In an automatic “California’s-in-an-energy-crisis” reflex, I absentmindedly reached for the light switch as I left the bathroom.
My hands searched the wall, groping the smooth wallpaper for that inevitable source of electricity, until I felt something — metallic, rectangular and cage-like — blocking my fingers’ path to the switch. Frustrated, I turned around to inspect.
Ah, that’s right, I thought. It’s Shabbat.
A clever invention, a sort of “light switch fence,” was temporarily installed to protect the switch from the more secular dinner guests (such as myself) in the rabbi’s home.
I left the bathroom — door ajar, lights on — and resumed my seat at a table near the kitchen.
It was my first Shabbat dinner in a rabbi’s house, and already I could feel the uncomfortable, unspoken barriers — like the barrier keeping my fingers from the switch — between the secular and the religious.
A week earlier, I had received an e-mail from friends with a forwarded invitation for Shabbat dinner at Chabad.
It said “Richmond Torah Center-Chabad: Friday Night in Morocco. Join us … for an enjoyable Shabbat dinner featuring Moroccan cuisine. Learn about the Jews of Morocco.”
I didn’t know what to think. I had been to Chabad a few times for Yom Kippur services, but that was the extent of my experience.
My friends, who like myself, come from a Moroccan-Jewish family, insisted that we check it out.
I have to admit, I was curious. Not just to see the Chabad version of couscous and Moroccan-style chicken (which, by the way, was quite successfully and tastefully done by the rabbi’s wife), but also to catch a glimpse inside of a religious community that, to me, always seemed distant and unapproachable.
As a little girl, I watched Orthodox Jews walking around Jerusalem. I wondered what their lives were like, and what they thought of me. They would walk right past me in the shuk, occasionally casting an obligatory look, so as not to run into me in the crowded marketplace.
I watched them walking to synagogue in Palo Alto, whispering in Yiddish in the Jewish quarter of Paris, and wandering through the streets of Santa Fe, N.M., where their distinct black silhouettes contrasted sharply with the adobe architecture of the Southwest.
I always watched from a distance.
Once, at my sister’s wedding party, I was introduced to a Chabad rabbi. I reached out my hand to shake his. Because I am a woman, he refused.
To his credit, he smiled at me apologetically and said, “Don’t be offended. It’s just our way.”
I was infuriated.
And yet, there I was, fumbling for the light switch in the rabbi’s San Francisco home, realizing how little effort I had made to understand “their way.”
Approximately 50 guests were crowded around long tables spread to all corners of the brightly lit living room. I could tell by their clothes and covered heads that most of them were Orthodox Jews, members of Chabad.
They smiled at our table. They seemed happy to have new and young guests, even though it was obvious we were not particularly religious. We drank sweet wine to ease our minor discomfort.
They didn’t judge us.
At the center of the great labyrinth of tables sat the Chabad rabbi, dressed in a traditional Moroccan gown. He ate, laughed and occasionally broke out in song.
As the evening progressed and the plates were cleared, tea and pastries were served. The guests pulled their chairs around the rabbi, and he began to tell story after story of famous Moroccan rabbis and their pious miracles.
I began to feel comfortable, enjoying the atmosphere they were gladly providing us with. I was grateful for the way they effortlessly melted the layers of a wall I had always assumed stood between “us” and “them.”
The “light switch fence” no longer seemed an imposing barrier. It was simply a gentle reminder, a silent, modern adaptation to bridge the gap between Orthodox and secular.
Michal Lev-Ram, born in Israel, is a journalism major at SFSU who can be reached at [email protected].