Open the drawer
It is Friday.
My challah (a Kineret frozen loaf, I admit) is rising on the stove top.
My chicken is seasoned, and ready to pop into the oven, along with a pan of veggies.
Salad is waiting to be tossed, fruit washed and cut.
There is a certain comfort that comes from the rituals of readying for Shabbat, even as a mostly secular but sometimes religious (whatever that connotes) Jew.
Serious is how most of us prefer to be called, those of us who are drawn to Jewish study and its concomitant spiritual search and flirt with ritual observance. Labels, of course, are misleading, nay patently meaningless, in this changing- as- we- speak world where anything seems to defy categorization.
And so, I read a recent article on Tablet, the online Jewish magazine, with not a little bit of interest -- and guilt. Writer Elizabeth Cohen’s essay on “Private Practice” tells of the suppressed desires of intermarried women to observe Shabbat with their children and the every so often Friday night coteries that evolve.
It is a beautifully written piece, as moving as it is achingly real, especially for those of us with intermarried children who are valiantly trying to raise their children as Jews and retain their own Jewishness. Cohen perceptively describes herself, and perhaps our daughters and granddaughters, when she writes of marrying an “a-Jewish” man. “When you are young,” she writes, “you can think you can do anything.” Even marry for love and still keep what is precious, even if is tucked away in a drawer, only to be pulled out on special occasions.
Yet, she writes, even Jewish choices -- synagogue memberships, day school tuitions and sometimes shared holiday observances (the recalcitrant spouse at the Passover table lurks in Cohen’s piece) -- do not make up for the palpable loss. Her angst is real, even as she opens the drawer of past memories and lets them escape every so often like the succulent scent of the roast chicken from the oven door. Shabbat shared is what she is missing, Shabbat with husband and children around the table, as she remembers. Shabbat as something that has a place in the rhythm of family life, not Shabbat relegated to an every so often dinner with friends, non-Jewish husbands in absentia.
And so, I began to think about Cohen’s conundrum -- and her solution -- and realized that it is not just those who have fallen in love and chosen to share their lives with men for whom Shabbat is not a part of who they are, but those of us who so very cavalierly take our Jewish identity, and that of our Jewish spouses, for granted to whom Cohen speaks.
And I feel guilty. Very guilty.
It is so easy, so very easy, especially as our children are grown and gone, to let Shabbat lapse, to forego the challah and the candles, to substitute Merlot for Manischewitz, to order pizza in rather than turn on the oven. It is so easy to miss the message and meaning of turning off for a few hours, or more, of turning inward to ourselves and toward our spouses, to learn to quiet our lives and quell our spirits.It is so very easy to put Shabbat in a drawer, along with the hand made challah covers and kiddush cups our kids brought home, depriving us of what it means to rest and renew.
So this Shabbos, I cooked. And come 7:23, my candles will be lit.
09 Jul, 2010 >
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Merlot for Manischewitz?!
Whats the problem with drinking a fine wine for kiddush?
Zack - 27 Jul, 2010 - 12:35:43
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