There it was, a faded sign, a pitch-dark eatery. We were the only patrons

White crag and monkeys and two oceans meeting in a thousand shades of blue. That rock at the foot of Europe: Gibraltar. We were there, in the tiny Jewish community, part British, part Mediterranean, for the weekend.

After a day on the rock, we followed a path of steps hewn into the mountain, down into the Jewish quarter, hoping for supper. Tall houses shadowed each other. There it was, a faded sign, a pitch-dark eatery. We were the only patrons.

We put in our orders and waited. Something else was on the menu. The brother’s story. While the proprietor was mixing and serving behind wooden doors, his brother walked in and fell on a seat.

“I come here because there’s a shiur nearby, and if I go home,” he pointed outside, “I’m going to get comfortable on the couch, and I know myself, I won’t come back for the shiur. This is how I make it work.” Honesty and soup.

He’s a policeman, he told us, manning the fronts of Gibraltar. It’s a duty-free zone, a slip between continents where people try this and that, a huge gambling industry. Lots to keep a cop busy.

“You’re looking for an Ashkenazi minyan, right?” He turned to my husband.

“Whatever, just a minyan,” my husband said.

“We have a Carlebach minyan, too. It’s fun. We do lecha dodi at the beit avot. We attract a young crowd, and we all dance.”

“I’m in,” said my husband.

The man’s face fell. “Not this week. An old member died recently. How can we be joyous in the face of this sadness?”

Our food came and we were thoughtful as we ate.

Do we care like that after an older person passes on? And more than that; are we so uplifted when we sing and dance as to feel it’s a joy we shouldn’t experience in mourning?

There’s a secret here on the rock.

On Shabbos, davening in a big, old shul, with endless gold filigree on the ceiling, I saw a sign: Kiddush being held in honour of so-and-so’s sixty-second birthday. In the courtyard, there was schnapps and even cholent, and the Gibraltarians toasted each other to life.

The 62-year-old gentleman was wreathed in smiles.

I thought of the average Shabbos in our shul back home, two bar-mitzvahs, several kiddushim. Birthdays?

We looked for our meal hosts, a friend of an uncle. Leibowitz. They davened in another shul.

“What’s his name?” helpful people asked.

When we finally found Mr. Leibowitz, he said, “You should’ve asked for David. They know me by my name. I’m David.”

When we left the sweet peninsula, we wondered if we could ever learn, relearn the secret, or if our community had grown so big, so sprawling, so fractioned, we were living in different proportions.

The fallouts of growth. Victims of our own success…