Four secular teens, a Haredi family, and a place at the table

Eli is 16 years old. He grew up on a kibbutz, and he is devoutly secular. Yes, devoutly. He’s too young to vote in the next election, but he has strong opinions about religion and politics, especially when it comes to military service. He believes that every sector of Israeli society should serve in the army or contribute through some form of national service. And he’s not shy about saying so.

Anyway, Eli and his three best friends, who are equally secular and equally opinionated, decided to do something that I’ve always wanted to do myself: hike from sea to sea. It’s practically a rite of passage for Israeli teenagers. You start at the Mediterranean Sea and walk all the way to the Sea of Galilee, crossing hills and forests, passing through villages, scrambling over rocks, and maybe stopping at a waterfall or two along the way. You carry everything you need on your back. You sleep under the stars. You get lost, figure out where you are, and keep going. And you do it with your friends.

Full disclosure: I’m Eli’s mother, and having grown up in Los Angeles, where teenagers generally don’t disappear into the wilderness for several days without an entire committee of helicopter parents coordinating snacks, sunscreen, and emergency evacuation procedures, I find this whole thing absolutely delightful. So anyway. The boys set off just before Sukkot. And somewhere along the trail, Eli had an idea. He messaged me and said that he and his friends would love to find a family to host them for the holiday meal.

Now, as a mother who loves nothing more than connecting people, I felt that this was my moment to shine. I posted on Facebook, explained that four lovely teenage boys were hiking across the Galilee and looking for somewhere to celebrate Sukkot, and within a short time, I had several offers. Because Israel.
People were delighted to invite them. Complete strangers were opening their homes and offering to feed four hungry teenagers they had never met.

There was only one problem. None of the invitations worked geographically. The boys had a route, and the families who offered hospitality were simply too far away from where they were planning to be when the holiday began. And while I might have been willing to rearrange the entire geography of the Galilee to make this happen, the boys were considerably more practical. So we thanked everyone, and I figured that was that. They would celebrate Sukkot on the trail, under the stars, with whatever food they could carry in their backpacks. Not exactly a tragedy.

After all, what could be more appropriate for Sukkot than a group of wandering Jews eating outdoors beneath the heavens? But Israel had other plans. On Friday afternoon, the boys came down from Mount Meron and found themselves in a very religious community. Now, these are not the sorts of people Eli and his friends ordinarily spend much time with.

They live in different worlds. Different schools, different clothes, different music, different assumptions about what it means to be Jewish and Israeli. And, of course, very different opinions about military service.

The boys went into a little store to pick up some snacks and supplies for their holiday meal on the trail. And the man behind the counter, a Haredi yeshiva student, struck up a conversation. Who were they? Where had they come from? Where were they going? The boys explained that they were hiking from the Mediterranean to the Kinneret, and that they were planning to spend the holiday together out on the trail. And then exactly what you think would happen in Israel happened.

The man behind the counter was absolutely horrified. Not because these boys were secular. Not because they weren’t wearing kippot or studying in yeshiva. But because four Jewish boys were about to spend the holiday of abundance and hospitality alone. This was completely unacceptable. So he picked up the phone and called his parents. And his parents, without hesitation, invited four complete strangers into their home for the holiday. Now, here’s where I have to give Eli some credit. The boy has rizz. And apparently, he also has a little foresight.

Because before they set off, he had told all his friends to bring white shirts, just in case they ended up being invited into someone’s home for the holiday. WHITE SHIRTS. On a hiking trip. Across the Galilee. My heart. Anyway, after checking with the other parents and me, the boys happily accepted the invitation. And just like that, four devoutly secular teenagers found themselves spending the holiday with a Haredi family they had never met, in a community they might otherwise never have visited.

They went to synagogue. They joined the family for the holiday meal. And they stepped into a world that was, in many ways, completely unfamiliar to them. “We were at the synagogue with everyone, and we didn’t know any of the songs and prayers,” Eli told me. “But when they sang Lecha Dodi, we got excited and said it was a banger.” A banger. Lecha Dodi. I can’t even.

And yet, I keep thinking about this story. Because Eli didn’t suddenly become religious that evening. And I very much doubt that the family who welcomed him into their home suddenly changed their minds about the role of yeshiva study in Israeli society. The arguments are still there. The disagreements are real, and they matter. Questions about who serves, who sacrifices, and what we owe one another are not small questions. They go to the very heart of what kind of country Israel is, and what kind of country it wants to become.

A holiday meal doesn’t resolve them. But something happened around that table that I think is worth paying attention to. A Haredi family saw four secular boys and didn’t see a political argument. They saw four hungry Jewish teenagers who needed somewhere to spend the holiday. And four secular boys walked into a Haredi home and didn’t see a political argument, either. They saw people who had opened their door. Nobody had to abandon their convictions. Nobody had to pretend the differences didn’t exist. They simply made room for one another.

And maybe that’s one of the things I love most about living here, even when this country drives me absolutely crazy. We spend so much time talking about the divisions between us, and God knows those divisions are deep. But sometimes, on a Friday afternoon, in a little shop somewhere in the Galilee, a yeshiva student meets four secular teenagers, calls his mother, and makes sure they have a place at the table. And somewhere in the middle of all that, four boys discover that Lecha Dodi is, in fact, a banger.