Shabbat: the food, the ritual, the celebration

By Elissa ShevinskyPrint Story | Email Story
The family sits down to the best dinner of the week, complete with tablecloth, candles, special food and blessings — this is the Sabbath, the Jewish holiday of rest. It’s considered the holiest Jewish holiday of them all. It happens every week from Friday at sunset to Saturday at sunset. A traditional Sabbath meal brings the whole family together. The table is set with candles, wine and special Sabbath dishes on a Sabbath tablecloth. This is the best meal of the week. Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe would save up their money to buy delicacies like eggs and sugar to make challah bread and a kosher chicken to make chicken soup. American Jews are fortunate enough to afford such delicacies daily, but favor such foods for their traditional value. Seth Rogovoy, freelance writer, cultural critic and author of The Essential Klezmer, celebrates a relatively traditional Sabbath. He said of his experience, “Starting mid-day Friday I get ready by studying the weekly Torah portion so I can teach my family a bit about it or discuss it with my community on Saturday morning. I also prepare our home for the Friday night ritual, which is the one meal where we set out a table cloth, special dishes, and I make a pretty elaborate meal. It is a very traditional meal usually of roast chicken, matzo ball soup and challah. There’s no religious significance but some of the dishes were from my grandmother so it does tie us to our past and inheritance. Friday night we sing songs welcoming the Sabbath, light candles, say the Kiddish (blessing over wine) and wash our hands ritually. Then for the next 24 hours I don’t do any work. I read and study Jewish texts, attend worship services, take walks, I spend time with my family and I do what I can to recognize the separation of Shabbis from the rest of the week. This is a day of very different quality, this is a day of spirituality, so i do a bit of a mental flip into Shabbis mode.” Of the Sabbath food and rituals Rogovoy said, “The food and the rituals are really just vessels to channel the inherent spirituality that’s present during the Sabbath.” Diane Weinstein, of Pittsfield, was raised in a religious home. For her, the Sabbath is about taking “that deep breath for the first time in a week.” Diane takes this day of rest literally and is famous amongst her friends for taking Shabbis naps each Saturday afternoons. She described her ritual, “By the time early afternoon comes around then my body and mind are very at peace, very quiet and tired, and ready to rest. And that’s what I do for a couple of hours. Everyone who knows me knows my Shabbis nap is an integral piece of my week.” She also keeps more universal traditions. These include gathering with her family Friday nights to say the traditional prayers over the Sabbath meal, including the candles, bread and wine, and attending Saturday morning services at Knesset Israel in Pittsfield. Rachel Barenblatt, the author of a book in progress on the art of Jewish ritual craft called Disorganized Judaism and the executive director of Inkberry, has created Sabbath rituals to bring out the true spirit of Shabbat for modern souls. She said, “The theme of my adult Jewish life is discovering that even if I don’t have exactly the right materials, even if I’m not doing it exactly the way my parents did, that it can be special because of what I bring to it and because of what I find in it.” Rachel shared this story, “I lived through a period of time in college where every week my friend David and I would gather in my dorm room for the Sabbath. We were on a meal plan so we couldn’t have a Sabbath meal. But we would get together and light candles and we would chant the Kiddish (the prayer over wine) over whatever alcoholic beverage we had in the dorm at the time. Sometimes it was cheap wine, a few times we did it over fruit juice, once or twice we even said the Kiddish over a bottle of beer which is not technically the way you are supposed to do it. But standing together, over my window, at twilight, singing the Hebrew words together — it didn’t matter that it was beer instead of wine. It felt like we were really welcoming the Sabbath together. It was special even if it wasn’t the official way to do it.” Rachel shed some light on the traditional Sabbath meal. “I know that a lot of families of Eastern European descent have chicken or chicken soup on Shabbat. For their ancestors in Eastern Europe, who were poor, being able to get a kosher chicken and make soup from it was like birthday cake. It was something you only did for Shabbat and festivals. As for the wine — wine in Judaism is traditionally a symbol of joy. Almost every Jewish holiday involves blessing wine.” The challah bread, braided, is a symbol of the double portion of manna that is believed to have been given from God to the Jewish people during their time in the desert. After college, Rachel arranged to have Fridays off. She would spend them baking challah bread. She said, “That was my little connection to the tradition. To me, it’s a real pleasure because you start with such pedestrian ingredients. It involves eggs, some milk, a bit of sugar. Spending half an hour at the kitchen counter using my hands to make this thing is grounding, and almost always puts me in a better mood than I was before.” Rachel added — “I want people to get a sense of what a delicious and enriching experience it can be to take a little pause at the end of the week and connect with themselves, their families, their communities, their traditions, their sense of a spiritual or sacred or holy, with God if that’s a term that works for you. When I was a kid I used to think Jewish holidays were special so we did these weird things to show that they were special. What I’ve come to realize as an adult is I had it backwards — Jewish holidays are holy because we make them.” Common to all Sabbath traditions is a festive meal together with family, connecting with spirituality and community, and taking a day of peace. Ultimately, the Sabbath isn’t about the chicken in the pot or the blessing over the wine but the spirit brought to the moment. Elissa Shevinsky is a freelance writer pursuing the connections between the mystical Jewish and Yogic traditions.
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North Adams Clothing Store Moving to Larger Space

Staff Reports
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Label Shopper is moving across the parking lot to the former Peebles location in April.
 
The discount clothing store has been located in the downtown's L-shaped mall downtown since 2009. It replaced Fashion Bug, which had been in that spot for 24 years before closing in 2007; the company liquidated in 2013. 
 
Label Shopper is part of Peter Harris Clothes, established in 1970 by Peter Elitzer. Starting as a single store in Latham, N.Y., offering brand-name apparel at discount prices, the company operates more than 70 stores throughout the Northeast and Midwest.
 
The store is set to close on April 6 for the move and reopen on April 9 in the former Gordmans, according to signage. 
 
Gordmans briefly replaced Peebles in the former Kmart until the parent company of the two brands declared bankruptcy and closed its stores in 2020. 
 
At 17,250 square feet, the Gordman's space is at least double the size of Label Shopper's current location.
 
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