A Norman Rockwell Shabbat
June 19, 2012 
8 Comments
By Madelyn M. Katz
I had the good fortune to grow up in Monroe, New York – a town which, in the 60s and 70s, was about as close to “Leave it to Beaver” as a real town might be. Life was good. Simple. Monroe was truly a “Norman Rockwell” type existence. And his artistic renderings of his community made life seem “perfect.” I grew up looking at life through a “Norman Rockwell lens”– a “feel good” but unrealistic way to approach life!
I used that “lens” even as I anticipated building a Jewish home. What would a Norman Rockwell Shabbat look like? During my studies at HUC in Jerusalem, I thought I had found it – friends and food in abundance, everyone sharing the same enthusiasm for Shabbat and everyone “knowing all the words!” That worked for many years, while I was single. However, in the pre-wedding counseling session my fiancé and I had with Rabbi Lennard Thal, he wisely challenged me with “OK, Madelyn – how will you deal with a husband who is less observant than you?” That husband and the very real, “non-Rockwell” children—from the crying baby and fidgety toddler to the “Why do I have to be home on Friday night?” adolescent—challenged me to rethink my expectations for Shabbat. Add to that two full-time working parents neither of whom was a particularly good cook. All of these factors made that perfect Shabbat dinner experience a real “dream.” My reality led me to think about these questions: What is the real essence of a meaningful Shabbat observance? Does Shabbat have to include chicken eaten in the dining room? Could Shabbat still be Shabbat if I pick up a pizza on the way home from my office? And what if the kids always giggle during the blessings because my musician husband insists on “harmonizing” to the blessing melody (even though he can’t sing!)?
Let me back track for a moment as my childhood Shabbat was clearly not “Rockwellian!” I grew up in a Reform Jewish home, where I was active in our synagogue, supported the URJ camps and NFTY, and was committed to keeping our movement strong for the Jews in the future. However my parents always said theirs was a “mixed marriage.” My mother was raised in an observant Orthodox family. My father’s parents were Eastern European Jewish immigrants who fled Poland and an oppressive Jewish family. Two very different upbringings with equally strong commitments to Jewish life.
Shabbat was foreign to my father. My mother, on the other hand, knew Shabbat was coming when she saw her older sisters mopping the kitchen floor and putting down newspapers so she wouldn’t step on the wet floor. Yet somehow my mother and father compromised and made Shabbat a special part of our family life. On Friday afternoon, our house smelled like hairspray (from my mother’s trip to the beauty parlor) and paprika (from the Friday night chicken). We ate in the dining room on the “nice” dishes. We lit candles (apparently singing the blessing to the Hanukkah melody). I never knew it was the wrong melody until I was a grown up! When dinner was over. our Shabbat celebration continued. In the winter that meant piling into the station wagon and going to the high school basketball game! Yes, often our Shabbat observance included rituals ranging from candles and “Friday night chicken” to community and basketball—melding different values into one Shabbat celebration. And it worked. We knew that Shabbat meant a time for family, a time to stop and to appreciate what we had, albeit in a rather unconventional way.
After many years, I came to see that Shabbat in the home I was creating might sometimes include chicken on our special dishes and a relaxed mom. Other times, it might include “take out” on our best paper plates with at least one adolescent daughter “in a mood” and the trials and tribulations of work coming to the table with us. What makes it Shabbat, though, is the fact that we stop and watch and look at each other, making sacred even those few minutes available to us. Those moments—which over the years ranged from blessings and basketball to ten minutes with a fidgety toddler to a leisurely hour with NFTY kids around our table—were set aside for us to shamor v’zachor, to guard and remember Shabbat. Making that time sacred is what makes for a Norman Rockwell Shabbat.
Dr. Madelyn M. Katz is the Associate Dean, HUC-JIR Jack H. Skirball Campus, Los Angeles.
Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah
Even though you spent your Shabbat in an unconventional manner,you were all together.Your idea of shabbat “rest” is unique to you and your family.There’s nothing wrong with that.
This is such a lovely piece–I sent it on to my not-Jewish-but-interested partner. Plus, I know and love those NFTY kids! Good Shabbas, Madelyn and Katz family
Lovely. I would like to use this in a 3rd grade class that I will be teaching in the fall – a major component of which is the study of Shabbat and how to make it a part of every family’s week.
