Learning from our Jewish neighbors

Every year I am invited to participate in the Jewish Passover at the home of Jewish Orthodox friends in Jerusalem. I have learnt much about presiding at a Catholic liturgy from observing closely how the father and mother in wonderful harmony guide the family through the intricacies of the celebration, tenderly making place not only for the participation of their children and grandchildren but also steer the contribution of each of their guests. As a Jewish-born Roman Catholic priest, my presence in the midst of this family is an important expression of my complex identity, rooted in the Jewish people as a priest in the Church. However, this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was not able to attend the meal with my friends. Instead, for the first time in 41 years, the members of my own Jewish family congregated on Zoom, bringing together members of the family in Johannesburg, Berlin and Jerusalem, with my brother in Johannesburg presiding.

One of the dramatic effects of the Covid-19 crisis is that Catholics are almost completely cut off from the Sacraments. This Holy Week and Easter, priests and bishops scrambled to find creative ways to celebrate the great liturgies of the Triduum so that they would not be completely absent in the lives of the faithful, but livestreaming on social media could not substitute for the physical presence and material participation in the Sacraments that is at the center of Catholic life. Many of the faithful felt orphaned from a Church that is paralyzed by civil regulations that insist – wisely – on a shutdown to prevent the spread of the virus.

This year, unable to either celebrate Mass on Easter Day with the faithful or to participate in the Jewish celebration of Passover, I was struck by an astounding difference between religious practice amongst Jews and Christians. Whereas in the Church we almost exclusively focus on the church as the appropriate place for liturgical worship, and insist on the presence of an ordained (and celibate) male priest when Mass is celebrated, Jewish religious practice offers a very different model.

After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, the rabbis (known as the Sages of Blessed Memory) reimagined what it meant to be Jewish. Religious practice had primarily focused on the Temple, the priestly class and the sacrificial cult, and the destruction of the Temple and the loss of Jerusalem and the Land of Israel should have been a death blow to a religion founded on the centrality of these loci for its faith and religious life. However, rabbis from Yohanan Ben Zakkai through to the formulators of the Mishna and the Talmud, rethought Jewish practice and faith, creating the formula that still defines Judaism in the twenty-first century. This time of crisis could be the moment to learn something very important from our Jewish friends.

With the disappearance of the Temple, the priestly class and sacrificial cult also disappeared. A wonderful Rabbinic story captures what happened next: the dawning of a new consciousness. “One day, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was going from Jerusalem in the company of Rabbi Jehoshua when he saw the sanctuary (of the Temple) in ruins. ‘What a calamity for us’, exclaimed Rabbi Jehoshua, ‘that this place where expiation was made for the sins of Israel lies in ruins!’ Rabbi Yohanan said to him: ‘My son, do not be sad! We have a means of expiation that is equivalent, it is the practice of goodness according to what is written: What I want is love, not sacrifice’ (Hosea 6:6)” (Aboth di Rabbi Nathan, 11a).

During the centuries that followed, the Rabbis developed a religious system in which the Temple was replaced by the synagogue and the family home. Two structures of leaderships replaced the priesthood of ancient times: the rabbi and the parent. Two parallel and complementary liturgies developed to replace the sacrificial cult: the worship of the lips in the synagogue and parental instruction and prayer at home. Home worship is not a marginal footnote in the life of Jews, but an essential component, without which Jewish liturgical life is not complete.

The central rite of Passover, one of the most important Jewish feasts, is not celebrated in the synagogue. Rather, the rite plays out in a beautifully formulated liturgical celebration around the family table at home. The presider is the father, assisted by the mother, who leads the participants, family members and friends, through a multi-layered and evocative liturgy called the Haggadah (which means “narration”), recalling God’s redemption of Israel from slavery in Egypt and the continual presence of God through the generations.

The liturgy starts with the youngest member of the family posing questions regarding the feast and its customs which are answered during the long celebration that follows. I have vivid memories of when I was the youngest at the table and stood up on my chair, suddenly the focus of attention. In the Hebrew I had mastered at school, I enunciated slowly and clearly the four questions, clearly conscious that the flow of the liturgy depended on me getting the questions right. “Why is this night different from all the other nights?” How jealous I was when a few years later my younger brother was old enough to play the part. I remember seeing the pride that radiated from my father’s face as he looked on, waiting to answer his son’s questions.

The practice of two parallel and complementary liturgies is repeated every Sabbath. Before setting off for the synagogue, where the Sabbath Queen is welcomed and brought into the midst of the community, the mother of the house, often accompanied by her daughters, lights the candles that signify the start of the holy day. When the family returns from the synagogue, the home is once again the center stage for a liturgy around the table, for the blessing of the special Sabbath bread and wine, the meal and then the prayer of thanksgiving, drawn out with joyful hymns of praise.

The celebration of the liturgy in the Jewish home, with the parent as celebrant and the full participation of the children, and the recognition of the home as a sacred space are all lessons that we might reflect on as Catholics. Many are expressing their longing to visit their church and the realm of holiness it provides and, of course, desperately miss the Sacraments, the source of our strength and our renewal. This longing is already a participation in the very Sacraments that cannot be celebrated as they must be. But we need to learn from the example of our Jewish neighbours and rethink the place of the home in our spiritual lives. When Christianity began, church and home were both central. Believers met in the temple and at home to celebrate liturgy. “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46).

David Neuhaus SJ, a professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem, was Patriarchal Vicar for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem from 2009 to 2017.