On Christmas Eve, Here I Am

“We are not interested in converting you,” the abbot announced. “We are happy that we are Christians and you are Jews.”

Here I am, in an unlikely place at an unlikely time (the night before a Hebrew test). It is Christmas Eve in Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion, just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Two of my rabbinical school classmates (and close friends) joined me on a misty night, waiting outside the gates of the beautiful German Benedictine Church for over an hour to attend a midnight mass. Missing my family, who at that very moment was preparing to attend their own mass (and then, of course, to feast on a traditional Italian-American Christmas Eve meal), I wanted to hear some carols, to see what Christmas Eve in Jerusalem might be like, and to witness the pageantry of Catholicism as both an observer and a future clergy member. Here we are, future Jewish leaders learning about a religious tradition with a complex historical relation to Judaism—from “brother” faith to Judaism’s bitter persecutor.

When the abbot said the religious men of his order were happy that “you are Jews,” he meant it in a statistical sense: well over half the people crowded into the round chapel were secular Israeli Jews. Here we are, in this room together, and we are all about to make a negotiation: the clergy, about to perform a mysterious religious ritual without a community of faithful to perform it for; the gathered crowd, interested but detached. We all laughed at the ease with which the abbot accepted this strange occurrence: a major Catholic feast day, a solemn religious ritual, and an audience of Jews.

We were definitely an audience. Ambivalent about treating the mass as a show and concerned not to disrespect my own family’s devotion to their religion, I cringed at the number of cameras in the room—some even equipped with telephoto lenses—snapping away at the most solemn and, to the priests performing the rites, sacred moments of the mass. But the abbots seemed to take it all in stride. I guess this is what happens in Jerusalem on Christmas Eve.

As my friends made occasional, whispered comments on similarities to Jewish liturgy or historical concepts, or asked clarification questions about the symbols, actions and rituals, I watched the precise movements and actions of the priests from a new angle: the future clergy member. I couldn’t help but think about my own presence on the bima in future congregations where, I hope, I will work, leading Jewish prayer and teaching Torah to the Jewish people. I thought about body language and connection. I found myself—and I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way—questioning the high drama of the mass, the extremely precise motions, the repetition of certain actions, the bowing. I wondered, too, at how the priests viewed their own actions in that particular context: before a room full of secular Israeli Jews and practicing Jews, how could these rehearsed motions seem anything other than a strange play, a performance, a parody, even?

In Jewish prayer, too, there is choreography, though (and this is particularly true in the Reform movement) it is not nearly so elaborate as in the Catholic mass. We Jews rock back and forth as we pray the Amida, the central prayer, we close our eyes when reciting Shema, we take steps toward God, bend our knees. These behaviors are both learned and spontaneous, communal and personal. Sometimes they distract from prayer, and sometimes they contribute to our prayerful mood. So, too, I hope, did the incense and the bowing and the pageantry contribute to a prayerful mood for the far-outnumbered Christians visiting Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem on Christmas Eve.

“All those things they prayed for,” my friend said to me quietly after the petitionary section of the mass, “those are good things.” These were prayers for healing and peace, for security and understanding. And they were prayed for in a room where most of the people did not repeat “Amen” with our voices, though I know that, in my own heart, I echoed their longing for a more just world. Here I am, thinking, “Od yavo shalom aleinu v’al kulam”—Let God yet bring peace upon us and upon all.

The abbey’s Christmas Eve celebration focused, as all Catholic masses do, on the liturgy of the eucharist, the central Catholic ritual. But for me, the central moment of that strange mass, performed nearly in absence of faithful Christians looking to partake in that particular rite, was the abbot’s sermon. Unsurprisingly, the priest discussed the notion of Jesus as divine figure; but, true to the evening’s early announcement that no attempt to convert us would be part of the prayer that night, he also discussed an over-arching theme: God’s longing for humans. In Torah, a text incorporated into Christian scripture, God constantly reaches out to God’s unique, sixth-day creation (human beings)—to us. The priest cited example after example: God searches for Adam in Eden, calls to Noah before the flood, makes a covenant with Abraham, leads Moses and Israel out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Though I disagree with the abbot on the precise nature of God, I do believe that human beings are called into relationship with the Divine, and that we have an opportunity to answer, Hineni, Here I am.

So, here I am, writing to my Jewish community and to my Christian family, with the hope that we can all answer our God with a willing “Here I am.”