How does an heirloom begin?
First, the story, shared 20 years later.
On the March of the Living (see http://www.motl.org ) in 1994, a young girl came up to me at the end of our 2 weeks in Poland and Israel, and asked: “Alida, I want to light the Sabbath candles when I get home, but I know my Mom won’t let me. What should I do?” I had just spent 2 incredibly meaningful and powerful weeks with this young lady, so I knew her story.
Mindy came from a secular, non-observant home. Her parents had agreed to let her participate in the March of the Living, but told us up front, that they wouldn’t and didn’t support the program. We took her anyway.
No, I didn’t sit down with her and have a long talk about observance, honoring your parents and more. I simply said, “Do you have a light in your closet at home?” Mindy replied, “Well, yes I do.” I asked her if she had learned the blessing for lighting the Sabbath candles? She said yes, she had learned it during the past 2 weeks. So I said, “Mindy, when nobody is around on Friday evening, open the closet door, recite the blessing, and turn on the closet light. Turn it off when Shabbat is over.” Mindy looked at me, and said: “Okay.” And she walked away.
Twenty years later, I received an email from Mindy. She told me that she had turned on the closet light for 1 full year. The next year she went to college, and purchased a set of Sabbath candlesticks, and has been lighting candles ever since. She even lights them when she goes home, in front of her Mother. (Who wisely smiles and lets it pass.) She went on to tell me that she is married to “…a nice Jewish boy…” Her 2 children attend a Reform Jewish Day School, and she just wanted me to know that “…she had come out of the closet…”
When I started this blog, I wrote to Mindy, and asked if one day I could share her story, changing her name. She said yes. She also told me that in a year from now, when her first daughter will celebrate her Bat Mitzvah, she will offer to buy her a set of candlesticks from my web site.
That’s how an heirloom begins.