Reminded me strongly of my Conservative Jewish upbringing in which we ate dinner at the local Greek restaurant before walking together to Friday night services. On Saturday mornings, I was a “regular” at Junior Congregation service (where I learned everything I knew about leading services!); afterwards my mother, sister, and I would go shopping downtown, eating lunch at the Toddle House diner…It was only after summers at Camp Ramah (idyllic years from 1963-1967) when I would begin to consider my family’s Shabbat observance not sufficient; and I would dress in white, and head off to read poetry in the park…your piece brought back to mind many lovely memories..my own contribution as a mother was when I realized that the smell of frozen, store-bought challah dough was the same as truly home-baked…we do the best we can!
“What makes it Shabbat, though, is the fact that we stop and watch and look at each other, making sacred even those few minutes available to us.”
That might make it a happy moment, but that alone absolutely does not make it Shabbat.
I just can’t get up the same enthusiasm as the other commenters. All this post says to me is that Shabbat can be hard to keep in a modern American family, so why bother trying?
There really is a point–even in Reform Judaism–at which it’s just not Shabbat anymore. Just because a family is all together on a Friday night doesn’t make it Shabbat. It might fit the bill for a purely humanistic take on Judaism–which our movement’s most recent Platform still claims is not the full definition of Reform–but to me, there’s something missing.
Remembering and observing Shabbat–whether or not life’s interventions actually let you successfully do that–depend on making the attempt, even if that attempt is a(n even weekly) struggle. Simply letting Friday night into Saturday night be whatever circumstance lays at your feet and calling it the Sabbath may be remembering Shabbat, but it’s not really keeping much of it.
We claim that a normative Reform Judaism exists. Yet we often turn around and rationalize much of our traditional heritage away. Just because it feels good doesn’t make it Shabbat. As Reform Jews, we aren’t required to be strident about our Shabbat observance (unless our individual conscience’s guide us in that direction, which is also perfectly ok.)
But as Jews, irrespective of denomination, it’s still our duty to make an effort. Otherwise, what makes us Jews in the first place?
Purely on principle, I agree with you completely and emphatically, though there is no doubt we differ substantially on how to put such principles into practice.
I’d say that you are observing Shabbat as long as you have the humanistic elements of rest and family togetherness and peace, PLUS some concrete religious sanctification of the Day. Whether it’s going to Temple, staying at home for candles and kiddush, or just meditating on spiritual themes, something must be done to set the day apart in a RELIGIOUS way. It is important to re-claim a certain sense of “normative” religious obligation and even “commandedness”, but in order to do so without erasing the distinction between Reform and Conservative Judaism, we must have different, less “traditional” standards for what that normative observance has to look like. In some ways, I think we should “rationalize away” EVEN MORE of tradition than is currently popular, while simultaneously taking care to be serious about that which we retain, and what we build upon it.
Jordan, what separates Reform and Conservative Judaism is how we view the commandedness of halacha. Conservative Judaism views halacha as binding on all Jews. Reform Judaism views halacha as non-binding and leaves it to individual Jews to determine whether and how individual mitzvot speak to them.
That means while not common it is perfectly within normative Reform Judaism for a Reform Jew to have a very traditional style and even level of observance. As long as that Jew arrives there–or decides not to go there–through personal consideration and soul searching, that’s Reform Judaism.
To say that Reform Jews should reject tradition just because we’re Reform Jews is a misunderstanding of what defines Reform Judaism in the first place. That’s the equivalent of the often-heard phrase, “We don’t have to do that, we’re Reform.” The point is having the ability to engage with Jewish tradition personally, not rejecting tradition outright.
I am aware of the nuances of commandedness in different streams of Judaism, thank you. All I was trying to say that it is possible to arrive at a minimalist mode of observance without committing the stereotypical willfully ignorant, poorly informed, blind rejection of tradition of which Classical Reform Judaism is often so misguidedly accused. I shall be contacting you privately to share with you an interesting article by a CR minimalist who also disapproves of the “We don’t have to do that, we’re Reform” attitude.
It seems to me that the “very traditional style” such as yours IS what is common and normative, while I am the odd one out for RESPECTFULLY and KNOWLEDGEABLY rejecting so much.