One of Four

When I first moved to the city, I came here with two suitcases and little else. I had a friend downtown and a rabbi uptown, plus some money in the bank. I knew not what I was getting myself into in the slightest.

I hardly knew the neighborhoods. I didn't know where the grocery stores were, or what blocks to avoid. I had no idea what a bodega was.

Day one, weary eyed from a long flight in from Israel, as I wandered through the JetBlue terminal, only passing through New York a week before my official move-in, I passed a short Jewish girl. In my exhaustion, I somewhat noticed that she was speaking to me, so I gave her the courtesy of stopping before I walked on top of her.

In fact, I knew her. She was an old friend of a friend. Ten years prior, in another life, in the days of acne and ringer tees, she'd been in love with me. But now, she told me, on that day of half-alertness, we'd be friends.

Flash forward two weeks. I was already stationed in a cave of an apartment on the Upper West Side, buying out IKEA to fill the space and learning to love Bed Bath and Beyond. I got a phone call as the week neared its end. It was that girl, inviting me for Shabbat lunch.

In that moment, something beautiful was born.

I had another friend in the city (Actually, Long Island. But he likes trains.). And that friend knew this friend. And soon I made another friend who I met sitting, somewhat cluelessly, on a chair at shul. And within a few months of moving to this crazy island, I had the three of them over for a Shabbat dinner of my own. Three musketeers plus one. The four of us.

I have a ritual at my Shabbat tables. When I was a kid, sitting back in the chair and hating having a napkin in my lap, bored out of my mind listening to adults speak about adult things, I always knew there would be a point in the meal when I would be required to share the best part of my week. Around the table we'd go, each telling a tale of happiness or triumph, something heartening or delightfully unexpected. And, somewhere in my maturing, that ritual passed on to my own table.

That first Shabbat with these new friends, I told them they were required to divulge these deep dark treasures of the week past. And it was somewhat awkward. Who is this guy? What is this? The wicked child's skepticism overcame one's impulse to be the good son on that first night. But around we went. Without sharing, they'd get no dessert.

And it stuck. And so did the friends. My own little Shabbat community. Regularly, if never else during the week, we came together for the food and the singing, the stories and the laughs, complemented with overflowing wine.

One day, the short girl made clear that she wanted a new siddur, one that she could carry with her at all times. I went to my book shelf, and took one down, and brought it to her as a present. But before offering that gift, I took a stamp from my shelf, one which reads "From the Library of David J. Singer" and imprinted those word's on the prayer book's cover. She took it. She uses it.

And time passed. Two years in fact. The changing winds of time swept these three friends off to far away places. In the blink of an eye (or the slow painful passing of seconds), this Shabbat chevra disintegrated - not for lack of want, but, rather, 6,000 miles of physical distance.

You don't expect to, but you can actually mourn community in the same way you would an real person. The absence of a dynamic, of a group, is painful and haunting. You wish for things to go back to "how they were," to a magical time of old.

Nine months heals that pain. We move on. Life continues. Things evolve.

But this morning I got an instant message from that little short girl, from number one of the four of us. She told me how she made Shabbat dinner a few days back and, in her preparation and eating, really missed what we once had. She mourned it. She longed for it. And she told me how, unbeknownst to me, I had given her a gift with those two years of Shabbat shalominess. How she had grown Jewishly at my dinner and lunch table. How my selfish need to share Shabbat with others and show off my cooking was just as much a gift to each of those I had shared it with - that she now looks forward to paying that gift forward in the years ahead.

And in our conversation she reminded me of that siddur I had given her so many months ago. And she reminded me that my name is still imprinted on the cover. She said that it's fitting - that every time she goes to shul she brings me with her.

Community is a beautiful thing. It is the basis of our Jewish experiences. It is all the more crucial for the formation of Shabbat. And time passes, and communities move on. But the caring ones, the good ones, the loving ones, the ones you look forward to being a part of every week, where you share life-changing experiences with amazing people who you love, as much as those communities may physically separate, as much as they may disappear to the point that you wonder if they ever really existed, they never actually cease to be. They stay with you, always.

The memories live on. They provide the inspiration for the day ahead. They remain imprinted on your very soul, and everywhere you go you bring their memory with you, using your experience to recreate what once was, this time with new people in new places, adding new Torah along the way. They go with you, they stick with you, imprinted on your very cover.

Just like that siddur, that prayer book that I gave a friend, one friend of four, at the end of one Shabbat dinner in the city. Those communities are with you, always.

Comments

[RGM]

I love you - and your Shabbat table - from a deep, deep place in my heart. May you be blessed, as you go on your way . . .

[bim]

and here's to many more...

cheers to the place where I learned about the shabbat bride, zmirot, and friendship.

[Debra]

Shabbat shalominess.
What a great term.
I'll be using it.