The week sometimes ends in a rush of tasks and projects yet to be finished. For my wife and I, sometimes the intention of having a reflective Friday night, perhaps even a Shabbat dinner, is thwarted by the week’s unfinished business. For me, for us, we haven’t made it a habit to celebrate Shabbat. So, sometimes the best way to do something you’ve been meaning to do is to apply some positive peer pressure. I met with Pursue to reconnect to the social justice component of Judaism that I’ve always identified with, that has allowed me to find Jewish community wherever I may be living, and wound up volunteering to host a Pursue Shabbat dinner. So, unfinished business or not, it was time to get serious about Shabbat.
We hosted six other people in our small S.F. apartment; we made sweet potato and black bean chili, a spicy peanut broccoli stir-fry, and our guests brought challah, wine, and a vegetable platter, cookies, and cheese and crackers. We started off with small talk – where are you from, what do you do, how did you find out about this, etc… but by dinner, we were knee deep into wonderful conversation about social justice, social entrepreneurship, policy, political and philosophical ideologies, resource consumption, and what being Jewish, or rather, how all of this and all of our talking, connected to being Jewish. In a short span of three or so hours, I had made six new friends, met six people that inspired me with their thoughts, actions, characters, and we created a community grounded in what’s great about Judaism – creation of community, adaptation of tradition and ritual, connecting Jewish identity to actions for social justice and equality. Our diverse group was comprised of teachers, consultants, grad students, computer programmers, and education reformers, and all of us were strangers to San Francisco, hailing from a varied cross-section of the country and globe: Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland, New York, Argentina, and Israel.
During this Shabbat, we all individually decided to reflect and mark the separation between the regular work week and Shabbat. With risk comes the opportunity for great reward, and on this evening, we all risked the potential awkwardness of showing up at a stranger’s house and we were all rewarded by leaving with a new community of friends.
This Shabbat dinner I was reminded that every second counts, and that in interpreting the most basic of rituals and traditions, we can find great meaning and purpose. I relearned that the willingness of a group of dynamic, creative, and well-intentioned people can immediately generate a community inspired to live fully and to carry forth with work that will allow all people to live fully. For celebrating Shabbat is living fully – we eat, we rest, we reflect on all we have accomplished, what it means, and how we shall proceed once our respite and reflection gives way to the next week of work.
David Feinberg is an urban planner/educator living in San Francisco. As part of Pursue’s Social Change Shabbat series, he hosted a dinner in his home on January 28, 2011.
