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Home Is Where
the Challah Is
By Jacqui Shine '05
My favorite part
of the week starts on Thursday night, when four or five
of us pile into a borrowed car and head to
the grocery store, usually at an hour when the only other
shoppers are the ones
who are buying eight cases of Diet Coke and a cart of
frozen dinners. Armed with canvas shopping bags and a detailed
list of the produce
and groceries that we need to prepare a kosher dairy
dinner for anywhere from 30 to 80 people, we prowl the aisles
of Super Stop-n-Shop, scrutinizing
can labels for kosher symbols and yelling across the
store that we only need three pounds of chocolate chips, but
definitely more than
10 packages of tofu.
 The late-night trip to the store is
only the beginning. We put the groceries away in the kitchen
and head for our respective homes only a few hours before
we’ll see each other again; preparations for Shabbat will begin the next
morning at 6 a.m., when we descend upon an otherwise-quiet local diner for the
pancakes, eggs and coffee that will get us through a long day of cooking. We’re
back in the kitchen by 7 a.m., where we throw on aprons, turn up the radio and
get to work so that we can be ready to open the doors for dinner twelve hours
later (and maybe attend class, too). When I stagger home around 11 p.m., covered
in flour and unidentified sauce smears, I’ll be exhausted but deeply satisfied;
this day of cooking and laughter forms the center of my Jewish community here
at Smith.
As the business manager for the Smith College
Kosher Kitchen, a student-run kosher co-op that prepares a weekly Shabbat
dinner for the Jewish community,
I’m
part of a group of committed students who work tirelessly all week, but especially
on Fridays, to provide not just a home-cooked meal, but a Jewish home, for Smith
students. The K., as we fondly call it, is the center of Jewish life. Students
gather in the K. on Wednesday nights to study religious texts with Rabbi Bruce
Seltzer; on Thursday afternoons for the Hillel@Noon speaker series; and on Friday
nights for a Shabbat meal that runs the gamut from old Jewish standards like
matzah ball soup to a kosher (and vegan) Thai coconut soup. I spend about 20
hours a week working in or for the Kosher Kitchen, and it’s the place at
Smith where I feel the most comfortable, the most myself.
But it wasn’t
always this way. During much of my first year, the Kosher Kitchen was the last
place you’d find me. When I arrived on campus that
August, I was eager to find a place in the Jewish community. My six years of
Catholic school had been both a challenge and a pleasure, but I wanted to find
my way in Judaism, the tradition I was raised in. So I threw myself into Jewish
life at Smith, attending services and Hillel meetings and looking for a role
that challenged me to grow as a Jew but took into account what I already knew
about myself and the world.
Much to my disappointment, that role was
pretty elusive. The harder I tried, it seemed, the more out of place
I felt in the Jewish community.
I was unprepared
to have my identity challenged -- my mom isn’t Jewish, and I had spent
six years learning about Catholic social teaching and the Sermon on the Mount -- and
was uncomfortable at services that drew from Jewish traditions I was unfamiliar
with. I felt disconnected and isolated, not just from the Jewish community, but
from Judaism. I avoided Friday night services and tried to pretend that I didn’t
miss lighting candles with friends at Hanukkah. I worried that I would have to
put my Jewish self on hold for four years, until I could find a community that
felt more comfortable.
Fortunately, my way home was just across
the hall. My housemate Aryn Bowman was (and still is) a cook in the kitchen
and made sure
to invite me to dinner each
week, even though I invariably declined, too afraid of being disappointed again.
Finally, after several months of these invitations, I relented -- but I was
only staying for dinner, not for the recitation of grace after meals or the sing-along
that followed. And then I was only staying to help wash dishes, and only to wash
pots, and only to sing a couple songs. The next thing I knew I was coming early
to help set up, waking up early on Friday mornings to come in and chop vegetables
and knead dough, staying up later on Thursday evenings to help shop for groceries
and plan the following day’s menu. I had fallen in love with the warmth
and light of the K., the friendliness of the cooks, the uniquely Jewish experience
of inviting strangers into your home and sharing food with them -- food prepared
with love transmitted by the work of your hands.
Since my first hesitant step
through the door of the kitchen last year, I’ve
found abundant blessings in the routines of running the kitchen. The clarity
of stars in the frozen morning sky; the scent of dough rising and the grit of
flour under my shoes; the joy of laughter and loud music and 8 a.m. Shirley Temples;
the moment of silent anticipation between the striking of a match and the lighting
of the Shabbat candles. These familiar moments quiet that sense of restless searching
for my Jewish self that dominated my first few months at Smith; I am part of
a Jewish tradition that extends in all directions, and, in the words of modern
Israel’s first rabbi, “the old becomes new and the new becomes holy.”
Each
Shabbat in the Kosher Kitchen both restores me and reminds me of the person
I want to become. Each week I look forward to the moments where I can
find myself
in pots and pans, fresh vegetables, the faces of people I love. Each week I
walk through the door and remember what it feels like to finally come
home to Judaism,
to myself. I am so lucky. |
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