Uncharted landscape. Shifting roles. Chaos and upheaval. Through it all, Shabbos was their anchor. Six Stories

Feeling the Rhythm

By Rachel Weiss

My brother was unrelenting. “You’ve gotta experience a real Shabbos. It’s a day of transcendence. It’ll change your life.”

He was a fresh baal teshuvah studying at Aish in Jerusalem. I was in Manhattan, working grueling hours in a castle-shaped skyscraper.

Week after week, I firmly refused the Shabbos invitations my brother tried to arrange. Eventually, I capitulated. “It’ll be a 25-hour cultural experience,” I told my friends, who couldn’t fathom why I’d voluntarily go to a stranger’s house to get brainwashed about Orthodox Judaism. Truthfully, I was dreading it — I only agreed because I thought it would halt my brother’s hounding (it didn’t; he stopped only after I became fully observant).

The woman who hosted me for Shabbos was a baalas teshuvah my age, in her late 20s. Over the phone, Zahava gave me directions to her Washington Heights apartment and mentioned that I should try to arrive before Shabbos began. I balked when she gave me candlelighting time for that January weekend – who leaves work before 6 p.m.? No, I most certainly wouldn’t take her suggestion to finish work early “just this once.”

I knew enough about kashrus to understand she wouldn’t eat my food, so I offered to buy dessert. “Thanks so much,” she gushed, “but I cooked up a feast. Everything is taken care of.”

But I couldn’t just show up at some stranger’s house without a hostess gift. “Just tell me the name of a kosher bakery and I’ll pick up something on the way.”

“They close early on Friday,” Zahava replied.

Ugh. “So tell me a kosher wine and I’ll buy it.”

“Really, you don’t have to. We have plenty.”

“But I want to.”

Tense silence. “The laws of kashrus and wine are complicated, so please don’t worry about it,” Zahava pleaded.

On Friday night, a good hour after dark, I strolled into her sixth-floor apartment with a fragrant bouquet of flowers — surely no kashrus issues there. Zahava was in the kitchen, flanked by young children, and she took the flowers hesitantly, thanking me. Then she put them in a vase without water. How odd, I thought.

After a few minutes, my curiosity morphed into indignation; I’d spent good money on those flowers. “Let me fill this with water,” I said, reaching for the vase.

“You can’t,” Zahava quickly countered. She tried to explain the beauty of Shabbos and how we abstain from certain activities on this day of rest. But no amount of back-and-forth could help me understand her reasoning. For the remainder of that Shabbos, I watched the flowers slowly wilt, and told myself I would never ever become religious.

Still, there was something serene about the meal. The husband’s singing. The kids dressed up and happy. Warm glances between the couple. Conversation that was deeper than the chatter of a dinner party. They encouraged me to ask about anything I didn’t understand and we spoke until late in the night. But I was guarded, worried that if I enjoyed myself too much, I might have to admit there was legitimacy to this lifestyle.

Any magic I felt dissipated the next morning. The kids were up early and over-sugared on Shabbos cereal. They tested limits; they got time-outs. Because of complications with the Shabbos elevator, we couldn’t walk to a nearby park. I was trapped in a stranger’s apartment, making polite conversation when all I wanted was an escape route.

Whenever I used the bathroom, I turned the light on and off without thinking — after all, why waste electricity? Each time, I flicked the switch up and then down again. Up and down, up and down. Then Zahava initiated a discussion about lights on Shabbos, trying to explain the concept.

More rules? More limitations?

After the lunch seudah, I hid in the guest room, willing the hours to go by, waiting until the sky darkened so I could return to the normal world again.

Two years later, I was living in Jerusalem, studying at Neve. But I found Shabbos challenging even after I’d committed to keeping it. I ate delicious meals with lovely families, but the remaining hours were tedious.

Sitting in my dark dormitory room, I’d wonder why I couldn’t write or paint. How was I supposed to pass all these hours productively? And why didn’t I feel the spiritual transcendence of Shabbos? Where was the menuchah and simchah I kept hearing about?

Flip to the next chapter of my life: I was a newlywed living in a machsan in Har Nof. I spent hours in a cramped kitchen that could barely fit my growing stomach, trying to learn how to cook something more complicated than a quesadilla. I served baked carrots for almost three weeks straight, until my tzaddik of a husband gently mentioned he didn’t care for them.

It took months before I could prepare a single Shabbos seudah on my own. And then several months more until I learned how to reheat food on Shabbos without it burning or drying out.

After eight months of kitchen fiascoes and triumphs, my husband asked if we could stay home for all three Shabbos meals. I reluctantly agreed, mostly to prove to myself that I could actually pull it off.

And I did. But it wasn’t just a culinary accomplishment. In the quiet between the meals, in the comfort of my own space, I actually felt the sweet rhythm of Shabbos for the first time.

The flurry of Erev Shabbos, moving, moving, moving, and then, suddenly, with the flick of a match and a single brachah, everything changed. No more melachah. No more trying to fix what’s not perfect. The uplifting soar of Friday night followed. Shabbos morning, alone in the kitchen prepping lunch, I felt palpable tranquility and a swelling acceptance of the life tests Hashem had dealt me thus far.

Hours later, as light gave way to dark, there was mounting introspection. I internally twinged, remembering moments I regretted from the previous week. Over a simple Shalosh Seudos, my husband and I spoke about where we’d been in the past, and where we wanted to go. Havadalah came too soon; I wanted to hold on longer.

So this is what Shabbos is, I thought. This is what Zahava was trying to show me years ago. She gave up her private haven of Shabbos so I — a total stranger, but a Jewish sister — could experience it for the first time. It took many more Shabbosim, but eventually, my guard dropped and my heart thawed enough for me to truly feel it.