Back to Hebron, December 18/19

I had arranged to go with Miri to Hebron for Shabbat, staying by the Cohens, who run the Chabad house there (what a sentence I never thought I would say!)
Every Friday night, Bat Sheva hosts a Shabbat dinner for about 40 of the soldiers stationed in Hebron, and so when girls go to stay by her they need to get there early, and are expected to help and work.
I don’t know if I will ever understand how this woman really keeps her sanity. In addition to having this massive dinner every week, for which she makes all the food fresh, she also has six children from the ages of 12 years to 4 months, the first five boys (and you can imagine how crazy five boys are to have), and she is a perfectionist down to the manner in which the napkins for the table are folded.
Miri and I arrived by 9:30, and we were right away chopping, folding, cooking and slicing (with the occasional eating breaks…Bat Sheva is a Jewish mother, after all) until nearly 3 when we went upstairs for a short rest and to shower and dress for Shabbes, and then go to Machpelah, the cave where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah are buried to pray, and then came home for dinner, during which we were very helpful. In truth, the amount of work that we were doing during the meal was not entirely necessary all the time as there were five girls there doing this and just one entry to and from the kitchen, but there would have hardly been any reason to stay seated. The seating had been arranged so that I was sitting only with the other girls who were there, and the parents of one of the girls who were visiting Israel. Although I desperately wanted to speak with the soldiers, talking with them about their experiences and lives living and working in Hebron, in such an environment, I could tell that it would not be the most appropriate thing for me, as a woman, to do. The limitations to entering certain worlds…

After dinner and cleaning up, I was sufficiently ready to go to bed. Miri and I were staying in the Chabad guest house on the roof, literally 15 or so feet from a guard post where a soldier keeps watch 24 hours a day, and as it was such a chilly, windy night, before turning in I made the soldier a cup of tea and wished him good shabbes. Then Miri and I retired, having a long conversation about my actual feelings towards the apparent theology of the Chabad movement. She took it pretty well. Saturday morning I slept very late, still getting over my cold and tired from the day before. The benefit of being shomer shabbes is there are no alarm clocks, so no one can be angry at oversleepers . After reading a bit from The Five Books of Miriam on my own, I went downstairs to help put lunch together, a much easier task as there would only be 15 of us (crazy to think, ONLY). After lunch, which was just as perfect as dinner, Miri and I went on a tour of Hebron, given by a local who had lived in Hebron for 33 years. He took us on a tour of the Old (not ancient) city, and we were accompanied by about 20 armed soldiers, and a few lovable stray dogs. The level of needed separation was odd to see, and the level of guards seemed extreme, but another girl told us that on a previous tour, local Arabs had thrown rocks and even a knife at them…hard to reconcile the situation….
We returned home for a snack and Havdallah, and then directed ourselves for the bus stop to return to peaceful Jerusalem.