Shabbat Dinner in the Time of Covid 19: A story about buttons, ginger ale and loss
But at the end of another long locked-down Covid quarantine day, the end of a long self-isolated night, the living room and dining room lights turned off, the only illumination coming from the Shabbat candles burning down to their ends on the kitchen table before me, the house so quiet - a sacred time for a parent of young ones finally gone to sleep - in that brief screenless moment before heading to bed myself, just sitting here, watching the hardly flickering flames, it was then it all became so clear.
i. The Button Story
About a month ago I started celebrating shabbat dinners with my family on a regular basis. The impetus for this comes down to a couple cans of ginger ale. I’m not even kidding. But in time I’ve come to see how meaningful Shabbat has become for me and, I hope, my family, especially since losing my mother three years ago and my father in March of this year (not Covid related).
In a recent and really quite profound episode of Brian Koppelman’s podcast, he interviews a man named Jason Rosenthal who wrote a memoir about losing his wife, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, to cancer. Amy, it turns out, was a friend of Brian's. They had actually dated in college. Together Brian and Jordan paint a picture of a woman who was clearly an extremely positive and creative soul, not to mention enormously successful professionally (she published adult and children’s fiction, made films, did a TED talk), but to her loving husband – himself the subject of one of Amy’s probably best known writings, a New York Times Modern Love piece entitled “You May Want to Marry My Husband” - would sum her up as just incredibly kind in all she gave. This prompts Brian to tell a story about reconnecting with Amy as friends in later years. Amy at the time was collecting buttons and asked Brian how many buttons he thought he might see between his Manhattan apartment and his office on a given day. None! Was Brian’s bemused response. No buttons, wtf are you talking about? Amy told to him to go look for buttons and that he would see as many as fifty buttons in one day, whole buttons that have fallen off people’s shirts. And lo and behold when Brian began to look on his way to work, he found this to be true. Brian couldn't believe it, and told Jordan in his pod, “You will see what you’re looking for.” Amy’s husband confirmed this saying this was her philosophy on life. Jason said, “Amy had an expression: Pay attention to what you pay attention to.” What you look for is of course what you will find.
This then is the story of how Shabbat, in a sense, has become my button. A thing worth paying attention to.
ii. The Pop Was a Big Deal
Most Ashkenazi Jews refer to the sabbath in Yiddish as shabbas. But my parents, both born and raised in South Africa, emigrated to Israel in their late teens and lived in Jerusalem for the better part of two decades. For that reason, in my family, the sabbath has always referred to by its Hebrew: Shabbat.
My folks weren't religious, not in the conventional sense. My dad ate bacon, my parents’ favourite rabbis at their egalitarian synagogue were both women. There were, however, fairly universal Jewish traditions my parents passed down. Friday nights the simple white sabbath candles would be lit, prayers would be made, typically a braided golden challah would be brought out, my mother so lovingly making sure to heat it minutes before we sat down so it would come out warm and perfect for dipping hand broken-off hunks of into one of her excellent soups. In the most conventional sense our Shabbat dinners were Jewish affairs because of how much it was about the food, about the dessert. Also, we got to drink pop.
The pop was a big deal because my parents came to Canada like so many other with very little. Budgets were tight and one way my dad believed in saving money was that we never got pop when going out to a restaurant. We didn’t get pop at the movies. Like a pricey bottle of wine, pop was for special occasions only. Fortunately ours came up on a weekly basis.
iii. What Is There to Look Forward To
On a more somber note, I am ashamed to admit that until the lockdown I did a lousy job of continuing my family’s Shabbat tradition with my own children. In my larger family, the tradition didn't completely end when my mother died three years ago. My sisters’ would host us, we occasionally hosted them and we all did our best to make sure my father was not alone on Friday nights. But these last years, as his health deteriorated from Parkinson’s (and heart break), taking him out of Christie Gardens, the home where he lived, got ever more difficult. We ate many meals at the home with him and while I would give anything to be back there, to be with him now, it would be dishonest to describe those Friday nights as having the spirit of joy and fun of the Shabbats I knew growing up. Also, for reasons no one ever explained, pop was not allowed at Christie Gardens.
Like many modern parents we don’t keep pop in the house and my kids hardly ever drink it. But as one who clearly takes his fizzy drinks too seriously - childhood forbidden fruit and all that – I’d been craving it this Covid spring. So I thought why not let my kids have a taste of that same pleasure I got as a kid. Let’s make it a Friday night thing. Pop for everyone!
A few weeks after we’d begun Shabbating it up, I started hearing a similar anxiety from close friends. Assuming you aren’t working on the frontlines battling this devastating virus, or aren't in dire financial straits as many are, for the fortunate the common refrain was that it was getting hard to find things to look forward to. As one who in the “before times” would mark his weeks with what to look forward to, mostly in edible (where will I go for lunch tomorrow) form, I saw Friday night as just this kind of opportunity. Let’s save that favourite meal for Fridays. We’ll have pop too.
Committing to a Friday night Shabbat tradition was of course about more than ginger ale, it was about my need to mark the start of the weekend, to differentiate this time from the weekdays, because suddenly every day is the same and how else to do this? Groundhog Day isn’t as funny if its runtime goes on for ten plus weeks.
So the four people who comprise my half-Japanese, half-Jewish family light candles Friday night, we hold hands and sing an old Hebrew song about peace and say a few prayers before we dig in to a good meal and some ice cold Canada Dry. In this way each Friday comes round and we all have what to look forward to. The button to look for. And like my Friday nights growing up, you go in with a little excitement and joy and guess what you get back? Friday nights dinners becoming the funnest thing in town, in my little apartment they are anyway, for the kids especially.
A recent Friday night, after all had gone to bed, my wife included, I took a moment after cleaning up the big meal to sit at the kitchen table, the words coming into my head so quick I jotted them in the Notes section of my old iPhone so as not to forget.
But at the end of another long locked-down Covid quarantine day, the end of a long self-isolated night, the living room and dining room lights turned off, the only illumination coming from the Shabbat candles … it all became so clear.
Tradition is about remembering the dead. About preserving their memory. Because once you are confronted with the eventual reality we all must face of becoming orphaned adults all, you are left most profoundly with the traditions your parents shared with you.
These burning candles at the end of a Friday night, they make me think of my mum and dad, my Mum and Aba as we called them (the British and Israeli influences on our family both), and as I write this into my phone because I’m liable to otherwise forget, I am at once tremendously sad for what I can never go back to and comforted by what these two lingering flames can bring.
What to look forward to was one button. Another was yet one more way by which I could remember and honour my wonderful parents.
Shabbat shalom