I would like to invite you over for Shabbat lunch. But…
Well, we have this international pandemic happening right now. Not only that, but at this very moment (Friday morning, just a few hours before Shabbat begins), I’m sitting in a small hotel room in Gaithersburg, Maryland. There aren’t any picnic benches outside, and it’s a bit cold for eating on the grass. And are you in Gaithersburg?
My daughter and my dog and I are sharing this room for a week or so, and it’s a bit crowded. Plus, there’s no actual table, just two trays you can pull up to the sofa so you can eat while watching TV (or while not watching TV). We have a mini fridge and a microwave, and we’re hoping to be on a plane back to Israel early next week, so we hardly have any food. A banana, a bunch of grapes, some instant oatmeal, tofu, bread, pickles and peanut butter (of course), pretzels and hummus, popcorn. The cupboard isn’t bare, but it’s not exactly the makings of a shared Shabbat meal.
Well, we’ll be back in our apartment in Israel soon! But… then we’ll have 10-14 days of quarantine. And the apartment is small — about the size of this little hotel room. And we have a small table and two wobbly chairs. Even pulled out from the wall, with two people sitting on the sofa, the table probably could only squishily seat four people and four plates, with serving dishes on the counter, not on the table.
From reading the above, you can probably see why it didn’t even occur to me to invite you for Shabbat lunch. But by the time I wrote my opening sentence to this blog, issuing the invitation, it had. And I’ll tell you what changed: I read the following lines from this week’s Torah portion, Shemot.
Now the priest of Midyan had seven daughters. They came to draw water and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. But shepherds came and drove them off. Moses rose to their defense and he watered their flock. When they returned to their father Reuel, he asked, “How is it that you have returned so soon today?” They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds, he even drew water for us and watered the flock.” He said to his daughters, “Where is he then? Why did you leave the man? Ask him in to break bread.”
Exodus 2:16-20
When I read this, I thought of Rebekah meeting Eliezer at the well when he came to find a wife for Isaac. Eliezer had asked God to show him the right woman by showing him someone who would offer water for him and his camels. Rebekah did that, and she invited him back to her family’s tent for a meal. So what was the difference between Rebekah and these women? (By the way, one of these women was Tzippora, Moses’ future wife.) In my opinion, it’s the same answer as the difference between me before I considered inviting you to lunch and after.
Before I’d considered inviting you to lunch, I had the stressors I listed. Limited space, limited food, limited virus-free breathing room. I had limitations. They were so present in my current moment, that I almost hadn’t noticed them. I just unknowingly assumed that I wouldn’t invite anyone for lunch. Reading the question that basically asked, ‘why aren’t you inviting someone over?’ allowed me a pause. In that pause, I came back to the three words that I mentioned last week: limitless, creative, relaxed.
To the best of our knowledge, when Rebekah was out watering the flock and Eliezer met her, there wasn’t anything weighing her down. She was out in the open air, doing what she usually did, and enjoyed the opportunity of helping a stranger. On the other hand, Tzippora and her sisters had just been run out by a group of shepherds who took the water of their hard labor. I imagine them as being stressed, and probably even fearful. In moments like those, it’s harder to be our truest selves. Their brains were probably just focused on staying alive.
That’s what our brains do. Sometimes our brains can’t distinguish between being attacked by shepherds and a limited living space. It’s just that the more support we have in place at any given time, the easier it is to be naturally open. I’m blessed in that I really do have a lot of support of many sorts in place, and a brief pause helped me center back to that place. I highly recommend pauses!
So, as I said: you’re invited. You’re invited to make your own lunch and eat with me/us over zoom. You’re invited to eat outside on our lovely balcony when we get back to Israel. You’re invited to a cup of tea or coffee that you brew yourself and drink while we talk on the phone. Those are just a few ideas. The possibilities are limitless!