What’s a rabbi doing at the nativity scene?

Several days ago the Christmas season culminated with the January festival of the Epiphany, a holiday that commemorates the arrival of the three kings to the manger where Jesus was born. And several days ago, dressed in my rabbinical robe and traditional striped tallit, I joined the residents of a neighboring town to participate in the Italian traditional “presepe vivente,” (pronounced “pray-SEH-pay”) the living nativity scene.

The mountain Calabrian village of Panettieri was the host of this 20-year-old event that featured a replica of the biblical city of Bethlehem replete with live actors dressed in historically accurate costumes and playing the part of artisans, Roman soldiers, and shepherds with real animals. Five local newborns including a set of twins rotated in and out of the manger as the real “baby Jesus,”

All of this and a rabbi, too? Yes. I was invited by Mayor Salvatore Parrotta to staff the area set aside as a synagogue. As the mayor emphasized, “In the time of Jesus’ birth there would have been a synagogue in Bethlehem. We will make the synagogue if you will be its rabbi.”

At first, I was reluctant, mostly concerned with how my participation would look to friends and colleagues. But then I remembered a wonderful Zoom lecture by the very creative Rabbi Maurice Harris, Assistant Director of Thriving Communities for the Reconstructionist Judaism movement (of which our synagogue in Italy is an affiliate).

Rabbi Harris offered a plan for growing a synagogue community – what he calls  “The Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” approach.  Rather than working to get potential members to come to us, we rabbis must reach out into the community and make a presence there.

Thanks to that lecture, I now saw the “presepe vivente” as my golden opportunity to share Judaism with the several thousand visitors who, over a week, would pass through  “Bethlehem” on their way to see the “baby Jesus.”

As each group of visitors packed the little synagogue space, I offered a five-minute presentation on the fact that Jesus was born, lived and died an observant Jew.

I emphasized that the seven-branched candelabra, the menorah, that I brought from our own synagogue,  would have been on display in his synagogue and that the tallit I wore featured the fringes similar to those on the robe worn by Jesus, the observant Jew.

The audience was fascinated to learn that the reading table was a replica of the table where Jesus read Torah when he became a Bar Mitzvah and the shofar I sounded was the same blast Jesus heard when he observed the Jewish New Year.

Two young men, Francesco and Alessandro, served as synagogue “sacerdoti,” (priests) and we concluded the presentation with Alessandro, yad in hand, reading from a psalm.

Two days ago, when the “presepe vivente” closed its gate, staff “kvelled” that more than 5,000 guests had visited replica Bethlehem, a great many of whom visited the synagogue to learn about Jesus’ Jewish heritage. True, some were skeptical and exited abruptly, but most were proud to learn that Pope John Paul II (now a saint) had opened the door to interfaith dialogue when he declared that, “With Judaism therefore we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.”

For me as rabbi of the only synagogue in Italy’s Calabria region – an area the geographical size of the US state of Virginia, to be a part of “presepe vivente” was Jewish outreach at its best. Our congregation consists of b’nei anusim, Italians who have reclaimed their Jewish roots. Thanks to my presence at the baby Jesus diorama, I believe we touched the hearts of many hidden Jews who long to grasp the hand of Jewish welcome and come home.