Faith, Challah and Finding My Way Back to Judaism
Friday nights in my household have always been sacred. Candles stand in the centre of the table, always in pairs, waiting to be lit to welcome the Shabbos. My mother, stressed, runs around the kitchen making sure everything’s ready before guests arrive. An array of colourful dishes sit on the bench. Challah rests in the oven sending sweet aromas through the house, beckoning the promise of rest.
It’s a night filled with family, friends, community and food — lots of food.
In Jewish culture, Shabbos (or Shabbat) is the day of rest, beginning at sundown on Friday with the lighting of candles and ending when three stars appear on Saturday evening. We say a blessing over wine and break the challah, sprinkling a pinch of salt over the freshly baked loaves, before taking our seats and tucking into the meal. We’re surrounded by friends, family, strangers, jews and non-jews alike.
I admire the way my mother opens her home to anyone and everyone who wishes to learn or be part of the experience. She insists on reading prayers in English as well as Hebrew, particularly when joined with new people at our table.
We turn off our phones, wash, and pull out our nicer clothes, hopping in the car to attend the Kabbalat Shabbat service. I never particularly liked going to shul (synagogue), but the Friday night service was different — the melodies and harmonies of cantors filled the space like a cloak of community, sending us home with a feeling of hope and connection.
Now that I’ve settled into a routine away from my childhood home, when I can, I make challah. This slightly sweet, soft bread recipe was given to me when I moved away. It shifts from week to week as measurements are made from the heart, people, and ingredients I have on hand. It has been at the centre of every Shabbos meal for as long as I can remember.
Bringing this tradition into my new flat and life in Wellington has become somewhat of a hyper fixation, an action of love and routine. Often battling the clock to finish the dough on a Friday morning before attending the tasks of the day, the finished dough sits patiently in my room rising while I go about my day. Waiting for me to return to it later.
Shabbat continues to be a time the house is filled with people, stories and community.
Art / Luka Maresca
My idea of faith and spirituality lives within these moments. It doesn’t exist in an idea of God, or the concept of a ‘promised homeland’. It exists in the feeling of togetherness, in food and familiar blessings of peace and gratitude, and in the minchagim (personal customs) we create for ourselves and pass through our family.
There’s a built-in questioning in Jewish practice. We’re taught to challenge and ask why we do what we do. During Pesach (Passover), we read the Haggadah — a book about order and questioning, the story of exodus, and the suffering of the world. We read different commentaries and argue and discuss moments in our history.
In my discussion with family friend Sarah, she jokes, “We do a lot of talking about talking, and reading people talking about talking, but by the end of it somehow I still don’t really know what happened in the story of Exodus.”
And on the phone with my parents, they reminded me of a Seder (Passover feast) many years ago. A guest of ours — a Moroccan Jewish woman — held the Seder plate above her head and passed it above each guest, singing a song of peace, freedom and liberation.
Sarah comes from a Sephardic background, with her mother coming from Spanish and Greek heritage, from Thessalonika. Their traditions look different to ours despite us growing up in the same community. Their Seder features songs in Ladino, an ancient Judeo-Spanish language that her grandmother used to sing. It features a spread of lots of spinach and Sarah’s ultimate comfort dish — avgolemono — a Greek lemon chicken soup, filled with orzo and lemon.
Sarah tells me, “It’s the ultimate comfort soup for me. If I'm feeling unwell or in an unfamiliar place, it’s such easy ingredients and will always make me feel a sense of home … My cousins all make it too, but everyone makes it to different consistencies.”
For many, food is at the heart of Jewish culture.
For my mother, it’s learning and community. She’ll turn up to any Passover Seder with three Haggadot, each marked with Post-it notes and commentary she finds interesting.
For me, it’s dinner parties and potlucks sharing of pits and peaks from the week.
As war rages on in a land once called sacred, many Jews are questioning their relationship to faith, Zionism and the State of Israel. It’s hard not to.
As a Jew in the diaspora, my version of Judaism was never tethered to Israel. It’s rather rooted in Ashkenazi traditions and stories from the Mishna and Talmud. It exists in the customs of service, learning, tzedakah (charity) and recipes for matza ball soup and gefilte fish.
We’ve been Jews in Spain, Yemen, Ethiopia and Poland. Come from Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrachi, Ethiopian descent, each with our own customs, all still Jewish.
Judaism has always existed in the diaspora, and that's the version of faith I choose to hold onto.
What’s happening in Israel-Palestine has triggered a deep identity crisis for many Jews. Criticising the State remains taboo in some spaces, and many struggle to separate religion from nationalism. I believe it is rightfully Jewish to question, challenge and criticise these areas of our history. We are not only defined by oppression. Being the victim is not and cannot be our identity. I want to explore Jewish music, culture, and tradition, and understand my people beyond the same stories of the Holocaust or the lens of Zionism.
While my belief in God or any Jewish ‘promised land’ remains largely up in the air, I’m still working on building a set of customs and traditions that can shape how I engage with a sense of Jewish faith. I feel a calling to engage in ways that extend beyond a corrupt government or the Zionist ideology, and rather fill a void of community, history and faith.
Sarah reminds me, “When you leave home, you realise that everyone’s just trying to find a little bit of community, whatever that may be.”
That’s what I’ve found in Friday night dinners, in braiding dough, in lighting candles and in singing blessings that echo across time zones.
Shabbat is a time for self-examination. For pausing and returning to what is important to us.
Every Friday, when I light the candles, I think of my mother doing the same. I think of Jews across the world gathered in community at this time. I remind myself how lucky I am to be in safety and surrounded by people I love.