SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Some Jewish men, Chasidim in particular, go to the mikvah (ritual bath) on Friday afternoon. It is a lovely custom, for mikvah not only symbolizes a spiritual cleansing, it also offers a few moments of private time to reflect, to relax, to disengage from the past week, to think about the coming experience of Shabbat. However, if their wives are home frenziedly preparing for Shabbat, caring for eight kids, it’s not altogether fair, nor is it in the spirit of the day. Similarly, in those families where a woman has the leisure to sit in a beauty parlor for three hours on a Friday afternoon, while her husband is frantically winding up a hard week, there might be a better distribution of responsibility so that a man will have the time to come a bit more restfully into Shabbat.
Before Shabbat begins, it is a custom to put some money into a pushke, a charity box. Nowadays, tzedakah (charity) being a bigger business, what with appeals, dinners, guests of honor, checks and IRS deductions, this custom of slipping a few coins into a slotted tin box is of less impact. Yet, it is a sweet thing for children to observe, to do, and to learn from. And it’s one more act associated with the special preparations for Shabbat.
Some people also are able to set aside time to meditate, or study quietly before Shabbat. These are wonderful ways to prepare spiritually for the day. My husband often studies his daily quota of Talmud right before Shabbat. Somehow, I never have the time or discipline to distance myself this way until the very last minute. Perhaps this is my conditioning as a woman who, like most women, has been largely responsible for the physical preparations in the home, and who gleans the sense of sacred-ness and holiness from those endeavors; but for those who can get themselves spiritually as well as physically ready, there is a different foretaste altogether of Shabbat.
Inasmuch as one should review the Biblical portion of the week at least once before it is read in shul on Shabbat morning, this is an excellent subject for quiet study on a Friday afternoon.
HACHNASAT ORCHIM—HOSPITALITY
Although tradition requires that Jews fulfill the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim whenever the opportunity or need presents itself, for most of us modern urbanites Shabbat and holidays seem to be the preferred times for inviting guests. There is more time to spend leisurely with old friends, and more time to get to know acquaintances better. In addition, Shabbat and holidays are experiences of sacred time and of family tone. Those are added gifts to share with people who are lonely or unconnected to family and/or tradition.
And finally, hachnasat orchim is a wonderful mitzvah for children: a) it is a concrete model from which to learn the art of sharing; b) children have an opportunity to become acquainted with all different kinds of people, including non-Jews; c) it reminds them, periodically, that they are not the center of the universe....
Like all good things, we must learn to balance openness and sharing with our own needs for privacy and rest. Like all good things, we must plan ahead to fulfill this mitzvah. Erev Shabbat is too late to invite guests for that evening, but it is a good time to think ahead and act. It is easy to invite people we like; but, occasionally, we have to extend ourselves and invite those who otherwise might not have, yet would greatly appreciate, the experience of a family Shabbat. Most often, they, too, become our friends. In other words, Shabbat is a great occasion for enlarging one’s circle of friends.
ONE FAMILY’S PREPARATIONS
Preparation for Shabbat fits Parkinson’s Law, and then some. On several occasions, in the year 1981, I kept a diary of our own preparations. In comparing them, I find it almost hard to believe it’s the same household. I have selected two here: one, during the time we had a live-in housekeeper who had been with us almost a year; the other, with the family fending pretty much for itself.
SHABBAT I
On Thursday and Friday I called the butcher, the baker, the fish store, the vegetable man, and gave them my orders, most of which were delivered. I made up a menu and talked it over with my housekeeper. When I returned home on Friday afternoon, everything had been done, except for the following: setting the lights and the Shabbos clock, picking up the bakery order, fish order, and some last-minute supermarket items, checking the tissues and towels in the bathroom, baking a homemade cake, chilling the wine, putting up the kettle of water, burning in the candles’ bottoms, prodding the kids, getting the blech set up, and everyone showering, polishing shoes, and dressing. All of these tasks were divided, and the last-minute tensions were kept to a bare minimum. (Without a little hysteria, it just wouldn’t be a real erev Shabbat.)
