Shared past puts us all in thesameboat

EIGHT DAYS of glatt kosher food and Jewish heritage sites awaited us as we boarded MS Sapphire at Nuremberg. The boat was full of exclusively modern Orthodox Jews — around 80 or so — on this cruise along the Rhine. Our 135m luxury vessel would be sailing from Nuremburg to Amsterdam, stopping at Bamberg, Wurzburg, Mainz, Worms, Frankfurt and Cologne, in search of Jewish heritage — much of it mediaeval and some from the Second World War.

We did not get off to the best start, missing our transfers at Munich airport, but we caught the train and just about made it for Kabbalat Shabbat. Everyone else was already seated in a dining room alive with chatter.

Malcolm Green, the chef and co-owner of Kosher River Cruises, steered us to two empty seats on a table where an Israeli woman was settled with her mother-in-law. Green’s welcome was as hearty as the gourmet meals he produces and we soon caught up with our new acquaintances while tucking into a bowl of chicken and kreplach soup and a large challah roll, before venturing to the buffet.

T he b o a t s t a y e d docked throughout Shabbat and we were entertained with shiurim and lectures from Rabbi Shmuel Weiss, Rabbi Elli Fisher and Dr Rachael Furst — the resident lecturers. The next 25 hours flew by and soon we were wishing each other Shavua Tov. Rabbi Weiss’s voice boomed through the loud speakers. “I’d like to invite you to

I’d like to invite you to Havdalah on the sundeck’

do Havdalah on the sundeck. We have to start now before the boat reaches the low bridge.”

We gathered, men and women together, under the inky starry sky, to serenade the incoming week as we set sail through the dark but pristinely clean German waterways.

Our first stop on Sunday was Bamberg — a gorgeous, colourful but tiny town without much evidence of Jewish life. We were told: “this is where a synagogue once stood” or “this was the MS Sapphire, our kosher home for eight days