Shabbat Dinner(s)

This entry kind of goes along with my earlier post about breathing into space. A while back, I decided to spend the weekend in Jerusalem, working on just being. I dedicated Friday morning grinding into the thick layers of black mold that were caked onto the trim of my bathroom and creeping up the walls like the demonic shadows of a scary movie. Feeling somewhat accomplished, but by no means satisfied as it mocked me from the ceiling, I closed the bathroom door and went for a walk. I found a frisbee game being played by Orthodox men (i.e. No Girls Allowed) so I hung out on the sidelines and threw with a very chatty nine-year-old with a huge backhand (that’s frisbee lingo – he kept launching it over my head). Having made one pre-pubescent friend and one very ancient friend but no real progress at getting on the field, I bid farewell with a promise to join Shabbat dinner with the boy and his family.

I headed to the shuk – the market – which in every way, shape, and form is quite simply masochism on Friday at 2pm. Every Jew in Jerusalem (ok, maybe just over one thousand of them) and Birthright tours looking for the “cultural experience” are stuffed into a three-block maze of tiny shops. (I almost lost it on a tour guide cramming twenty kids into a busy intersection. You can talk about the history of salted nuts and gummy bears from across the street where there are not wall-to-wall Chosen people packed into a skinny passage all trying to get the best bargain and book it home before sundown. Seriously? This is where you choose to stop and have a teaching moment?) Everyone was at the market to buy the necessities for a feast and weekly celebration of Shabbat – sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. (As an aside, they mock our pre-Thanksgiving freak outs. “I don’t see the big deal. We do this every week!”) With last-minute invitations to two Shabbat meals and no prior awareness of the Friday shuk experience, I dove in on a hunt for something to contribute, and emerged forty minutes later with cookies and an eye twitch.  

The first Shabbat dinner was at the home of Chana (Colombian/American) and David (American) and their son. We were joined by two other girls slightly younger than I, which brought the table to six. At a pause in our pre-dinner conversation, Chana burst into song, quickly followed by the rest of the diners. Clapping and beating on the table, she explained during a lull that this was the ritual of calling in the Shabbat angels who just come in to say what’s up and then move on. We performed the ritual washing of our hands and more singing. There is no distinct rhythm or melody and the songs don’t rhyme. So this communal singing introduced a powerful and totally new, joyful sound to me. David blessed, sliced, and salted the bread, and the feast began. There must have been six different salads at the table. There is no holding back for Shabbat. And unbeknownst to me, this was just the first course. Slowing down, Chana explained their family’s ritual of sharing a learning around the table. This week’s emphasis was on Exodus and the plagues, so that was the foundation for the sharing but our contribution could really be about anything. At one point, Ari Lev (my young throwing buddy) was talking, and Chana interrupted to ask if I wanted some context. Without an ounce of judgment or checking any notes, she started at Adam and Eve, moving to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and eventually Joseph, who had a coat of many colors and was sold into slavery in Egypt. The story Ari Lev was talking about pertained to a side story of Joseph’s brother Judah, and his dealings with his daughter-in-law, Tamar. I sat in awe of how this narrative, one that I’d seen painted on a wall in Sunday School or sang songs about in youth group, was so deeply engrained in the very existence of the people at this table. Never in my life had I felt as connected to a nation or a narrative as these people do. I thought of how it would feel, sitting at the breakfast table with my roommate, rattling off the lineage of Roosevelt or Taft and how their stories would eventually get to me. I often don’t consider the roots of my own narrative. But on one level, that’s why I’m here in the first place.

We leaned back, totally stuffed (oops) and voted on a game (Dix It – like Apples to Apples with pictures), after which Chana invited everyone back to the table for another two rounds of food and more reflections. Then we benched, which I guess means to formally close the meal. We sang (or more specifically, I hummed and beat on the table) and everyone fell into a hushed whisper of their own prayers. I closed my eyes and listened to what sounded like muffled spirits in the wind. They each closed their prayer books and kissed the covers. I walked home with one of the girls, who explained that she too is a mutt (my word - she had more formal phraseology for herself), but that she boarded the Orthodox train a few years back. She explained that Jews don’t proselytize to anyone except people like us who have Jewish heritage. (Not knocking Christians, but it was a very different sensation to be educated by Jews and I couldn’t figure out the difference at the time. It is because there is no tenet that requires Jews to attract new followers as there is in the Christian faith; so there was no sense of recruitment in their teachings – just a flat but engaging offering of this is what is). She explained why many of the women wear wigs (in Hebrew, the root word for hair is also gate, so they believe that anywhere on your body with hair is also a gate and must be protected. Married women wear their hair wrapped or cover it with a wig, and men have the curls at their temples).

The next morning, still physically and mentally full from the dinner before, I walked back to Nachlaot for a mid-day meal with my organization’s director and his family. We were eight, nestled into the corner dining table with a feast of salads as plentifully packed onto the table as we were around it. We went through a similar ritual of songs and hand washing and bread breaking. Yonatan (my boss) hoisted his son onto his shoulders and they chanted in sync to call in the angels. I hadn’t learned my lesson from the night before, and satisfied myself on Asian salad, beets, hummus, tabouleh, and sprouted rye bread. We began the same ritual of reflecting on the week’s teachings around the table. They paused just before they got to me, and I was stunned (but not deterred) when they brought out the main course of quiche and curried tofu with peas and another salad. With a plate full of hot food, we resumed the reflections; I kind of cheated, or reflected more deeply, rather, on my Hasidic class again. We sang and listened to stories and when Yonatan’s turn came he asked us to create a rhythm – a subtle and consistent “oyoyoyoy”; and he began to sing/rap/freestyle his reflections on Exodus. The plagues were not random acts of an angry God, he explained. When you mess with the water, the frogs die; when the frogs die, the bugs arrive and take over; they consume the vegetation; which leads to famine; and so on. It’s like the skeleton song, except instead of the body, it’s the world. Pharaoh knew after the locusts that he’d really screwed up, and he told Moses as much. But he still couldn’t let his slaves go, not because of his ideology, but because slaves were the backbone of the entire economy. Similarly, American slaves weren’t freed due to a moral tipping point, but rather an economic one – the introduction of the fossil fuel industry, which started the shift towards the capital infrastructure of the country. Pharaoh was bound to his wrongdoing because of his economic obligations, just as we today are bound by ours. We are the slaves of today and our monster is the black gold we leech from the earth. We see signs and whisperings of greater forces of resistance to our way of life, but so far we aren’t doing anything about it. All of this was expressed so fervently and eloquently to the delicate rhythm of the other diners. And we continued around the table…worship by way of food, community, and reflection.