I can’t say that I missed the cooking, cleaning, and setting up, no matter how much it heightened the difference between week work and Shabbat. If someone else fills my house with Shabbat cooking odors and spanking cleanliness, that’s just fine. Several years ago, I was assigned to supervise a lab that officially closed at 4:00 P.M. on Fridays. I ordered most of my food ready-made, and would stay as late as possible toward closing time. This meant that on certain Fridays of the year I didn’t get home until twenty minutes before Shabbat. I remember once coming home to find my candles lit for me. It was a half hour before Shabbat, and I couldn’t figure out who had done it. Yitz had picked me up at school so I knew it wasn’t he. The children were all under seven, so it couldn’t have been any of them. It turned out that the housekeeper, who had been with me only three weeks and had seen me light candles during the previous weeks, wanted everything to be just perfect for Shabbat when I arrived home.
I recall my father was very unhappy about my Friday-afternoon routine that entire year, with so little personal preparation on my part. He felt that it just wasn’t the same, and that I wasn’t creating for the children the proper memories and associations and smells of Friday in a traditional Jewish home, memories my mother certainly gave me. I wasn’t quite liberated at that time, and it would never have occurred to me to say, even respectfully, to my father, “If you think it’s so wonderful, how come men don’t take over the preparations for Shabbat?” All I could tell him was that my appreciation of Shabbat after a hard day at work was as great as it was staying home all day and preparing. I still feel that way, even though I know that our children don’t get the same flavor of the day unless all of us are involved.
SHABBAT II
The second Shabbat was somewhat more harried. It went something like this: On Wednesday, at 10:00 P.M., I call the wife of my vegetable man. (A little thing like having a vegetable man take telephone orders—at night, no less—can save at least a hundred hours a year.) He will leave my order on the porch, and I’ll leave him an approximate check in the mailbox. The temperature is just right and the produce will hold until I get home. Thank God that Juno, the dog down the block, doesn’t scavenge fruit and vegetables.
Thursday morning: I prepare my menu. I should have done it on Wednesday because I forgot to order mushrooms and Mr. I. is already out with his vegetable truck. Here’s my menu:
Friday dinner
Saturday lunch
Vegetable soup
Grapefruit
.....
.....
Tossed salad
Tsholent with brisket
.....
Chicken
Parve tsholent (meatless for the vegetarians)
Baked salmon (main course for the vegetarians)
Tofu with mushrooms and onions (for the vegetarians)
Potato kugel
Cole slaw
Sweet carrots
Tomato/cucumber salad
.....
.....
Tea Seven-layer cake
Tea Brownies, rhubarb pie
For fifteen years I prepared five- or six-course meals for Friday night, starting with fish or fruit in season, soup, salad, main course, dessert, tea and pastry. That’s how my mother did it, so that’s how I did it. Most Orthodox families still eat that way on Shabbat. About eight years ago, Jane Brody, health columnist of The New York Times, wrote an article that made me ask myself whether it is actu
ally a commandment from Sinai to push six courses on the table. So we cut that first course, and the dessert, and surprise! It’s still a “Shabbos meal.” I’ve even found that those summer Shabbat lunches at which I serve dairy have, more or less, taken on the feeling of a traditional meal.
Next, I call my kosher butcher. He’ll deliver my chicken and meat at 6:00 P.M. on his way home (I can’t take a chance with that mutt, Juno). “Very clean,” I tell him. “No feathers, please, and cut into eighths.”
Three of our children are vegetarians. If I wait until Friday, I’ll forget them and they’ll be stuck with hard-boiled eggs for Shabbat, so I call the fish and the health food stores (for tofu) to put my orders aside for tomorrow afternoon, when Moshe will pick everything up.
