The flicker of candles; the aroma of oven-warmed bread; my dog whining at my feet. This is what Friday Night Dinner looks like for me at home in London, a familiar ritual that ends the busy working week. I use ‘ritual’ here in a literal sense, as Friday Night Dinner is the somewhat more colloquial term for the meal many Jews (like me) eat to mark the beginning of Shabbat, a day of religiously ordained rest. For my family, this meal starts with a few brief blessings over the Shabbat candles and a covered loaf of traditional challah bread (the hamotzi) before digging in, but specific routines vary hugely across different families and regions.
Assuming the average UK life expectancy of 83 years, I can expect to experience around 4,000 Fridays before I die. Even in my brief life so far, my Fridays haven’t always looked the same. Whether it was the sudden joy of a free afternoon in sixth form or the anticipation of fish fingers at lunch in primary school, I could count on this day, like any other, changing along with me over the years. The one constant I can identify is Friday Night Dinner – so much so that I could probably map the whole trajectory of my life in Fridays. Growing up in North-West London, for example, I could point you down the road to Daniel’s Bakery in Temple Fortune where my mum bought challah; I’d map my family’s relocation to the centre of the city through the bagel shop on Fulham Road where she buys it now. One of my most vivid memories of a trip to Australia when I was about five years old is praying over two small tealights (quite a departure from my family’s usual candlesticks) to mark Shabbat, albeit untraditionally.
I think that a lot of young Jews, especially those belonging to Reform congregations like myself, struggle with balancing the religious and secular aspects of our lives. Fridays might mark an evening of rest for Jews (some more observant families avoid driving or turning on the lights), but for the rest of the world they can mean something pretty different: going out. I won’t deny that I rarely passed up a Friday birthday party or a pub trip because of my religion, but it certainly gave me pause when I realised plans would clash with Shabbat dinner. Luckily, I could usually squeeze both occasions in with a bit of planning ahead. As I got older– with these kind of clashes becoming more frequent– I remember getting quite innovative on Friday nights. At one weekend sleepover, I remember covering a packet of bagels with a napkin to bless, for which I received a few amused glances. More recently, praying over my phone torch in various hostel rooms over the summer; my attempts to recreate my family’s routine veered even further from tradition – and perhaps recognisability.
However silly it might sound to some, these atypical Friday nights really did remind me of home. The shape of the blessings on my tongue conjured up sense-memories of countless family Shabbats. I can never forget the hiss of the lighted match, the warmth of the candles, and my mum kissing my cheek after the blessings; these are sensations I have already felt approximately 900 times.
You might expect, then, that moving to Oxford last October wouldn’t bother me too much in terms of spending Shabbat away from my family. Of course I’d done a bit of research in advance, and knew that the university’s Jewish Society hosted its own Friday Night Dinners once a week. However, in the rush of freshers’ week and the anxiety I felt to make friends as fast as possible, I admit my attendance was initially sparse. I was eager to spend as much time as possible having the typical ‘Oxford experience’, which meant spending Friday evening at ‘pres’ before a party, instead of at Shabbat dinner. As the term went on, I began to realise what a silly approach this all-or-nothing mindset was; how could I have spent so much of my life balancing Shabbat and my social life just to abandon it now? Regardless of religion, I’m sure a lot of first-years, overwhelmed by their new routine, similarly lose a sense of balance in those first weeks of Michaelmas. For me, making an effort to regularly attend Friday Night Dinner at least every other week was profoundly grounding. Once a week, despite being away from home, I could feel a sense of familiarity and the comfort of routine.
In a discussion of the Old English poem ‘The Wanderer’, one of my lecturers pointed out the poet’s use of the word ‘hall’ (sele) to mean something approximate to ‘home’. Oxford’s dining halls, for a lot of students, function similarly – I remember my friend commenting on the comfort of sitting down to something resembling a home-cooked meal at the end of a busy day. For me, eating Friday Night Dinner serves as a similar reminder of home, and in my eyes a powerful testament to the value of community.