We had the most lovely Friday night dinner recently. We don’t often have the opportunity to attend or host a traditional Shabbat dinner, but this past Friday, we did. My husband was off from work on December 24, so we decided to host a Shabbos dinner. We tried to invite Jewish friends, most of whom were either out of town or had other plans already. Ordinarily, we’d have invited some non-Jewish friends to round out our table, but we figured most of them would be busy that night.
As it turned out, a family we know who are not Jewish asked us Friday morning if we were still having a dinner that night, and we were still looking for guests. When we had trouble finding guests the more traditional way, I had resorted to pleas on my Facebook page for anyone who wanted to come who didn’t have any other plans. As it happened, despite their celebrating Christmas, our friends were very interested in coming to our house for dinner, so we happily welcomed them.
What resulted was a warm, friendly Shabbos table. We had a veritable feast. Given the whole day to cook, and the fact that both my husband and I can and do cook on a pretty equal basis, we were able to make quite a few dishes, from appetizer to dessert. We had homemade challah, cucumber-and-tomato salad, gefilte fish, Moroccan-style salmon, chicken, meatballs, broccoli kugel, roasted potatoes, and homemade brownies. We did candle-lighting before sundown, kiddush (blessing over the wine) and Motzi (blessing over the bread) before the meal, and the Grace After Meals at the end. The entire Shabbat dinner experience, and, all-in-all, quite a successful meal on all counts.
Our non-Jewish friends asked what the significance of the dinner was. Since it was a special night for most Christian or Christian-identifying people in the world, she wanted to know if December 24 specifically was special, or if we were just having a random dinner party, or what. I took tremendous pride in explaining that this was a reasonably traditional Shabbat dinner, something that Jews around the world do every Friday night. To us, what was special wasn’t that it was December 24, it was that it was Friday night. It occurred to me that some might look upon it with awe, that Jews have a special holiday dinner every week.
I felt especially Jewish last Friday, and not in a negative way. I felt like we were doing something so absolutely right, by having a nice Shabbat dinner on Christmas Eve, just like we might have on any given Friday night, whether it was December 24 or April 27 or August 5. On the other hand, the fact that we were having a nice Shabbat dinner on December 24, as opposed to all our neighbors and many of our friends who were celebrating Christmas Eve in whatever traditional way their families have, was a way of acknowledging in a particularly powerful way that we are different.
Showing posts with label community. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community. Show all posts
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
On Finally Paying It Forward
I was working on a post about traditionalism for yesterday, but then I got a call from my rebbetzin asking if I would take a meal over to a couple in the community who just had a baby.
Flashback to three-and-a-half years ago, when my first son was born. I had a very difficult birth with him, including a c-section with complications, and I was having a really hard time in those early weeks. We lived in suburban Philadelphia, where there is a pretty high concentration of religious Jews. We, quite by chance, lived smack-dab in the middle of a religious community and had easy access to kosher food, a kosher deli inside a regular supermarket, a kosher butcher, and quite a few synagogues. We didn’t exactly consider ourselves part of the community, but we were friendly with a few families and had been to a few Shabbat dinners.
Thus, unbeknownst to me at first, a friend of ours organized members of the community to bring us meals for two weeks after our son was born. Every day, someone would knock on the door, and I’d meet a new person or become reacquainted with someone I’d met casually in the past. I’ll tell you, those meals were fantastic. Anything that saves an almost-bedridden new mother and a new dad working hard to take care of the new baby and his wife from having to cook is absolutely wonderful.
I said to myself, when someone else in the community – or a friend of mine - has a baby, if I’m asked to make a meal, I will wholeheartedly agree. I so wanted to pay it forward!
Then we moved to California, and friends 3000 miles away started having babies. It’s not so practical to take a casserole to a friend when they live on the other side of the country (or, in one case, the world) from you. So we sent gifts and corresponded by email, and I fondly remembered how nice it was that people so kindly brought us meals, and how I hoped that when someone local to me had a baby, maybe I would be able to bring her food.
And finally, this week, I got the call. I don’t actually know this family, but apparently they have come to a few community functions such as the Passover seder. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know them. The point is, they are Jews in Oceanside, they are members of our community, and they just celebrated the birth of a son. We as a community celebrate with them, and we as a community rally to help.
Tomorrow morning, I am going to make a casserole, and I am going to drive it over to their house. I am going to take a couple of challot that I baked last week, and I am going to give them disposable casserole dishes and paper plates and plastic forks so that they don’t have to wash any plates or worry about returning anything. And, if she’s up to it, I’ll sit with the new mom and chat with her and hold the baby for her for a minute (oh, what a hardship!), and keep her company for a while, if she wants.