Thursday night: I had planned to do a bit of Shabbat preparation after dinner. But I am too tired, having put in a full day’s work. So, after we clean up the dairy dishes (there’s no law about this, but it’s customary to serve dairy on Thursday evening; it heightens the taste for chicken and meat on Shabbat), I announce that everyone must come home immediately after school tomorrow and we will all do the job together. Working woman and all, I am still pretty much in charge of the whole plant and its day-to-day functioning. David says he has to go to the library for an hour after school, so he does his job—vacuuming and dusting—on Thursday night. He knows he’s getting off easy.
Friday morning: I call the bakery to get my order ready. There are some compensations in shopping for a large family. The clerk in the bakery wouldn’t take a phone order for two challot, but for six loaves plus, everything will be ready for whichever Greenberg comes by, usually at an hour when the challot are all gone.
Friday morning: the cleaning woman comes. She will stay for half a day, washing the bathrooms, changing the linens, and cleaning the kitchen, only to have us come home after she leaves and mess the whole thing up.
Friday afternoon is countdown, with mostly cooking to be done. Goody and I are the first ones home. After a snack, she brings the TV into the kitchen, plunks it down on the counter, turns on her favorite “soap,” and begins to polish the silver wine cups, challah plate, challah knife, and serving pieces. What with Luke and Laura (of the soap opera General Hospital) inching romantically toward each other, Goody’s work gets done only during commercials. Then Goody starts peeling potatoes—five pounds for kugel and tsholent. Her friend Seth has just come over to visit, and he sweetly offers to help, so we give him another peeler. If only his mother could see him … Moshe takes the car and goes out to do the errands: the bakery, the fish store, the health food store, the cleaners, and so forth. Deborah is baking brownies and a pie, and preparing popcorn for her friends, who will visit during Shabbat. Meanwhile, with Deborah’s help I have made the vegetarian soup, cleaned and put the chickens into the oven—ignoring the few feathers the butcher missed—and prepared the two tsholents—one with meat and bones, the other, vegetarian. I have also called my guests, to inquire whether any of their children are vegetarian (and really to remind them of our date tomorrow, since I haven’t spoken to them in a month). Goody and I feed the rest of the potatoes into the food processor for the kugel. I don’t feel like hassling an onion, so I cut off the ends and throw it into the processor with its skin on. But it doesn’t work, and I have to scoop that one out, take another onion, and do it the right way, tears and all. I mutter aloud my old motto, “Haste works only seventy-five percent of the time,” and Goody cleverly tells me those are still better odds than “Haste makes waste.” J.J. takes out the garbage, sets the Shabbos clock, and begins to set the dining-room table. He gets as far as cleaning my papers off the table into a carton, spreading out a new cloth and placing on it the stack of dishes. Then he vanishes. As I come to set up my candlesticks a few moments later, I see that he has not finished the job. I set out the plates and goblets, also the challah plate, knife, challah cover, and wine cups so at least the table will look Shabbosdik. I save the rest for later. If I remember, J.J. will hear from me.
The phone rings; it’s my mother-in-law calling to wish me a good Shabbos. I should have called her first, but I was waiting for her son to come home to speak to her as well. She gets upset when he has to be out of town for Shabbat. He’s scheduled to arrive from Detroit one hour before Shabbat. If all goes well, he’ll be home forty minutes before candlelighting. It’s pretty hairy; there are often long lines for taxis on a Friday afternoon, so we’ve arranged for the local car service to be waiting there for him. His plane is actually five minutes early; he calls from the airport to find out where to meet the driver. So far, so good, I think to myself. Everything, except J.J., seems to be working.
