Lost and Crashed a Shabbat Meal
Everyone has an "Only in Israel" story!
Here's Rena's story:
I was in Israel for the year, during my second year studying Judaism in midrasha, and my friend and I were spending Shabbat in the Old City of Jerusalem. Her sister set us up to go for Shabbat lunch by her friend we had never met before, who had already made Aliyah.
As Shabbat came around, my friend realized she had forgotten to write down the name and address of our lunch plans! All we knew for sure was that we had the challah and wine for the meal, and our hostess was named Rivki.
We knew the general area of her apartment, and so we began our 40-minute walk on Shabbat day, hoping to find her along the way. As expected, we were quite lost and heard a lot of noise in a building close by, so we tried our luck.
Rivki wasn’t there, but a bunch of Israeli university students was, who offered for us to stay and join them. Feeling like we had to stick to our original plan, we declined and kept wandering around the area aimlessly and hopelessly. Eventually, the Israelis from before saw us sometime later still meal-less, and called down for us to come up. We ended up joining their meal, with our broken Hebrew and their broken English and had a really nice Shabbat.
They shared with us their food and made us feel at home. Only in Israel do you find these levels of hospitality- הַכְנָסַת אוֹרְחִים. Till today we are friends on Facebook with one of the Israelis from that meal!
