Chicken Soup and Kabbalah

Every once in a while, we get Jewish visitors here.

On Friday night, we had an interesting guest. Sergei is 19 years old and he is spending the year touring the world. He spent a little while in Moscow, and his main goal is to get to Japan. So he took the TranSiberian railroad from Moscow to Vladivostok. It was six long days, he told us. He did not get off the train. He found Vladivostok, to his surprise, to be really interesting - one of his favorite cities in the world.

Anyway, he ate over Friday night. Yisroel found the poor boy to be really receptive of Judaism, and grabbed his chance to teach him the basics. So while I served my chicken soup, Yisroel explained to Sergei, a vegetarian, why, according to the kabbalah, man should eat meat and properly fulfill the hierarchy of the world. During the main course, they had a long discussion about circumcision. Sergei didn't know how lucky he was that it was Shabbos. For his part, Yisroel would have been glad to take care of matters then and there. As the meal drew to a close, Yisroel talked all about finding your true self, and getting to know your Jewish soul. Sergei insisted that he wasn't searching for anything at all on his journey around the world, but Yisroel told him that sometimes people are not even aware that they are looking.

As for Sergei, he went back to his hosts talking about what a wonderful meal he had. The only thing he specified, though, was that the rabbi has a nice wife. Glad I made an impression.