Ninety minutes to candlelighting. I call my parents to wish them a good Shabbos. Moshe comes back with the last-minute groceries, which he proceeds to put away. He’s hungry, and heats up some spaghetti for himself, and then starts to tip the string beans, J.J.’s job. I prepare the fish and the tofu/mushroom/onion dish. All four burners are going. My sister calls to say hello. Some of the kids have gone up to shower and shampoo and dress. What’s still left? I check my menu and my Shabbat countdown list taped to the inside of my pantry closet: cook the string beans, and the carrots, prepare the salad, boil a kettle of water, prepare the tea essence, set up the blech, and turn on necessary lights. Deborah and I split the tasks. We scratch coleslaw from the menu. No time. We’ll open a jar of pickles instead. David walks in, famished, and despite the pressure of time, he sits down to a bowl of dry cereal and a leisurely reading of the cartoons on the box. I prod him along, give him a speech about how he shouldn’t save library work for Friday, and I tell him to go quickly upstairs. He grins and says, “You know I’ll be ready before you.” “Right, Flash,” I answer, and up he goes. J.J. saunters in. Our neighbor was leaving for a ski weekend and good-natured J.J. spotted him through the window and went out to help him load the car. I want to say, “You should help your mother first,” but instead I give him a long look and we call it a draw: Knowing how slowly he moves, I tell him to forget his other jobs and go up and get ready.
There is no time to clean up the cooking and baking utensils, so Deborah removes the racks and loads the dishwasher cavity with dirty pots and pans, which we will tackle tomorrow night. Dreadful, I say to myself, but I will put it out of my mind for the next twenty-five hours.
I go up to shower and dress while Deborah stays down to clean off the counters. I wanted to be down when Yitz walked in the door, but the timing didn’t work. While I’m upstairs he arrives, calls out hello to everyone, makes two phone calls, slits open two days of mail, and sets aside the personal mail to read later in a moment of leisure. He unpacks his suitcase, polishes his shoes, showers, and shaves. We’ll talk later. The best water-saver in the world is the erev Shabbat shower. Seven people, and the water isn’t cold yet. It may not be the most relaxing shower in the world, but it works. As I dress quickly, I think about my cousin by marriage, a professor of social work, who goes to the mikvah in Forest Hills every Friday afternoon; then he comes home and helps his wife prepare for Shabbat. Now that’s the way to do it.
I call everyone on the intercom. Ten minutes left to candlelighting. J.J. can’t polish his Shabbat shoes because he can’t find them. His father tells him to reconstruct. Sure enough, last week our guests used J.J.’s room, and J.J. left his shoes in the attic bedroom beneath Moshe’s bed. No matter what, J.J. will be late. We’ve tried punishing, bribing, ignoring. They all have about the same effect. We try to stay cool.
I put on my long skirt, wrap a scarf around my head, which is still wet, and go down for the last-minute details. There’s a smell of gas in the kitchen: the kettle of water boiled over and extinguished the flame. I check the lights again and put on the front-porch light for after-dark visitors. Yitz takes care of the upstairs lights and checks to see if there are tissue and fresh towels in each bathroom. He hurries everyone along.
The intercom sings out, “Five minutes to licht-bentschen” (Yiddish for blessi
ng the candles). The tension mounts. Am I the only one who feels it?
David is the first one down, all ready except for blazer in one hand and blazer button in the other. “You forgot to sew my button on during the week.” “I can’t remember everything,” I tell him; “you have to remind me during the week. Besides, next week I’m going to teach you how to sew by hand.” (He knows how to machine-sew.) He reminds me that he already knows, and has sewed on his own buttons in camp. “So why don’t you do it yourself?” “Please,” he says. Who can resist that? I take the needle and thread and tell David to fix the blech. There’s no place to set down the hot pots for a moment, so he takes today’s Times, places it on the counter and puts the pots on top, spoiling pages 1 and 2 for me, which I haven’t yet read.
“Thirty seconds to candlelighting. Who’s ready to light candles with me?” “I’m coming,” Goody calls back on the intercom, but she doesn’t get there in time. David is the only one with me as I light the candles. Afterward, I heave a sigh of relief, give David a kiss, and feel the stress and strain of the week begin to drain out of my body.
There is hardly a thing we could not have done earlier to ease the pressure. We have fallen into bad ways. I hope our children will do it differently, like their grandparents, ready by midmorning. Nevertheless within ten minutes, everyone else is down, on their way to shul with Yitz or ready to daaven (pray) at home with me. Once again, we’ve made it....
Celebrating Shabbat
SHABBAT
How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household Page 5