Shabbat Shalom (Had to ask Liz if this was right?!?)

So, right now, Liz and I are on a train, heading through the countryside toward Krakow, where we are staying for three nights. As I look out the window, I can’t help but be amazed by how much the scenery reminds me of driving south through Ohio and into West Virginia. All the farmland, the yellowed fields of harvested wheat, the mix of birch trees and evergreens. The flat, flat land dotted by hills upon which fat black and white cows graze. It’s so familiar and so foreign. Which is how I’ve been feeling this entire trip. Even who I am – how I feel to myself – feels so familiar and so foreign. I have a lot of out of body experiences. I feel myself getting up, walking, talking, and writing, but I don’t feel really connected with any of it – as though my spirit is hovering above my body, gazing down and out into the unknowable future.

I should also say that right now is the month of preparations leading up to Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year. Now, I do not know this because I am a faithful, observant Jew. Rather, I’m a very, very bad Catholic. But this is what I learned when I attended my first Shabbos dinner last Friday night.

Rabbi Schudrich had invited us to attend Friday night services and dinner. That afternoon, we worked and did laundry, and fretted over what to wear to such an event.

“Do we need to have our shoulders covered?” Liz asked.

I freaked out. Our shoulders covered? I didn’t even consider all the rules!

I combed my closet for the sort of dress a “nice, Jewish girl” would wear and chose the one that I had opted to wear on my first visit to Menorah Park, the Jewish retirement community where I’d been conducting research since March. It didn’t seem to offend any of the people there, so it should work here, was my logic.

I got dressed and Liz began preparing us a nice salad – spinach and tomatoes and corn and bacon. Bacon!

Liz started to laugh. “Denise!” she said. “Do you realize we are eating bacon before our Kosher dinner?”

“That is so weird!” I said, remarking that I hadn’t bought it intentionally. That maybe it was due to some sort of unconscious fear. “I will never give up bacon,” I said.

We ate our bacon-dressed salad and then proceeded to leave the house.

When we arrived at the synagogue, we were greeted by a man dressed in traditional Orthodox Jewish garb. I thought he was Hassidic, but Liz informed that, no, he was Orthodox, and, again, I was reminded how ignorant of my “background” I really am. He let us in and said that it’d be best if we sat upstairs. I was super grateful that Liz had given me an extra scarf for some added modesty.

We quickly wandered through a line of pews that faced out onto the main floor. We grabbed our seats and then hunched over the rail like little children spying on their parents.

Below, men in all sorts of traditional dress, suits, casual clothes, wide-brim hats, yamukels, and long satin robes greeted each other. Some prayed silently by themselves, while others socialized.

In the pew next to us, a woman marched in place, scratching her head over and over. “Is she praying?” I asked Liz. “Or is it like a mental illness or something?”

Liz confirmed that it was most likely a sort of prayer.

Then the cantor started his chanting. And the congregation followed behind in a low hum, with call and response in Hebrew. I was completely lost, but also completely entranced. It was amazing how formal, yet how random the whole ceremony was. While everyone was praying together, their unique movements and physical distance from each other seemed to heighten their loneliness.

Rabbi Schudrich appeared downstairs, a long linen robe with tassels around his shoulders, and he began banging on a lecturn, making recitations throughout the cantor’s singing.

Liz and I did our best to sit, stand, turn, cover our eyes – whatever the other women were doing. It struck me that there were only 25 or so people attending the service. I wondered if it was because most Jews in Warsaw aren’t Orthodox? Or was everyone on vacation? Or were there really just no Jews to be found?

After the service, Liz and I quickly ran out to the front of the synagogue for a cigarette. As we stood there, puffing away, the other congregants began pouring out. “NO! No! NO!” a man shouted at us. “If the Rabbi sees you!”

Liz and I looked at each other, confused. “We aren’t allowed to smoke on Shabbos?” I asked.

“No! No!” said a woman.

I quickly put out my cigarette and decided to make no further swift moves for the rest of the evening. As we walked, the older participants didn’t seem to happy with our presence.

We followed the group to a small building, inside which were two tables prepared in a sort of long T, covered with linens. Liz and I huddled in a corner and waited for the Rabbi, hoping he’d give us instructions so that we didn’t make further fools of ourselves. When he saw us, he seemed pleased that we had made it and asked us to sit next to him at the head of the table. Even this was stressful! I wasn’t sure whether to sit in the chair next to him, or one over – or what was allowed! And I kept patting him on the back, which also freaked me out, because I’m pretty sure women aren’t allowed to touch Rabbis or something.

The Rabbi stood at the table and began chanting in Hebrew as he fiercely cut through some Challah bread and then distributed grape juice. Then we were ordered to wash our hands in the nearby bathroom. Again, even this was stressful, as people in the line continually eyed Liz and I – strangers in a strange place. When we approached the sink, we noticed a cup collecting water from the tap. Do we wash our hands in the cup or turn on the sink? My brain was really starting to hurt.

Back in the dining room, the food was being served – a plethora of kosher delights, like egg salad, potato salad, two types of herring, eggplant and zucchini, grated carrots. It was all amazing looking. Worried not to take too much, I put about a teaspoon of each item on my plate.

“I’ve seen a bird eat more,” the Rabbi said.

“Eat! Eat!” he said. “You don’t leave here hungry!”

Liz and I piled egg salad and herring onto our plates.

After the first course came more chanting and then some soup and then more chanting and singing again.

During the meal, the Rabbi was having an intense conversation with the man next to him – an Israeli man who’d lived in Warsaw for many years. I tried to eavesdrop, but had no luck, when the man turned to me and started joking about the Rabbi dining with a very important person just the week before. The Rabbi rolled his eyes, nodded his head and then said, “Yeah, I had Shabbos dinner with Madonna,” he smiled.

“Madonna! Like thee Madonna? Why?” I asked.

The Rabbi went on to explain that Madonna had been in town for a concert and her Kabbalah Center had organized some sort of Friday Shabbat. It was his job to oversee the catering and make sure everything was kosher – which didn’t quite seem to click with Madonna’s extremely restrictive diet. But, he said, they made it work. And it was fine.

Then the Rabbi interrupted his story to address the group with a sort of homily. That is when he said that this night we were celebrating marked the beginning of the month in which we prepare for Rosh Hashanah. We do this, he said, by adding little things to our daily ritual – because it is in the little things we do everyday through which the greater things happen. Baby Steps, I thought. I can do that.

When he was finished speaking, I asked the Rabbi what little thing I could do every day in order to prepare for my own new beginning. “Read Psalm 27 everyday,” he said.

The meal continued with a main course, a desert course, and plenty more singing and chanting, when, by 11:45, Liz and I were ready to head home. Before I left, the Rabbi asked if I’d heard from my husband. “Only the lawyer,” I said.

He smiled at me warmly. “How long were you together?” he asked.

“Over nine years.”

“You must have been through a lot together.”

As I wagged my head, I started to cry. It was the first time I’d cried in days. As the group continued singing, the tears just came. And I tried to remind myself – little steps to a new beginning. It will be OK.