The last night of Chanukah

I was thinking of converting to Judaism and in the process Michael had contacted a rabbi he had met a few years ago. That rabbi had left, but the new youth rabbi (they're supposed to be the most open minded of any congregation) invited Michael over for the Orthodox service and then Sabbath dinner. After having a quick burst of a mini-fight on the white stone steps as the men in suits brushing past us pretended not hear, we kissed and made up and entered the building.

After hanging our coats, we approached the doors to the closed off, place-of-worship part of the synagogue. "Usually there is a place for women at the back," Michael told me, and we walked through. First thing I notice is a rabbi bounding towards us with his hand stretched out in front of him. "You must be my guests," he whispered as he pushed us back out the doors. "Hello hello," he continued once he had pushed us out of harm's way. "So good of you to come. Women's entrance is that way."

Myself and about a dozen women had box seats to a service about electric light on the Sabbath. Is it wrong to turn on the electrical lights on the day of rest? What about turning on an electric stove? On the Sabbath, one cannot change the status or stare of any material. What if you asked a trained monkey to start pedaling a bike that started a generator that would then bring electricity to an element?, the rabbi asked. What then?

By the end of the talk/service, I had learnt that if you live in a building with a key swab, you need to ask a non-Jewish neighbor to come down and let you in, and that turning the lights on prior to sunset and leaving them on through the night is the best way to avoid uncomfortable situations.

After service we walked the half block to the youth rabbi's two-bedroom apartment, in what looked like subsidized housing blocks. There was a group of us that had meandered over; a doctor as thin and long as a blade of grass with his silent, culture-shocked girlfriend, a round-cheeked family therapist, two teenagers. The rabbi's wife, bustling about the apartment, looked as if she had just stepped off the kibbutz, strong and stalky in a long cotton skirt with her hair back in a scarf. The family therapist's wife was there as well, in the same scarf and skirt, with two young girls under each arm. Her face seemed chiseled out of stone, with a roman nose at a long angle, and eyes that were sharp and deeply set. We all sat around the table, recited prayers then sang. The rabbi's wife went to get the bread. The doctor, sitting across from us started humming and tapping the table with his hand. Mike and I leaned in to each other and cracked a few jokes about our ignorance of gender placement in the area of worship. The doctor kept humming, louder now.

"I guess I'm your non-Jew in residence," I said. "If I choose to swab you in."

"You can be my monkey for a day."

"I'm not going to be your monkey."

"You'll have to turn on the elements at least."

"You never turn them on anyway. Everyday's the Sabbath for you when it comes to the stove."

"LA LA LA LA LA LA LA," said the doctor, staring at us and now pounding on the table.

The rabbi sat back down after grabbing something from the kitchen. He began slamming his hand against the table too, humming and swaying from side the side.

"Oh," Michael said, and whispered "I forgot. We're not supposed to talk between the first prayers and the breaking of the Halla. Ooops."

We were dutifully silent as the dinner guests swayed and hummed and pounded the table until the bread was passed around. They read from the prayer book, and broke into song. The therapist had moved to Vancouver from the US only three weeks ago, and his wife had only flown in the night before. She seemed tired and barely ate. They were staying there at the rabbi's apartment until their move in two weeks. The doctor wanted to practice medicine for rural populations. The rabbi sang. Lots of laughter. I had this flash of what it would be like to have a framework through which to see everything, one that would unit all the dangling strings of my life, but one that brought laughter and community and God. I felt as if I had had a glimpse of how shallow my life was, constantly skidding on the surface of whatever it was that I was interested in that week. For a second I felt hollow.

With dinner over we cleared the table and started a game of kibbits, which had to do with numbers and dominoes. I found my way to the bathroom, and caught a glimpse of the therapist's wife curled up on a mattress on the floor, as if tucking herself into the rectangle of light from the doorway. When I came back from the bathroom (All the toilet paper had been pre-torn into little squares so that no one would have to change the shape or status of any material) the rabbi's wife and the therapist were standing at the head of the table and the mood had changed. "What if we got the neighbor from the first floor to come and do it?" she was saying. "Would that be allowed."

"I guess so, but I advised against this from the beginning."

"I'm a non-Jew. I can help with any Sabbath situation you might have," I said, kind of in a jokey way, which I immediately realized was totally inappropriate.

"Carrie, there's something you have to do. It's serious," Mike said, a little pale.

"We have a couple of text messages on her cell phone. We can't even touch the phone on the Sabbath, so could you read them for us?"

"Sure, of course, and I walked over to the phone with the therapist.

I picked it up. Two messages. I opened the first.

"Im sorry to say Mom died tonight at 7:30 tried to call yr not answering."

"Oh my god," I said.

He nodded and thanked me and began to cry. He went into her bedroom and shut the door.

I walked back to the table and the rabbi stared at me. "She's dead," I told them.

All we could do was stare at the dominoes in silence.

After a minute, the rabbi's wife said "She had been dying for a long time. She was very ill."

"I told them to wait until after the Sabbath," said the rabbi. "There's nothing she can do except grieve in private until Sunday."

"Maybe that's a good thing," I said. More silence.

"It's your turn," said one of the teenagers, and we continued our game.