We're ready for the Jewish presentation this evening, but our scheduled facilitator has let us know that he is unwell and unable to attend. He hasn't been able to provide any materials for us to use.
We start off in three small groups, reading and discussing the Council of Faiths leaflets on the Jewish community. From what we know about Jewish belief and practice, what do we find of interest in terms of ethics and morality?
While we do this, Beate Dehnen comes to the rescue, carrying out some speedy research on just such issues (using books, I should stress, not online - and books in German, at that - which she translates so effortlessly that we'd never have known they weren't in English!). Beate is on the left in the photo above, with Kevin Commons (one of the course facilitators, from the Zen Serene Meditation Group) to her right.
Kevin has with him a few back-up moral dilemmas, prepared for this sort of eventuality; however, the material that Beate shares with us is more than sufficient to see us through to the end of the session.
We discuss how our historical and contemporary understanding, experience and aspirations related to justice, fairness and human rights are related to Judaism - to the people and/or State of Israel. Some people in the room this evening have visited Auschwitz; inevitably, that comes into the discussion too.
Something of a DIY session this evening, then, but enjoyable and instructive nevertheless.
As a small group of us are leaving Christchurch shortly after 2100, we're buttonholed (in the most courteous manner) by a woman called Becca, who asks us what we're doing. She says that she passes the church (of which she's a parishioner) the same time every Monday evening and sees people from our group coming out, chatting and laughing. We tell her about the course, I give her my card and direct her to the blog. That's a nice way to end the evening.
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