Strolling down a quiet side street in Cambridge, on certain Friday nights, you can witness a taste of the “World to Come.”
It starts with sound. Wafting out of open windows clad with stained glass hamsas and screen-printed posters are raucous harmonies and waves of melody. Just as the sound contains a multitude of voices, the prayer, too, contains multitudes. From Al-Andalus to Chernobyl, from the Bostoner Rebbe to Debbie Friedman, the melodies themselves say “elu v’elu”—these and these are divine melodies.
It continues with sight. Look in and find a room overflowing with yoga instructors and Gemara teachers, first time pray-ers and minyan presidents, aspiring converts and apathetic rabbis’ kids. Just as the prayer and sound contain multitudes, the folding chairs and couches that have been pushed together seem to contain any and every type of person.
It emerges with feeling. Deep in contemplation, closed eyes swaying (maybe even shuckling), all are open to greet a neighbor or to welcome a new face. A warm embrace and a flash of their prayerbook helps orient a new arrival to where we are.
Welcome to our home. This is Base Boston.
Base Boston (a program of Mem Global), built out of our home in Cambridge, is a community for folks in their 20s and 30s looking to engage with Judaism through Jewish learning, Jewish music, Jewish art, and Jewish community.
On these certain Friday nights, I speak about the four traditional understandings of rabbinic thought on when Shabbat “begins” within Jewish legal theory. Whether through specific prayers (Lecha Dodi, the psalm for Shabbat, or the beginning of evening prayers), or through a specific action (lighting candles), we take these Jewish legal delineations of how we “take on” Shabbat and transform them into four different gates, all leading into a beautiful garden that is Shabbat. Then, through singing together, accompanied by guitar and oud, we metaphorically saunter around that garden, hoping one of those gates allows us to truly enter in and embrace the restfulness, the community, and the holiness of Shabbat.
The structure of our Musical Kabbalat Shabbat reflects the diversity of those present. We sing each of the traditional psalms connected to the days of the week in Tsfat and used by the Kabbalists to welcome Shabbat on Friday nights but set to melodies that span denomination and geography. With guitar, drums, and oud, we reimagine familiar and new melodies through the end of Lecha Dodi, the first of our gates. After Lecha Dodi, we put down our instruments and open the kitchen for folks to individually light Shabbat candles, a feature of a home-hosted minyan that blends home ritual and synagogue ritual into one, and acts as our second gate. After lighting candles and schmoozing, we continue a cappella through the end of Kabbalat Shabbat, the third gate, and evening prayers, the fourth and final gate. This structure also honors the many levels of observance present, as, most of the year, we time our prayers to intersect with the traditional candle-lighting period at sundown and follow the prohibitions against utilizing instruments after Shabbat has begun.
One of our community members wrote about our Musical Kabbalat Shabbat for an ethnomusicology class (welcome to Cambridge!). They said, “I think I get it. It’s all Jewish practice. It’s not Mizrachi, or Oriental, or even foreign. It’s Judaism…you are giving people many options that they can choose.” It’s not simply a drop-in, spiritual buffet, but rather a prayer potluck of sorts—a diverse plethora of options for our diverse community.
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