Archbishop Zollitsch, the President of the German Bishops' Conference: "There will not be a turn from the turn, I stand for this."
In the Bat Kol program in July, studying the Book of Leviticus, we learnt more about Jewish understanding of the Holiness Code and the central commandment in Lev 19:18: "Love your fellow as yourself." We understood that we Bat Kol alumni/ae are called to open the boundaries of our faith communities through teaching and testimony, so that the commandment becomes inclusive, that more and more Christians reach out to their Jewish brothers and sisters and start to learn from the richness of their faith tradition. It is Bat Kol's mission to make sure that there is no "turn from the return."
INDIA/Kerala. Paul Mailackachalil "I found that the wilderness where Abraham and his children met God as still having the power to bring God closer to me. I experienced my ineffability and fragility which makes me lean on God - the God of our forefathers and mothers."
IRELAND/Dublin. Frank Keane cfc "I have been doubly privileged this year having had the opportunity to follow two Biblical programs one at Ecce Homo and the other at Bat Kol. Both programs were held in Jerusalem, ‘in the land that I shall show you (Gen.12:1) as promised by God to Abraham. Leviticus, the central book of the Torah which we studied, enshrines the great commandment, ‘love your neighbour as yourself." I wanted to know Jesus better through the Sacred Scriptures and I have not been disappointed. Every element of the Bat Kol program
has been enriching. Of the many aspects, the most stimulating was studying with scholars from many countries and varying Christian traditions. However, walking the land, visiting the sites that Jesus knew, will certainly equip me to invite others in ministry to walk in his ‘Way."
NIGERIA/Calabar. Ven. Lawrence Umar "My two previous contacts with Bat Kol put together cannot be compared to the July 2008 session. For a Rabbi to preside over a discussion on the Gospel of John was fantastic. For the group to study the Gospels as Jewish literature was fascinating. Studying the Book of Leviticus using both Old and New Testament references was superb - bravo to Bat Kol. I missed ‘Glenncyclopaedia' though when we went to the succah in the desert."
NIGERIA/Cross River State. ThankGod Ogujuiba "As a first-time visitor to the Holy Land, I enjoyed the whole program, but especially the teaching by the Jewish resource persons. It was a great eye opener into the richness of Jewish sources for a better understanding and dissemination of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Also worthy of mention were the visits to biblical sites, which enriched my knowledge and understanding of the Bible. It was indeed a wonderful experience."
PHILIPPINES/Manila. Natividad Pagadut "I discovered through the Bat Kol courses how much treasure there is in Judeo-Christian tradition which need careful and patient excavation Leviticus, in particular, seen through the eyes of the rabbis led me to a deep appreciation of the book. Its power and influence in the lives of faithful Jews challenges me to re-evaluate my own concept of holiness and to do something really positively radical about it in my own life."
PHILIPPINES/Rizal. Leonardo Galanza "For me is about the goal of understanding the text within a context. Enfleshing the text with the People and the Land makes this program very unique. I look forward to the ‘new' approach!"
PHILIPPINES/Zamboanga City. Judith-Joy Tugade "I prayed for life enriching experience to sustain, nourish and deepen my spiritual life and I believe that God answered my prayers through Bat Kol. My remarkable Bat Kol experience is indeed a defining moment of my life. It is remarkable for the following reasons:
- It taught me the proper way of understanding Torah through Biblical and Rabbinic interpretation and its importance.
- I do admire our professor/ Rabbis who are brilliant and excellent yet humble enough to admit their own limitations.
- The teaching paradigm of the program is academic, yet spirituality is being integrated into it.
- I was blessed to be with people from 10 different countries with diverse cultures that brought out the best in them to study and learn Torah and to share their own insights and learnings in the group.
- Lastly, I am delighted to see growing friendship as a sign of the I - Thou encounter.
I am overwhelmed with the experience and I am challenged to do something.
The greater challenge now is how am I going to integrate all my learnings into a real life situation and how to apply it in my own community respecting our very own context, tradition and belief. I believe the God will give me GRACE to do so. Let me thank Bat Kol together with the staff, sponsors, alumni, and above all to God for giving me this rare opportunity to be awakened with wisdom and knowledge. TODAH RABBAH!
SOUTH AFRICA/Johannesburg. Bernadette Chellew It was only a few weeks ago that I waited at Heathrow, London, for a connecting flight to Tel Aviv. "Bat Kol" was the magic word when people asked me what I was going to do in Jerusalem. It did not turn out as I expected - I imagined myself taking my time at holy places and being able to read the Gospels leisurely and prayerfully. Four weeks of much knowledge, many questions, and idols removed from pedestals, places, and people visited and listened to later, I feel as if I have been pummelled and stretched. But... that is not all! A community of 26 from 10 different countries was formed which can only be a proof of a worthwhile process by a talented team and visiting lecturers. Thank you Bat Kol, your reality sets me on a new road to understanding the World of God's revelation.
