Local families observe personal Shabbat traditions
JENNIFER GOLDBERG
Staff Writer
Families across the Valley celebrate Shabbat at home in a variety of different ways.
Rabbi Mendy Deitsch of Chabad of the East Valley invites people to eat Shabbat dinner with his family.
"We make it a point to always have a couple families at our Shabbat table that don't normally experience Shabbat," he says. Besides fulfilling a mitzvah, "the whole meal is so much nicer, so much warmer when you have other people present at the home. It really changes the whole atmosphere in our home." Deitsch often encourages his congregants to invite people to their own Shabbat tables, and "people come back to me and tell me how beautiful it was to have people over."
Saturday, Deitsch says, is a time for family. After services, "I'll spend time during the Saturday afternoon reviewing the week with my children, going over the weekly Torah portion and spending some quiet time.
"We don't answer the phone, the television is off, the radio is off, everything is quiet, we don't drive on Shabbat, so it's really a time to just spend time with family and close friends."
For the Christopher family, Shabbat consists of a mixture of in- and out-of-home traditions.
Scott Christopher bakes the challah each week ("He's the baker in the family," says his wife Fonda). Scott, Fonda and their daughter Michaela light Shabbat candles, perform netilat yadayim (the ritual handwashing that takes place before meals say Kiddush together and say a blessing over the challah.
The Christophers usually attend Friday night services and occasionally Saturday morning services at Temple Emanuel of Tempe.
Fonda says that Shabbat at home is an opportunity for the family to catch up.
"We share about what's happened during the week, and we basically talk about what's going to happen over the weekend." She adds that her husband believes Shabbat should be a time of relaxation. "He feels very strongly about being low-key on Friday afternoon and relaxing on Friday night, whether it's at temple or at home. Then also Saturday, doing something either as a family or something that is not work-related."
Whatever the traditions, families find meaning in their individual Shabbat observance.
"It's interesting that Shabbos is only an absence of work, but it's such an invigorating time," Deitsch says. "It's like exercise for the mind."
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