What I Learned at Dinner

The marathon tour of the north and south of California comes to a close. I sit in the center of a table, at a restaurant I haven't been to since my graduation from the fifth grade. One serving of garlic bread comes to the table, then another. The night passes in conversation and preparation to go to the airport, and then, home.

The topic turns to the latest small-town gossip: the family friend who was, at age sixty, fired from his job of twenty-five years. I hear anger, and desperation and frustration. Most of all, I hear betrayal. Not too surprising.

Does Judaism have anything to say about this, they ask. Like, something similar to the shopkeeper's law, another adds. I know not this shopkeeper's law of which they speak. So I ask for elucidation.

You can't go into a store and look around, they tell me, if you have no intention of buying in the first place.

Ah. I know that one, just not by that name. I learned it once, a long time ago, from a peer, a partner in shopping, on Nachalat Binyamin, as I searched for a mezuzah. I was fifteen, and it was what seems like another life.

I'm interested by this party's desire to know what we can or cannot do, according to Judaism, when it comes to business. Are they looking for an entry point into rabbinic wisdom or merely an excuse to justify what they're feeling? The conversation continues.

The waiter comes back, for the fourth or fifth or sixth time, and this time offers dessert. There's the cannoli, and the chocolate cake, and the carrot cake, and something we shouldn't have or want. You see, he already knows of our tribal membership. He's telling us not to order the "Yule Log." I can't imagine anyone ordering a dessert with the name "log," but I see quickly that this man is merely trying to connect - he wants to let us know, in the most subtle of ways, that he too is Jewish.

And we get it, and so does he, and then he defends his recent "lapse of faith," going on to explain that the Yule Log, unlike the other desserts, "isn't kosher." Seeing as there's no rabbi here, I recommend you choose another thing to eat.

Actually...

Actually. Great. I'm outed. We smile. He suggests I bless the cake. Doing all I can to ensure that the fork in my hand does not find it's way to the waiter's left eye, I smile and nod and ask for a decaf coffee.

The conversation continues, and now people have things to share about the Biennial that just swept through this town. It was pretty amazing, especially Shabbat. Oh yeah? Do tell more.

They talk about praying with so many other people - like Beth Israel on the Holidays, they say, but only one, not two seatings. And the rabbi in charge, they say, gave a great sermon. What was it about? Health care, they explain.

I chuckle inside that an hour-long talk focussing on resurrecting Shabbat from the coffers of bad reformations boils down to support for contemporary politics, but wonder what else will be added. Oh well. But they go on, and remember Shabbat, and the initiative, and now the conversation gets interesting.

You see, it's a nice idea, this Shabbat thing, but unrealistic - what with work and society how it is.

But then the man in the corner chimes in, the man who just spent a semester of his own studying in Israel. He keeps Shabbat now, he says. It's about friends and community and stopping and resting. Everyone agrees. If only, they say, we could refocus Jewish life on connections and people and real meaning, Shabbat would easily follow.

I stay quiet through the discussion, taking mental notes in preparation for a long blog entry. But, at the same time, I wonder.

I wonder why it seems to people that Shabbat is so impossible to make real. It doesn't work here in America. Sure, in Israel you can do it, but, here? No way. But I've seen it work - every week! Ha! They're so wrong! Jews make Shabbat come alive all the time in far corners of this western prairy. And so does that man in the corner, and so do so many others.

I wonder if this isn't just the same as that Shopkeeper's Law. It's a question of what we want to do with Torah. Is it a nice book of parables, or is it something tangible, something real, that I can feel and touch and hold? Lo bashamayim hi! It is not in the heavens! No, it is here, and now, and waiting to be held, Moses so carefully reminds us.

And he was so right. But it's only here on earth if we make it so. And it takes a lot of hard work and patience to do that. And it takes listening - listening through long dinners and appreciating people where they are.

We're all at the starting line, each one of us, just waiting for someone to blow the whistle telling us it's OK to go.

Comments

[BFuld]

What makes Shabbat so tough is that people don't understand that it can be different for everyone. Your idea of keeping Shabbat, and my idea of keeping Shabbat are most likely not the same. It has to start with the idea of Shabbat: the separation, the idea of it being special. Ritual will follow when the mindset has taken the leap.

It's not about someone telling us it's ok. It's about someone telling us why.

[phyllis]

i think it's more than just waiting for someone to say "go." i think people are sure that they're not "good enough" "jewish enough" "knowledgeable enough" or whatever it is. they're terrified of doing it "Wrong" and therefore make excuses about how it's just not possible.

p.s. i giggle that the sermon was first distilled down to "health care."

[BZ]

For the 50 million Americans without health insurance, it's not just "politics".

[Josh Levin]

Isn't this your second time on the URJ Shabbat blog?

Mazel Tov.