The Last Break-fast

Since moving to New York 6 years ago, I’ve hosted an annual Yom Kippur break-fast, the meal that Jews flock to after completing the 30 hour fast that marks Judaism’s day of atonement. For many, the break-fast is nothing more than excuse to binge eat babka and lox, but for me, the experience of spending an afternoon quietly slicing tomatoes, and setting a perfect buffet, is only elevated by the ensuing madness of  maneuvering through a crowded apartment, frantically refilling platters of lox, and seeing scores of friends I hadn’t seen over the summer months. It’s almost as if spooning chopped liver from plastic takeout containers onto good china has become my personal version of a Magnolia cupcake.   

The first break-fast I hosted was a relatively meager affair: my cousin and I sat together in my studio apartment eating cold salmon from the Westside Market. Shortly thereafter, I met my now-husband, and ever since we’ve hosted increasingly elaborate break-fasts in increasingly roomier apartments with an increasingly large number of friends and family.

In my second year as host, I waited for hours in the rain on Houston Street in front of Russ and Daughters naively clutching a numbered chit awaiting my turn to order at America’s temple of smoked salmon, not even bothering to question how, in a world of Uber Eats, such lovable chaos could still exist and still be endearing. 

By year 3, I had learned a new trick: if you call Russ and Daughters in advance (August), you were given an almost superhero like ability to triumphantly saunter through the front of the house, full of Erev Yom Kippur madness, and be honored to wait in a second, smaller line, filled with pleasant New Yorkers, who thumbed issues of New York magazine, waiting for your pre-packed boxes of smoked salmon, chive cream cheese, and babka.

When we moved into our newest apartment, a close friend remarked, “This is such a great space for your break-fast,” as if we had rented an apartment for one night. Consciously, I was sure we hadn’t. But subconsciously, maybe we had? 

As we get closer to this year’s Yom Kippur, in which our break-fast will go from an open door of 60+, to a family only affair, I’ve been struck by a sense of loss from no longer getting to experience what had become a cornerstone of how I celebrated the Judaism’s holiest day. How does one have a meaningful Yom Kippur, a holiday where one literally sings in prayer: “and who will die by plague”, during a year when people are literally dying by plague?  

This high holiday season is extra somber. The pandemic has robbed 200,000 Americans of their lives. And for those of us who are lucky to not be touched directly by loss, we are navigating yet another season of uncertainty when mundane pleasures have stopped

Yom Kippur’s central focus is on repentance, prayer, and forgiveness. And yet the holiday ends, at least for me, not with a dignified blowing of the Shofar, but with a ceremonial schmear of cream cheese amongst friends. Judaism, especially of the North American culturally assimilated kind, has heralded this sense of community. Shuls, or temples, are no longer simply places of prayer but community hubs filled with day-cares, sisterhoods, and out of the cold programs fulfilling the meaning of the Hebrew word for synagogue, beit knesset, as houses of assembly. 

Judaism is not alone in this regard and the pandemic has reminded all of us that human beings, regardless of religion or creed, are social animals: we find comfort in building a community, are nourished by ability to share food with friends, and express hope in the capacity to welcome strangers into our homes. Even the Passover text reminds us that it is our duty as Jews to welcome strangers into our homes, noting that we too were once strangers in a foreign land. I think about this as a central tenet of my own form of Judaism.    

The first year we hosted our break-fast together, my husband texted me from synagogue letting me know that he’d run into some loose acquaintances who had no place to go after services. He’d invited them back to our house and was worried we were going to run out of food. In looking at the 5 dozen bagels I had purchased, I reassured him there was no need to worry; I realized then that feeding strangers was my form of repentance. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, the virus has taken a lot from too many of us. It’s robbed us of the basic necessity to see family and friends, it’s taken jobs and livelihoods, and at its most extreme it’s stolen our loved ones. But it’s also broken one unmistakable character of our humanity: our neighborliness, the normalcy of breaking bread with strangers, or the power of building community simply by sharing meals with friends and acquaintances alike.

I moved to New York without much of a community. Yom Kippur has become a symbol of the life I had built for myself in Manhattan alongside people I didn't expect to meet and had come to love. It grew in size and evolved in custom along with my own sense of community. It also became a way to blend the ritualistic holiday with an experience that felt modern and emblematic of contemporary Jewish New York. Jews are, by our nature, a resilient people. And while I will not be serving an untoasted New York sesame seed bagel with a side of white fish to my nearests and the dearest, the hope of this year’s break-fast is the promise of another, even better one, tomorrow.

Shana Tova.