Alef: The NEXT Conversation

The Best Year

By Emily Comisar

It wasn’t too long ago that I found myself telling someone: “My best Jewish year was 2006.” In 1999 I joined a synagogue, in 2003 I learned how to bake challah, in 2004 I attended Kabbalat Shabbat services every Friday night, and in 2009 I was hired to work at a Jewish organization. Yet 2006, the year that I stopped going to Hillel every Friday night and made the evening my own, remains my best Jewish year.

I don’t even remember what prompted the decision – maybe it was my return from a conference at Camp Ramah Darom in Georgia, or maybe it was just that my New York Times Jewish Cookbook had caught my friend Ian’s eye – but somehow the idea of hosting our own Shabbat dinner wormed its way into the backs of our heads and wouldn’t go away until we did something about it.

Our first Shabbat dinner was intended to be a one-time event. Ian played the role of welcoming host because his kitchen was better than mine. He prepared the dining room and did most of the cooking — I can’t take credit for much more than drinking wine, telling jokes, and maybe chopping a few vegetables. Little did he know that his home was about to become a Friday night revolving door as we quickly realized that the food and the adoptive family were too good to not replicate.

That was how the tradition began. The company constantly changed; significant others came and went, friends popped in and out. Some days we served a table of ten; one time the two of us dipped our bite-size chunks of challah into a giant bowl of guacamole and called it a meal. The only constant was that one thing to which you can never put a name. It was the thing that made you forget all your stress from the week behind and the hectic schedule of the coming weekend. It was that feeling that you were exactly where you were supposed to be. I cannot count how many Shabbat dinners we cooked that year – there were so many.

Upon my college graduation some months later, I relocated to Florence, Italy – a foreign town where I had no Jewish friends and couldn’t buy a challah in the supermercato. The dinners stopped and Friday night became just like any other night of the week. There was studying and celebrating, drinking and eating, sure. I chalked up my lack of that nameless something special to my immersion in a brand new culture. It wasn’t until I returned to the United States that I felt the big, gaping whole in my week.

Now I find myself in a city full to the brim with Jewish people where you can find challah in every supermarket. You can find Hebrew classes, JCCs, synagogues, temples, kosher restaurants, and Jewish colleges. I’ve tried a few of these things on for size, but they all fit a little long in the arm and short in the leg. All that I’m craving now is a home-cooked meal with a few of my friends. I think what I really need, again, is to reclaim my Shabbat.

Read more posts from Issue 18: Friday Night Lights.

Photo by roland, licensed under Creative Commons.

Tags: jewish, NEXT Shabbat, Shabbat

Posted by Sarah, Wednesday, July 28th, 2010, 5:11 pm, Friday Night Lights.