Kabbalat Shabbat, the welcoming and receiving of Shabbat on Friday evening, as celebrated by young people attending a Mechina, an educational program for learning about the history of Israel, about Zionism and Judaism as a year of preparation for their service in the army, looks like this: All, that is the Mechina students, older folks from the kibbutz, young children who, time and time again, walk around both clumsily and aimlessly from “friend” to “friend”, sit in a circle, in their midst a table with two Shabbat candles, two big loaves of bread, two bottles of wine and little plastic cups, and they start off their little celebration with playing a round of charades, young and old trying to guess the words presented in pantomime… wild guesses at times. Later songs, the lighting of the candles, a young man reciting the prayers of thanksgiving and blessings over the bread and wine so fast, that the communal shouts of “Amen!” in between come almost surprisingly, then the breaking of the bread, the filling of the little cups with wine, and the distribution of the pieces of sweet challah, Shabbat bread, and of sips of wine among everyone… Bread and wine, what sustains us daily and what lifts us into high spirits, beyond the ordinary, shared among all – the whole spectrum of human existence, and together we eat our part and drink our cup… It is a time together as earthly and as real and as human, as earthly and real and human can get. Shabbat shalom friends.