Winning Piece - Essay

by Tova Weiss, Michigan

My family’s Shabbat table is a combination of a school cafeteria and a health food restaurant. With a rowdy family of seven and a varying assortment of guests, there always seems to be at least three unrelated conversations taking place simultaneously. In the midst of it all, my mom places mismatched yet scrumptious vegan delicacies on the table. In my household, the whole family takes part in cooking for Shabbat, which means lots of courses and a slight lack of cohesion between the different dishes. After everyone’s done (over-) eating, we stagger away from the table to sleep, read, play board games, or talk. Our Shabbbos guests’ Jewish backgrounds vary widely. But the one thing they all have in common is that their own Shabbos traditions are different from ours.

Some of our guests haven’t had a Shabbat meal in years. Others have been celebrating Shabbat their whole life. They celebrate by napping. By going out with friends. By watching TV for hours on end. By going to synagogue. By enjoying a soft, fluffy chunk of Challah. Some of them do all of those things, others one or two, while still others celebrate in entirely different ways.

There’s an estimated 15.7 million Jews in the world, and Shabbat means something a little different to every single one of them. For some of them, it doesn’t really mean anything at all — just another day of the week. For other Jews, their entire life shuts down Friday night and doesn’t restart again until sundown on Saturday.

Each of us builds our own version of Shabbos based on countless factors. Our upbringing, our beliefs. How flexible our schedules are, how comfortable we feel being Jewish publically. Where we live, who we know. Everything. The way someone’s Shabbos looks isn’t just a sheer roll of the dice—it’s a result of an entire lifetime of influences, experiences, growth and difficult decisions.

On the surface, I celebrate Shabbat the way I do because it’s how I was raised. Growing up in a Modern Orthodox household, I’ve never experienced a week that didn’t end in a 25 hour span without using electronics, writing, drawing, cooking or driving. For me, Friday night simply wouldn’t be Friday night without the flames of two tea lights flickering and glowing from the candlesticks in the center of the dining room table. My family keeps Shabbat, so as a member of the household it’s only natural that I do as well.

For me, though, Shabbos goes far beyond a long list of mandates for what not to do. It goes beyond going to synagogue or enjoying a meal with my family. Shabbat is the one day in the week where I’m able to set aside all the anxiety and fear that plagues me the rest of the week and just breathe. Recently, it seems like with each week de-stressing feels progressively more impossible than the week before. News sources pour out headlines so horrific they sound almost satirical. The sky washes red from reflections from wildfires thousands of miles away. Friends and family and entire communities fear for their lives and safety. Shabbat is the only time I don’t feel the weight of a rapidly deteriorating world on my shoulders. For me, that emotional recharging is one of the most significant reasons I celebrate Shabbat the way I do.

A secular Jew likely wouldn’t be able to fathom cutting out electricity for all of Shabbos the way I do. On the other hand, a Hasidic Jew would quite possibly be scandalized by my family’s Shabbat dinner conversation topics (politics, school, work—you name it).

The difference between the Shabbat observances of that secular Jew and the Hasid would be even more drastically striking. Perhaps the secular Jew just spends their day at work, cooking dinner, going to the movies. In stark contrast, the Hasid might spend the entire day learning Torah, davening, and eating with the members of his synagogue. The two people’s entire lifestyles are night and day. You’d know that just from hearing about their relationships with Shabbat. At a certain point, you might even wonder—is there even anything in common between their Shabboses? Can you really say that the two of them are celebrating the same holiday, if they’re celebrating in such radically different ways?

For each of us, our Shabbats are a product of who we are. A product of the innumerable delicate threads in every color of the rainbow woven together to create the intricate, unique tapestries we call identities. At first glance, there are probably not many similarities between a secular teen’s tapestry in comparison to that of a Hasidic rabbi; the details are all different, and the color schemes might even be total opposites. Upon closer inspection, though, the threads have the same exact silky feel. The background has the same vibrant pattern. Jewish is embroidered across the front of each of their identity tapestries. Maybe the Hasid has Jewish scripted in Yiddish, while the teen’s tapestry has Jewish written in English—but at the end of the day, it’s just the same concept inscribed in different fonts.

Our Shabbats are a product of our identities, and if Jewish is incorporated into your identity, then your Shabbat comes from the same exact place that millions of other people’s Shabbats are born from. Each person’s version of Shabbat tells a story about themself. As we observe how different Jews celebrate (or don’t celebrate) Shabbat, we have the incredible chance to read countless different stories from a diverse, dynamic community of Jews from every walk of life. And as we pick and choose and create Shabbat traditions to develop an observance that feels authentic and right for ourselves, we’re privileged with the opportunity to write our very own stories.