Shabbat Shalom

Back home in St. Louis, we observed the High Holidays like all good Jews. We celebrated Simcah Torah, my favorite holiday, in the fruit-filled basement of my Zadie’s Orthodox Synagogue. When I was almost five, I learned the four questions for Passover; my mother sat me down in front of the Victrola, pulled a record from its jacket (a Rabbi as old as God on the cover), and played the prayers until I had them memorized—in Hebrew.

Not long after Lily’s Tot Shabbat, I was rushing out of the house, late for an appointment when Lily grabbed my sleeve.

“Mommy, we forgot to light them. Again!” She pointed at the Shabbat candlesticks that Galia, my stepmother, gave me as a nudge gift, like the menorah she’d bought me the year before.

I walked into the kitchen and searched for white candles, cloth napkins, and matches. I moved slowly, with ambivalence, reminding myself with every step that I was doing this for Lily, because what I had started as a whim had taken root.

“Lily, it’s time.”

“Okay!” she said climbing on a chair at the dining room table, eyes shining.

“Alright, first, put this napkin on your head.” I put mine on to show her. With my daughter’s small hand in mine, we lit one candle and then the other. We circled our hands in front of our faces, and after the third circle we held them in front of our eyes. Once again, I felt tears gathering as I remembered my Baba, my great-grandmother, so small and old. I was three years old, helping her light the candles.

But then, as suddenly as Baba had appeared, she vanished and I was twelve years old, lying awake, and listening to my parents muffled argument behind closed doors. My mother’s voice rose above the din of the TV. “Well, charity begins at home Milton, and by the way, you’re never here anymore . . . your pals at the Jewish Federation can’t spare you from their meetings once in a while?”