It’s a Shababa Universe Karina Zilberman can’t wait to tell you all about the 92nd Street Y’s Shababa community. Shababa is not a tot-Shabbat program or a class or a program, Zilberman insists, “Shababa is an approach.” The director of Jewish family life and culture at 92Y explains the ethos of the family engagement model that has grown exponentially since she started it in 2007 as an exercise in spiritual play. From a few families in a corner of the lobby, Shababa Saturdays now often see more than three hundred people streaming into the Y for Karina’s signature Shabbat experience. Mother, fathers, grandparents, and children all gather to sing, dance, and giggle with Zilberman and her puppets Coco and Bubbie Bracha. Shababa Shabbat begins on Fridays, when in addition to parents, many nannies bring children to welcome the Sabbath. Zilberman encourages the women holding wiggling toddlers to find their own inner resting place as she and Coco talk to the crowd. There is also Shababa Bang and Shababa Bakery and Shababa Cares and Shababa Day Away and more in the Shababa universe.
Open for Shabbat “We are not open on Shabbat, we are open for Shabbat,” Zilberman says, explaining that she wants Shababa to bring families together with the higher purpose of being better people. The culture in Zilberman’s native Argentina drew entire families to the grounds of Jewish community centers every weekend to spend time together socializing and participating in sports and Jewish life. “The social aspect is huge [there]. That is what I missed the most,” she says, when she moved to the U.S. in 2000 in the midst of Argentina’s financial collapse. When Zilberman arrived in Miami, she was surprised at how much the American Jewish community seemed to be built around synagogue affiliation rather than the social and recreational life she knew in Argentina. For Zilberman, summer camp comes the closest to that Latin American immersive experience. At Shababa, people come to be with their friends, just as they do in Argentina. They don’t come to network nor do parents drop their kids off for some “Jewish time” and pick them up an hour later. They come for the relationships—with their friends, with their kids, with their souls.
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