“Shabbat shalom!”
“Shabbat
shalom!”
“Hi, you two little
munchkins, Shabbat shalom.”
“Hi,
Grandpa! Hi, Gramma! Mommy made challah.”
“It
smells so good in here. And what a lovely table.”
Our
youngest daughter beamed to see us. This
was our first visit to her home to enjoy one of her frequent Shabbat dinners. Pregnant, and with an almost four-year-old
and an almost three-year old, she moved slowly, while her husband managed the
quick stuff.
On
Fridays, when the sun sets, the Jewish Sabbath begins. The next twenty-four hours comprise the day
sacred to the Lord because that is the day when He rested.
I myself had “rested”
about thirty years before. I had rested
from the stringency of my agnosticism.
The exactitude of my agnosticism had been fueled by self-regard and by
academic doubt. My agnosticism was a
burden for me to bear, but I soldiered on.
At the same time, I sensed that my agnosticism had clay feet. I wanted to kick its feet into smithereens, but
I didn’t know how.
The Lord helped me to find
the way. Thirty years before, our other
daughter—our older daughter, then five—had questioned my wife and me about our
family’s religious identity. What she
observed was this: Mommy was sort of Jewish; Daddy was sort of Christian.
What was she?
We did not know how,
honestly, to answer her question, which was dispiriting for her father who had
a PhD in religion and art. Thank
goodness that our daughter’s question was pointed enough that it forced a decision
upon my wife and me, and that the force of our decision precipitated
action.
My wife was Jewish. Therefore, formally, our children were already
Jewish, too. I loved the Hebrew
Scriptures (otherwise, the Old Testament), though I thought that story about Jesus,
in the New Testament, was just too, too odd.
We made our decision
and could then answer our older daughter’s question.
All four of our
children—two boys and two girls—received their Hebrew names. For a while, we attended a small havarah—a gathering of Jews for prayer
and learning, generally not led by a rabbi—and then later we attended our city’s
largest Reform synagogue. My wife was
energetic to find social and educational groups within the synagogue with which
we could align. I—no Jew—was a stander apart
although I was a helpful husband and an informative father when questioned
about their Judaism by our children.
Despite my distance, as
a family we commenced what was to be our two-and-a-half decades of Shabbat
dinners. We dressed the table, we lit
the candles, we blessed the wine, we tore the challah and ate it, and we
performed these ceremonies while we chanted their accompanying Hebrew prayers. We
were grateful, even fervent, to praise the Lord.
Our Judaism was of the
Reform tradition. Reform Judaism arose
in the 1860s in Germany as a way for Jews to honor their biblical heritage but,
at the same time, to fit more neatly and less threateningly into European,
Christian society.
Then something happened
to me.
The Lord has a curious
way about Him, does He not? First, He
had our five-year-old daughter ask us a question we could not answer. Then, several years after we began practicing
Shabbat, He whispered another invitation to me.
During a High Holy Day service,
while we sat in synagogue and delighted to hear Kol Nidre on Erev Yom Kippur (the exquisite chant on the evening which
commences Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement), I heard His quiet voice. He stated that His doorway was open to me,
should I desire to step through.
Of course, He knew that
by then I was fervent to be with Him, and that I hated my position as a stander
off, while my wife and our children stood in.
The Lord offered me a
doorway. I assumed I knew which doorway
he meant. After all, my Jewish wife and my
Jewish children were beside me that evening, and I was lonely for complete companionship
with them. So I converted—to Judaism. The process occupied several intense years—Judaism
does not proselytize—and thus I became the Jewish father of my Jewish
household, and, satisfyingly, the Master of our Seder, too.
But that is not the end
of our story. The Lord knew there was to
be more to come.
Here’s a puzzle. At the moment of my conversion, the Lord may
have experienced one of two things. He may
have known that, me being me, it was not yet time for Him to introduce me to
His Son. Or else He may have shaken His
head in sorrow that I had not understood which doorway He had meant for me to
choose to step through.
So our family continued
to rest from doubt in the comfortable ease of Reform Judaism, positioned
theologically—as I interpreted it for a while—at the very beginning of monotheism,
not a bad place to be. Like our distant monotheistic ancestors, our family’s
minds, hearts, and souls were informed and were shaped by theophany within
Torah.
And twenty-five years
passed away. The children grew and went
out on their own into the world, to strive along their own pathways.
My wife and I became disenchanted
by what we perceived as the wearisome cherry-picking of Torah by our Reform
mentors and friends. Some formal
statements by the four rabbis whom we followed through our three successive
synagogues did not seem true. When we studied
Torah closely in regard to those statements, our study often left the rabbis’ statements
as untrue and unsupported by Scripture. Over time, my wife and I even questioned
whether some of our rabbis and Jewish friends, in their hearts, truly believed
the worldview which is implicit in the five Books of Moses.
Once again, our spirits
wandered in a desert, parched by doubt.
Our doubt was not about the puissance of the Lord, nor was it about the
righteousness of the Bible’s witness concerning the Lord and His
intentionality. Our doubt was whether the
religious community within which we had devoted twenty-five years of child
rearing was committed to the truth.
The Lord knew that, for
us, there was to be more.
“Shabbat shalom!”
“Shabbat shalom!”
“Hi, you two little
munchkins, Shabbat shalom.”
“Hi,
Grandpa! Hi, Gramma! Mommy made challah.”
“It
smells so good in here. And what a lovely table.”
Our youngest daughter
and her husband, like us and one of her brothers, are evangelical Christians. How this change from Judaism to evangelical
Christianity came about is not for me to relate in this space except to say
this: it is a gift from the Lord.
Either I finally caught
onto the point of the Lord’s
salvation story which He provided to the Jews for their theological edification,
or else I finally understood which doorway the Lord had pointed toward that
year on Erev Yom Kippur but which I had not identified correctly. Anyway, it worked as the Lord intended. However long it takes in human terms for us
to understand what the Lord directs us to do, and then to do it, a blessing
that the Lord provides to us is the blessing of persistence. Indeed, while we
may be persistent in seeking, our Omniscient Lord is always persistent in
providing.
***
For our first Shabbat
dinner at our youngest daughter’s house, we sat down at her Shabbat table. Our grandchildren were eager to remember the Hebrew
prayers as their mother lit the candles with the ritual shielding of her eyes,
as the children’s tiny sips of wine were taken, as their father revealed the
large, twisted, eggy, warm loaf—just out from the oven—which our daughter makes
for Shabbat dinner, and which her husband ripped apart so we could all partake.
Baruch
atah adonai eluheinu melech alon….
We thanked the Lord for
the light, for the wine, and for the bread, and thus we acknowledged Him as the
Lord of the Universe who has provided us with these gifts.
As the father to this
daughter, long ago, I had passed her a tiny sip of wine and a big hunk of
challah. Back then, we had blessed the Lord’s munificence just as we did at the
present time. Same Lord; same
munificence. Now, though, all of us at
that table knew we had received more
gifts besides.
For us around that
table, now as Christians, we recognize these more gifts besides as our redemption and salvation.
Praise the Lord—His
puzzles included.
“Why are you doing
this?” I asked our daughter afterwards.
“It’s my favorite thing
from childhood. I want my children to
know about it. And—for me, today—it
helps to shape my week…when we do it.”
“You don’t always?”
“No. And when we don’t, things in the week go
bad. But when we do, it’s a good week.”
“Is there theological
content in it?”
She shook her
head. “Not anymore. But there’s delight in it.”
She lay her head
against my shoulder and her hand on my forearm.
We rested from the meal, and the children were dismissed to play.
Copyright, Dikkon Eberhart, 2015
