Week 4: voice; childhood memoir /2

Sabbath

Friday afternoon, the piercing sound of the horn announcing the coming of the Sabbath was just heard and a complete silence follows.  No cars or buses or any other sounds that normally fill the rest of the week days. There is no other place in the world; I was always sure, where Friday afternoons feels like that. Where even the air changes and takes on a different quality, it becomes hushed and almost transparent.

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I am holding my breath while running up the stairs in the dark, not stopping until I reach the third floor and touch the door handle of our apartment.  It’s Friday evening and in our religious neighborhood, once the Sabbath starts you are not allowed to turn the lights on or off so I clutch the stone railing for guidance and take off. When I enter the apartment I am breathing heavily but feel as if I just won a race.

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Every Sabbath in the afternoon my parents and I are walking across the open fields to visit my grandmother on the other side of town. Her one story house in the middle of the most religious neighborhood in Jerusalem is always dark. The heavy furniture and gold framed black and white pictures on the walls add to the feeling of stuffiness. A peck on my cheek and a fist full of candy; she pulls from her pocket is our only way of communication. She does not speak Hebrew and I don’t understand her language. I stand on her narrow balcony for what seems like hours and watch the people walking down the street wearing their heavy black clothes. The men with their oddly shaped fur hats followed by women dressed in dark long dresses always holding at least one crying baby in their arms. The adults, my parents, grandmother and her second husband are all drinking tea inside talking in that language I do not understand.

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In the evening I keep searching for the three stars that mark the end of the Sabbath and then my father performs the end of Sabbath ritual. “Blessed are You, LORD, who distinguishes between the sacred and the secular."He tips the braided candle and then dips it in the wine. The fire hisses as it is touches the red liquid. I love the sound and the smell. “He who differentiate between the sacred and the secular”, it sounds like a secret code after which we are allowed to turn the lights on. We leave the holy and walk into another week of secular. It is one of these moments, I think, when the world stops for a minute, hesitates and then rolls on.

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Flashes of memory, unsullied and sharp as if the passing years have not touched them, unaffected by time they are vivid reminders of other times and different places. And still every now and then I catch myself on Friday afternoons taking a deep breath of air, searching for that unique and subtle quality. As a force of habit I still raise my head to look at the three stars that mark the end of the Sabbath and when I do that I can hear these words of the Sabbath end prayer in my head. I whisper them to myself and enjoy how they taste on my tongue.