SOUTH AFRICA/Johannesburg. Marie Andre Mitchell SND "Once again I realized the importance of having some knowledge of Scripture in order to understand the Old Testament. The very first verse of Leviticus, the book that we studied, showed how nuances of language are lost in translation. The Hebrew order is, "And He called to Moses. And the Lord said to him..." It thus follows the conclusion of Exodus. The only other place in the Torah where God ‘calls' rather than speaks to Moses is when summoning him to the top of Mount Sinai (Ex.24:16).
SOUTH AFRICA/Pretoria. Jennifer Slater OP "It is not easy to isolate just one aspect of the Bat Kol program that was beneficial to me and which will assist me in my ministry. The entire program presented a gateway to further exploration, intellectual expansion, and spiritual insights. It was in many respects mind opening, and the highly integrative dimension of the program makes it even more complex to isolate only one particular aspect. Having the Rabbis as first-hand tutors was a privileged way to be guided into the Hebrew tradition, psyche, and methodology of reading the scriptures. For the studies to take place in the context of Nostra Aetate not only created a challenging awareness to develop a deeper sensitivity to subliminal messages that could foster attitudes, outlooks and dispositions of contempt.
The experiential nature of encountering the land, the rugged beauty and spiritual riches of the desert, the Shabbat rituals and religious customs instilled in me an added sense of the sacred reverence for the written record of the biblical people and how their religious story brought them/us to an emergent understanding and relationship with the Divine in their/our lives.
Another appreciative reality is that the interaction and wrestling with the Scriptures all took place with the colliding elements of the contextual reality as a backdrop, where the political, social, and religious issues form the all-pervading amalgamation of past and present, pain and suffering, life and death, exclusion and inclusion, confrontation, singing and ritual brought me into the heart and soul of this country with all its diversities and contradictions. I will draw from all the riches encountered here not only as a source of for my ministry, but also as a means for spiritual growth."
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO/ Port of Spain. Everard Johnston. "On July 28, 2008, while the Bat Kol session was in progress in Jerusalem, a significant event in Jewish-Christian relations took place when the Chief Rabbi of England, Sir Jonathan Sacks, addressed the Bishops of the Anglican Communion assembled for the Lambeth Conference. He was invited to speak about ‘covenant' and, in his address (which is available online and which I would highly recommend to Bat Kolers), he gave what I believe can serve as a true description of the spirit of Bat Kol, July 2008. He said: "Wealth and power, economics and politics, the market and the state, are arenas of competition, whereas covenantal goods are areas of co-operation. Where do we find covenantal goods like love, friendship, influence and trust? They are born, not in the state, not in the market, but in marriages, families, congregations, fellowships and communities..." Communities, one might add, such as that formed by the participants of Bat Kol, July 2008. My profound thanks and deep appreciation to the organizers, teachers, and to fellow-participants."
SOUTH AFRICA/Hartbeespoort. Christoph Schonenberger "Holiness and Wilderness Themes in the Book of Leviticus, the title of the course opened me up for growth on several levels: It showed me how important the land was to the Jewish people. Ha'aretz cannot be separated from the lived experience of the people. The experience of barrenness of the land will stay with me and put the word of the scriptures in context. Whenever I will think of sheep and goats I will see the dry hills of Judea and wonder how they can survive on the bit of grass that is available. I got a taste of a language that is not only ancient but also very much alive. It filled me with awe to see how a relatively new nation had managed to instil a spirit of pride and joy into people that came together only 60 years ago from many different parts of the planet.
And within this short period of time the language has shaped and built the nation, as it did with the Israelites 3000 years ago. I learnt to appreciate the beauty of Jewish traditions and worship forms. I will most certainly try to build a few elements into my own prayer life, especially the beautiful blessings and the invitation to make Shabbat a special day of the week that can draw me closer to the Holy. And finally I came to value anew the rich history and heritage that we received from our brothers and sisters who share the same ancestors with us, and who make us aware that we are all children of the one Father.
I will keep the people and the land in my prayers, trusting that respect and love for all the three religions professing the one God and the one origin will eventually win over."
Bat Kol Institute, Jerusalem
~~1983-2008~~
"Christians Studying the Bible within its Jewish milieu, using Jewish Sources"
Marie Andre Mitchell, SND de Namur, Editor. Bat Kol Alumna 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008.
Please send your new submissions for the next newsletter to: marieandre@batkol.info
_________________________________________________________________________
RECIPE FOR SHABBAT BREAD
"Challah"
(Compliments of Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman 2002)
The participants of the Bat Kol, July 2008 program, requested the recipe.
Put in a large bowl:
3 cups of white flour
3 cups of whole-wheat flour
Mix them together, make a well
In a small bowl mix 3 tablespoons of active dry yeast
¾ cup of warm water
2 teaspoons of sugar
Pour into well
Sprinkle a handful of flour to cover the top
Sprinkle a tablespoon of salt over the top
In a medium bowl mix
3 eggs (beaten)
⅓ cup of oil
½ cup of honey
1 cup water
Pour into flour, mix, and add some flour. Start to knead. Knead for about 5 minutes, adding flour as you need, until dough is...doughy, elastic, a little moist...put back in bowl.
Let it rise for 3 hours.
Divide into 2 or 3 loaves, braid, coat with a beaten egg.
Top with sesame seeds if desired.
Bake in a medium oven for ¾ hour.
Enjoy!
