I Love Shabbat Dinners

Achi Simhony

Shabbat Table

My Ima was raised in a quite religious and traditional Moroccan family, she was also a Jewish Studies and Hebrew teacher at the only Jewish school in New Zealand, and so all I know about Judaism and the traditions we have, are from her.

Shabbat dinners were celebrated at family home every week. My siblings and I would spend the afternoon cleaning our respective area of the house, while Ima would cook the most delicious Sephardic Shabbat dinner.

We would then all shower and get ready for Shabbat to come in. Shabbat dinners meant loud singing, clapping and dancing to every Shabbat song we knew for at least 25 minutes, blessing the candles, wine and bread and skyping family overseas. I loved Shabbat so much that at age 7 I learnt the Wine blessing by heart for the days my brother was away, to take over. For many years Shabbat dinners were loud and big in our family of six, but over the years the number began declining when one of my sisters moved to Israel, the other sister moved to Amsterdam, later my brother moved out of home, and finally, my parents moved out of the family home to live in a rural farm.

I have now lived out of home for a year and I can count on one hand the number of Shabbat dinners we have had. I don’t think I ever realized how much I would miss having family Shabbat dinners.

I was gifted Shabbat candle-holders for my 21st birthday, yet somehow every week Shabbat seems to slip my mind. For so many years I looked forward to Shabbat, it was an evening where everyone with their own busy lives, would slow down, and we would all take a couple of hours to sing and eat together. Nowadays, Shabbat comes in and only after I think ‘Crap! It’s Shabbat today’. Those candleholders are gathering a thick layer of dust.

There is no conclusion to this story. I am still trying to determine what Shabbat means to me now that I am far away geographically from the Matriarch that carried our Shabbat services and taught me all I know about Judaism. It is now the time for me to determine what I miss from not having Shabbat dinners, and figure out how I can bring Shabbat into my own home. Maybe this is the time to take inspiration from the amazing Zoom Seder we had and try to implement this for Shabbat dinners with my family, however far away we all are from each other.