“Good Shabbos” is the traditional English greeting amongst Jews welcoming the Sabbath. On Friday 7th November this goodness was on full public display as Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town hosted the Jewish community for their evening ritual in an exceptional interfaith event. A reported 250 or more people of many faith backgrounds attended and the place was packed.
The guest speaker was Jewish academic Professor Steven Friedman, the Johannesburg-based political scientist and author of “Good Jew, Bad Jew”. Dr Rashied Omar of Claremont Masjied led Maghrib prayers and hosted the event. Mitchell Joffe Hunter of SA Jews for a Free Palestine was the presiding celebrant leading the Siddur, entitled “Shabbat against Genocide in Palestine”.
The Goodness expressed itself in many more ways:
- An incisive analysis about why the Genocide in Gaza matters to World Peace from Professor Friedman;
- A powerful sense of goodwill and common cause especially between local Jews and Muslims;
- A shared Muslim-Jewish poem was read by Megan Choritz and Iman Zanele Omar
- Food was provided by Falastini, a Palestinain caterer.
- The sorrow of the Mourners Kaddish;
- Songs like Lo Yisa Goy (Nations shall not take up sword against nation”);
- Liturgical poems like “A cry for Sudan, Congo, Gaza, and More”;
This interfaith Shabbos was honouring of all humanity. It was politically incisive and challenging, drawing together often unrelated symptoms into a cohesive critique. It was deeply and genuinely people-centered, and even in its tragic content, remained defiantly joyful.
Disturb Us – taken from the Siddur
Disturb us, Adonai, ruffle us from our complacency; Make us dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the peace of ignorance, the quietude which arises from a shunning of the horror, the defeat, the bitterness and the poverty, physical and spiritual, of humans.
Source: Mishkan Tefilah, 173
Shock us, Adonai, deny to us the false Shabbat which gives us the delusions of satisfaction amid a world of war and hatred;
Wake us, O God, and shake us from the sweet and sad poignancies rendered by half forgotten melodies and rubric prayers of yesteryears,
Make us know that the border of the sanctuary is not the border of living and the walls of Your temples are not shelters from the winds of truth, justice and reality.
Disturb us, O God, and vex us; let not Your Shabbat be a day of torpor and slumber; let it be
a time to be stirred and spurred to action.
Photo credits: Anwar Omar