Because, really, that’s what community is all about, isn’t it? It’s about having a built-in support system so that when you have a simchah (a happy occasion), or, G-d forbid, a difficult time, there are people around you who can cook you a meal, come sit with you for a while, or pray for you or with you.
Anyone care to share a positive experience you’ve had as a result of being part of a community?
Flashback to three-and-a-half years ago, when my first son was born. I had a very difficult birth with him, including a c-section with complications, and I was having a really hard time in those early weeks. We lived in suburban Philadelphia, where there is a pretty high concentration of religious Jews. We, quite by chance, lived smack-dab in the middle of a religious community and had easy access to kosher food, a kosher deli inside a regular supermarket, a kosher butcher, and quite a few synagogues. We didn’t exactly consider ourselves part of the community, but we were friendly with a few families and had been to a few Shabbat dinners.
Thus, unbeknownst to me at first, a friend of ours organized members of the community to bring us meals for two weeks after our son was born. Every day, someone would knock on the door, and I’d meet a new person or become reacquainted with someone I’d met casually in the past. I’ll tell you, those meals were fantastic. Anything that saves an almost-bedridden new mother and a new dad working hard to take care of the new baby and his wife from having to cook is absolutely wonderful.
I said to myself, when someone else in the community – or a friend of mine - has a baby, if I’m asked to make a meal, I will wholeheartedly agree. I so wanted to pay it forward!
Then we moved to California, and friends 3000 miles away started having babies. It’s not so practical to take a casserole to a friend when they live on the other side of the country (or, in one case, the world) from you. So we sent gifts and corresponded by email, and I fondly remembered how nice it was that people so kindly brought us meals, and how I hoped that when someone local to me had a baby, maybe I would be able to bring her food.
And finally, this week, I got the call. I don’t actually know this family, but apparently they have come to a few community functions such as the Passover seder. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know them. The point is, they are Jews in Oceanside, they are members of our community, and they just celebrated the birth of a son. We as a community celebrate with them, and we as a community rally to help.
Tomorrow morning, I am going to make a casserole, and I am going to drive it over to their house. I am going to take a couple of challot that I baked last week, and I am going to give them disposable casserole dishes and paper plates and plastic forks so that they don’t have to wash any plates or worry about returning anything. And, if she’s up to it, I’ll sit with the new mom and chat with her and hold the baby for her for a minute (oh, what a hardship!), and keep her company for a while, if she wants.
Because, really, that’s what community is all about, isn’t it? It’s about having a built-in support system so that when you have a simchah (a happy occasion), or, G-d forbid, a difficult time, there are people around you who can cook you a meal, come sit with you for a while, or pray for you or with you.
Anyone care to share a positive experience you’ve had as a result of being part of a community?
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Community
When I think about a community, I think about a group of people who live in the same general region and who have something in common, who rely on each other, help each other out, and share friendships, social opportunities, and generally support each other. Community functions to give people a sense of belonging, to offer assistance during illness, when a new baby is born, to provide services for the dead. Community is often built around a religious institution or place of meeting, but it can also be based on other shared interests or simple geography.
In Judaism, community is essential. There are prayers that can only be said in the presence of 10 Jewish men, a minyan, prayers that are said daily. Weddings, funerals, and other rites of passage require the same presence of a minyan. Many laws can only be observed properly in the context of a community, since one needs a place to procure kosher meat, kosher baked goods, and the various types of clothing and religious items such as Torah scrolls, mezuzot, tefillin, and other ritual items commanded in the Torah.
Thus, Jews seek each other out.
We belong to a small community of Jews who are brought together under the roof and wings of our local Chabad rabbi and rebbetzin. It is Chabad’s singular purpose to bring Jews together, provide services to the Jewish community, and generally increase the holiness of the Jewish people wherever Jews may be found.
The past two days, we celebrated the holiday of Shavuot. Yesterday evening, our Chabad hosted an event at which we heard the reading of the Ten Commandments, as is traditional on Shavuot, and ate a dairy meal, also traditional on Shavuot. It was here that I witnessed something that strikes me as odd. We are not one community. We are three.
I say this is odd, because if we are “the Jewish community of Oceanside,” that implies that we have some familiarity with each other, that we have interacted on some level at some time. But there were people at the Chabad house last night whom I have never seen before, but who clearly were familiar with and to the rabbi and rebbetzin, and who knew other people there, also whom I had never seen before.
