Letter from the Galilee
guest post from Esther Keiderling
Several Bruderhof members run a guesthouse called Beit Bracha in Migdal, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. We’re all volunteering with CMJ, an Anglican organization founded in 1809 that owns Beit Bracha, as well as a guesthouse in Jaffa and in Jerusalem. They also are responsible for Christ Church, the oldest Protestant Church in the Middle East, as well as schools, hospitals and social reform programs.
I signed up to be a CMJ volunteer and started volunteering at the Christ Church guesthouse in Jerusalem in 2022. Since 2016, volunteers from the Bruderhof have spent time at each of the three CMJ guesthouses and all of them have loved it as much as I did. At Christ Church, I worked eight-hour shifts, five days a week either in exchange for room and board as well as some volunteer outings funded by CMJ. I lived in an apartment with the other women volunteers and met people from Australia, Canada, all over the United States, England and Denmark. Together we enjoyed Jerusalem in the evenings and explored beautiful areas of Israel on our days off.
I’m a committed member of the Bruderhof and not about to become Anglican, but the people I worked with at Christ Church became my brothers and sisters in Christ. I met people in leadership positions who did not hesitate to spend hours washing dishes or busing tables or collecting trash. At devotions and church services in Christ Church, I experienced new ways of worshipping God that were different from but just as genuine as the ways I was used to.
The Bruderhof and CMJ entered a temporary partnership last year which allowed all the Bruderhof volunteers to move from Jerusalem to Beit Bracha and run the guest house there. By February all of us had moved to Beit Bracha—my brother, his wife and their two beautiful daughters, another young family who are the designated guest house managers, and me. Since then other single Bruderhof members have come to join us.
At Beit Bracha we have an interesting mix of community life and guest house management. There are some small apartments in the house next to the guesthouse upstairs from the kitchen and dining room where guests come to eat breakfast. Our guesthouse manager and his wife go shopping a few times a week to get all the supplies we need, and we have communal meals together four or five times a week.
In Israel, the week starts on Sunday. Shabbat, the Sabbath day of rest is on Saturday. So on Saturday mornings we gather to sing and read a Bible story that my very intelligent two and a half year old niece can understand. Her three-month-old sister loves the singing and looks around at everyone with shining eyes.
On Friday evenings we often serve a Shabbat meal and invite guests, performing the traditional blessing for the bread and wine. We’re not Jewish of course and try to remain apolitical but we enjoy following some of the Israeli traditions. My brother and I are proud of our Jewish grandmother and my sister-in-law’s grandfather was a Holocaust survivor who emigrated to Israel as a young man and later joined the Bruderhof.
Sometimes if we finish all the guesthouse work early, we go swim in the Sea of Galilee or visit one of the nearby national parks. In Israel you can drive from the dramatic varicolored mountains of the Negev to a Mediterranean beach to the farmlands of lower Galilee all within a day. A few weeks ago, the single members of Beit Bracha went for a camping trip to Eilat by the Red Sea, where Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. Every corner of this land contains not only precious Biblical history but powerful beauty that I’ll be able to imagine whenever I close my eyes for the rest of my life.
Most mornings at Beit Bracha I spend a lot of time on my knees, trying to clean every corner of vacated guest rooms for the next guests. Then in the afternoon, I get two hours with my oldest niece. The temperature has been going above 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day for the last month so I make sure she does not overheat and stays hydrated. She loves coloring, baking and reading stories, which happen to be some of my favorite things as well, especially when I’m doing them with her.
Sometimes we also like to get wet rags and do “housekeeping” in the basement below the guesthouse. Every time she sees someone cleaning, she always wants to help them. Sometimes she comes and helps make beds in the guest rooms for special. “The guests will be so happy about this bed!” she told me the other day. Maybe one day when I’m in my forties and she’s eighteen, she and I can come back to Israel as CMJ volunteers.