Prose
I used to dread Saturdays. An odd day to resent, considering it marks the end of the school week and the promise of weekend freedom. But I never felt free. Beyond the inherent lack of agency that comes with being under the age of ten, I was also bound by something more abstract, yet no less confining: the quiet stillness of Shabbat. From Friday evening until Saturday nightfall, our house transformed into a kind of suspended world: unplugged, subdued, sacred. No television. No phones. Not even the casual flip of a light switch. These rules made me feel impossibly far from everyone else.
I wanted nothing more than to blend in, to be one of the kids at the Friday night ice cream socials or the Saturday morning birthday parties. That might be misleading. Technically, I could go if I were to walk or if a bus route were to happen to align just right. These were the compromises. I’d arrive sweaty and out of breath, sometimes with grape juice in my backpack, always slightly off-rhythm from the others. I watched the kids laugh and buzz around, entirely at home in the moment. And maybe they were. I wasn’t so sure I was.
I believed soccer should be an exception. We made one every May for my dance recital; surely games warranted the same. However, all the games were scheduled for Saturdays (Sundays, of course, were reserved for church), and my parents weren’t willing to make an exception for them. Instead, they offered what they considered an alternative solution and a new route, both of which I found highly undesirable.
And so, every Saturday morning, I followed the route. I would bike with my father to the university bus stop, where we’d hoist our bikes onto the rack — a process that felt endlessly visible and slow. I imagined the eyes of every impatient rider fixed on us. I wished he’d move faster. I wished we could disappear. We rode two stops, unhooked the bikes, and continued pedaling. It was always warm by then. I was always sweating. And I never showed up late.
Tardiness would have only confirmed what I already feared: that I didn’t quite belong. I was the girl who couldn’t go out on Fridays, who couldn’t eat pepperoni pizza or Chick-fil-A, who left school on holidays no one else celebrated. Showing up late would only underline that I was also the girl who didn’t have a ride, who had to cross town by force of will and public transit. I arrived early instead, every time, stretching on the sidelines while pretending not to care that the others had parents sitting in lawn chairs just beyond the field.
But my father stayed, too, never on the sidelines, always just out of view. He would wait until halftime and find a spot, always the same one: a wide, flat rock on a hill just past the soccer complex. That It was where we’d eat our Shabbat lunch. He’d unpack tupperwares from a canvas bag — slices of challah, hard-boiled eggs, and grape juice poured carefully from a thermos into plastic cups. We said the blessings together, sometimes hurriedly, sometimes not. I remember the weight of it — not just the food, but the ritual, the care, the privacy of it. A quiet meal shared on a rock while my teammates passed around Gatorade and fruit snacks. I appreciate it now, in retrospect, but at the time, I, of course, wanted nothing more than that Gatorade.
For so long, I resented those moments. I resented the bus rides, the grape juice, the sweaty arrivals. I resented being the only kid who had to explain myself, to make my life legible to a world that didn’t know what Shabbat was and didn’t care to ask. It felt like my Jewishness was something I was constantly apologizing for, always translating, always softening. Something I carried like an invisible weight, invisible to everyone but me.
However, I now realize that what I once thought was a restriction was, in fact, a structure. What I interpreted as exile was, in its quiet way, a form of intimacy. Those Saturdays — the long treks, the lukewarm lunches, the blessings whispered over thermos-lid kiddush cups — they taught me to move deliberately in a world that rushes. They taught me that sacredness doesn't always look like a cathedral or a choir, but sometimes like a rock overlooking a soccer field, warmed by the sun and the ritual of being present.
As I got older, I tried to distance myself from the parts of Judaism that made me feel apart from everyone else. I didn't stop identifying as Jewish, but I pushed it toward the periphery. I told myself I was '“culturally Jewish,” the way some people say they’re “spiritual but not religious.” I told people I celebrated “Christmakkah” and Easter or Passover when I went to New Jersey. I recited the Passover questions halfheartedly, skipped services when I could, and answered questions at school with practiced, secular ease. What I didn’t realize was that, even at that distance, I was still living inside the framework that had raised me.
It was only recently have that I understood how deeply I had internalized the teachings, not just the holidays and rituals, but the quiet theological truths that shaped the way I see the world. Even when I stopped thinking about it explicitly, they it remained a foundational part of my worldview. When I act with conviction, it is often with the instinctive knowledge that my responsibility stretches beyond myself — that the world is fractured and fragile, and that I have a role, however small, in its repair.
Judaism was never just something we did in synagogue. It was something that seeped into the fabric of my life. In the way I spoke to strangers. In the way my family hosted guests. In the way my father would always–always!–give away the last bite of food, even if he wanted it, because someone else might need it more. I didn’t see those things as ‘religious’ at the time. They were simply normal. They were the way life was structured — quietly, consistently, lovingly.
And now, even as I live more secularly — as I light candles only when I remember, and skip services more often than I attend them — I find myself tracing those values back to the Shabbat table, to the big rock on the hill, to the long walk to the bus stop. I realize I have never stopped living a Jewish life. I have only stopped needing to prove that I am.