What happens is this: There are the cohort who attend services regularly or semi-regularly on Saturdays. There is the group made up of Hebrew school students and parents, who may either not attend services or who attend services at other area synagogues. And there are those who generally show up only for major events, such as this Shavuot dinner, the Passover seder, the High Holy Day services. That’s why I say we are three communities.
Last night was the first night where I felt like we three circles had a chance to interact and overlap. The rebbetzin went around encouraging us to introduce ourselves to people we don’t know, and our kids played together even though they’d never met. Certainly these people must have been at other events, but I felt like those other events were in more formal settings, which didn’t foster this kind of mingling. It was nice to see that “the Jewish community of Oceanside” didn’t consist solely of the 10 or so families I was most familiar with! Indeed, I would venture to say that last night was packed!
I feel that in a more traditional Jewish community, such as a more insular Orthodox neighborhood, this “three communities” phenomenon would not be so obvious. It seems like it reflects American society in general, where we have our school circles and our work circles and our social circles, and they mostly don’t overlap or interact. If we see someone we know in the supermarket, we might explain that, “Oh, that’s a friend from work,” or “Yeah, that’s the mother of my son’s friend,” and those two people may never have met and never will meet. They aren’t part of the same community, the same circles.
But if we are a Jewish community, shouldn’t we be a Jewish community? Shouldn’t we all be at least vaguely familiar to one another? We are all from the same circle. We all attend Chabad of Oceanside at least some of the time. I think as the community continues to grow and find cohesion, we’ll find the circles melding into one great group. As it should be.
In Judaism, community is essential. There are prayers that can only be said in the presence of 10 Jewish men, a minyan, prayers that are said daily. Weddings, funerals, and other rites of passage require the same presence of a minyan. Many laws can only be observed properly in the context of a community, since one needs a place to procure kosher meat, kosher baked goods, and the various types of clothing and religious items such as Torah scrolls, mezuzot, tefillin, and other ritual items commanded in the Torah.
Thus, Jews seek each other out.
We belong to a small community of Jews who are brought together under the roof and wings of our local Chabad rabbi and rebbetzin. It is Chabad’s singular purpose to bring Jews together, provide services to the Jewish community, and generally increase the holiness of the Jewish people wherever Jews may be found.
The past two days, we celebrated the holiday of Shavuot. Yesterday evening, our Chabad hosted an event at which we heard the reading of the Ten Commandments, as is traditional on Shavuot, and ate a dairy meal, also traditional on Shavuot. It was here that I witnessed something that strikes me as odd. We are not one community. We are three.
I say this is odd, because if we are “the Jewish community of Oceanside,” that implies that we have some familiarity with each other, that we have interacted on some level at some time. But there were people at the Chabad house last night whom I have never seen before, but who clearly were familiar with and to the rabbi and rebbetzin, and who knew other people there, also whom I had never seen before.
What happens is this: There are the cohort who attend services regularly or semi-regularly on Saturdays. There is the group made up of Hebrew school students and parents, who may either not attend services or who attend services at other area synagogues. And there are those who generally show up only for major events, such as this Shavuot dinner, the Passover seder, the High Holy Day services. That’s why I say we are three communities.
Last night was the first night where I felt like we three circles had a chance to interact and overlap. The rebbetzin went around encouraging us to introduce ourselves to people we don’t know, and our kids played together even though they’d never met. Certainly these people must have been at other events, but I felt like those other events were in more formal settings, which didn’t foster this kind of mingling. It was nice to see that “the Jewish community of Oceanside” didn’t consist solely of the 10 or so families I was most familiar with! Indeed, I would venture to say that last night was packed!
I feel that in a more traditional Jewish community, such as a more insular Orthodox neighborhood, this “three communities” phenomenon would not be so obvious. It seems like it reflects American society in general, where we have our school circles and our work circles and our social circles, and they mostly don’t overlap or interact. If we see someone we know in the supermarket, we might explain that, “Oh, that’s a friend from work,” or “Yeah, that’s the mother of my son’s friend,” and those two people may never have met and never will meet. They aren’t part of the same community, the same circles.
But if we are a Jewish community, shouldn’t we be a Jewish community? Shouldn’t we all be at least vaguely familiar to one another? We are all from the same circle. We all attend Chabad of Oceanside at least some of the time. I think as the community continues to grow and find cohesion, we’ll find the circles melding into one great group. As it should be.
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