Sitting around Shabbat Table

Our dining room table is an elongated circle, an oval of wood; mahogany, I think, maybe redwood. A legacy of my maternal grandparents, it’s old by contemporary American standards. I date it to the mid-nineteen twenties, though I may be off by a decade. When the children are home or when we have guests, my wife and I sit at opposite ends, but when it’s just the two of us we sit closer together, across the short axis. On Shabbat the candlesticks frame our view of each other between the glow of the shimmering lights. In the winter, when evening comes early, these provide the only source of illumination in the room that we allow to penetrate the darkness. We sing Shalom Aleichem, staring into each other’s eyes. It’s a song based on the Talmudic suggestion that two angels accompany the inauguration of Shabbat, a good angel and a bad. If the home is well prepared the good angel blesses the household and the bad angel is forced to say “Amen.” If the house is not well ordered, the bad angel curses and the good angel is forced to say “Amen.” But the hymn, at least in the form we have it, does not distinguish between good and bad angels, it speaks only of angels, and in my mind all of them are good. What else would HaShem create?

“We wish you peace, attending angels, angels of the most sublime, the King of kings, the Holy One, praised be He.

“Come to us in peace, angels of peace, angels of the most sublime, the King of kings, the Holy One, praised be He.

“Bless us with peace, angels of peace, angels of the most sublime, the King of kings, the Holy one, praised be He.”

And then reluctantly, ruefully:

“Take your leave in peace, angels of peace, angels of the most sublime, the King of kings, the Holy One, praised be He.”

When we finish singing I bless the boys if they are home and then kiss my bride of the past 35 years and thank her for being herself and for making us ourselves, for making our home the center of our lives. Then I chant two history lessons interrupted by a blessing. I sing in my off-tuned warble of the creation of Shabbat on the 7th day; I give thanks for the fruit of the vine and then I remind us of the exodus from Egypt. These two births, of Shabbat, marking the completion of creation and of the Jewish people, chosen, saved, for reasons we do not understand, inaugurate Shabbat in our house each Friday evening as we end one week and begin anew another.

So, when I, the rationalist, the student of Voltaire and Diderot sit at my oval Shabbat table, the gift of my grandparents, and someday our gift to one of our children, when we sing the hypnotically repetitious words of Shalom Aleichem, do I really think there are angels in the room, bringing peace? As I look into my wife’s eyes, reflecting back at me the flickering light of the candles she has just lit, as I see my children in their chairs, whether they are actually in the room or not, when I know that the week’s troubles are over, at least for a few hours in this sacred temple of which we have made our dining room, then yes, I do believe in the angels and I am glad they are there and just a bit sad when I sing the final verse:

“Take your leave in peace, angels of peace, angels of the most sublime, the King of Kings, the Holy One, praised be He.

As I write these words I am just back from our annual pilgrimage to the Tanglewood music festival. On Friday night we were not at our oval table, we were on the great lawn, waiting for the music to commence (Bach, Bach and Handel). To my right there was a family, a father, mother and daughter. The mother quietly, unobtrusively, blessed and lit the Shabbat candles and then together, soto voce, they sang Shalom Aleichem. The father blessed his little girl, aged around ten, and then said kiddush over the wine. After they passed around the cup, the mother said the blessing over the challah and together they ate their meal, as the glorious music engulfed us all. Should Shabbat be inaugurated any other way?

What I learned of human nature by watching Romeo and Juliet

Last Saturday I woke to the news of the shooting at the Seattle JCC. The war in Lebanon dragged on. I felt the need to get over the gloom, so we drove to Wilcox Park in Westerly to see Shakespeare. He’s been dead for quite a while now, but the magic of his words lives on quite nicely, thank you very much. The play was Romeo and Juliet, the first half of which, you will recall, is comedic, the second part less so.

Things start to go bad when Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin, kills Mercutio, Romeo’s quick-witted friend, and in a rage, Romeo kills Tybalt. All this on the day Romeo of the house of Montague secretly married Juliet, daughter of Capulet. Juliet’s mother, unaware of her daughter’s marriage, curses Romeo; she wants him dead. Attempting to impeach the credibility of the one reliable witness, she wails:

“He is kinsman to the Montague,
Affection makes him false, he speaks not true…
I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give—
Romeo slew Tybalt, Romeo must not live.”

Instead, Romeo is exiled. Friar Lawrence, in an attempt to bring the warring houses together has arranged for the secret marriage, and now he comes up with a plan to re-unite the lovers. Juliet will take a potion to feign death. Friar Lawrence will send a note to Romeo informing him of the ruse and inviting him back to Verona to sweep her away to the safety of his exile in Mantua. But the plan fails. Romeo doesn’t get the note. He buys poison, goes to the Capulet tomb where he drinks the quick acting stuff. Almost immediately upon his death, Juliet awakens, sees her dead lover, tries to find a few more drops of the poison to swallow, but when that fails, takes Romeo’s dagger and stabs herself to death.

The prince of Verona, who has been trying to impose peace between the warring factions within his city finds the bodies and summons the fathers. Montague enters the crypt tearfully announcing that his wife has died of a broken heart as a result of Romeo’s banishment. The prince, upon discovering the truth of what has happened, bellows in rage:

“Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate
That Heav’n finds means to kill your joys ...
And I for winking at our discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish’d.”

Later he modifies the hasty decree as the play ends. The families reconcile, but it is too late. The children still lie embraced by the eternal sleep of death. The prince sums up:

“A glooming peace this morning with it brings,
The Sun for sorrow will not show his head.
Go hence to have more talk of these sad things:
Some shall be pardon’d and some punished.
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Listening to Juliet’s mother and later to the prince, looking to the sky and seeing the dagger-like image of the constellation Cygnus, the nature of man was suddenly revealed to me in all its horrid simplicity. In Lebanon it is being played out dramatically these past few weeks, though it’s been simmering to the occasional boil ever since at least 1936. Are we Jews the house Montague? Are the Arabs Capulet? I do not know. I do not care, but either way we are:

“Two households both alike in dignity
…From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”

Shakespeare reminds us of two contradictory truths. The enmity between the houses was as self-destructively stupid as it was inevitable in the nature of man. The calls for vengeance bring on more vengeance. It is the human condition. We know it’s wrong, we know it’s stupid, and yet we cannot escape from the gripping maw of hatred which engulfs. As a student of history I try to pretend that we humans are reasonable creatures, and yet what crimes, wars, murders do I relate to my students on almost a daily basis? That being the case, though I know it will ultimately do no good, I’m for Israel being triumphant over Hezbollah and Hamas fighters until the world (the prince—for a while in 2000, I thought that the prince would be president Clinton; I’m pretty sure it won’t be Kofi Annan) imposes a peace that will last, how long? Only for a while, until the next unforgivable outrage.