Dinner with friends keeps Shabbat alive
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Dr. Moshe Vardi and Pam Geyer host Shabbat dinners on Zoom.
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Before coronavirus, community on Shabbat centered around the synagogue. For wife and husband, Pam Geyer and Moshe Vardi, Ph.D., it also centered around Shabbat dinners with friends. Since the shutdown, and not to be deterred, the couple began hosting virtual Friday night dinners, and thus, the magic of Shabbat remains alive and well.
“The challenge during a pandemic is how to capture some aspects of normalcy,” Geyer told the JHV. “For Moshe and me, Shabbat is not only about rest, but also about connecting with friends. This new tradition of Zoom dinner enables us to retain the social aspects of Shabbat.”
“We are members of Congregation Brith Shalom and around mid-March it was the last physical service, and we all went home. And, I was fairly bothered by the epidemic,” said Vardi, who understood early on what the pandemic meant. “I was wearing masks on planes in January. I stopped shaking hands around mid-February.” And then, Vardi saw a quote on social media by Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of Los Angeles:
“Every hand that we don’t shake must become a phone call that we place,” said the rabbi. “Every embrace that we avoid must become a verbal expression of warmth and concern. Every inch and every foot that we physically place between ourselves and another must become a thought as to how we might help that other, should the need arise.”
“So, I talked to some friends and I said we all use Zoom,” said Vardi, who, as a professor at Rice University has the professional license for Zoom, with unlimited minutes. “So, we decided that is what we will do. It’s a wonderful way to keep in touch with people. Everybody’s isolated; everybody’s stuck at home, so everybody was just delighted to join our Zoom meals and, apparently, they have become a big hit because some friends told us that they picked up this idea and now they are also doing it.”
“So, we are very happy to perhaps have started a new tradition,” said Geyer.
The couple started having dinner every Friday night, and it didn’t take long to realize that smaller Zoom dinners were better. “With a large number of people, it becomes very chaotic,” said Vardi. “You can’t just have a conversation with a person next to you, so we realized that two or three couples is the maximum. So, every Shabbat it’s a different set of friends.
“Now, we do Kabbalat Shabbat on Facebook with Congregation Brith Shalom, and at 7, we sit down with a couple of friends to catch up, to see how people are dealing with the current challenges. And, you cannot do it too long – after about an hour-and-a-half, you can get Zoom fatigue.”
Dr. Alan Silverblatt is a clinical psychologist who has attended the Geyer-Vardi dinners. He has found that the reaction diners have is akin to his patients who’ve experienced psychotherapy over Zoom. “It’s fascinating to watch people’s emotional response. They feel very connected. They don’t feel as isolated. There’s more to it that you don’t get with just a phone call. Everyone leaves these Zoom dinners feeling emotionally recharged.
“And, we were able to share Rosh Hashanah dinner with friends who live nearby and with others who live far away,” said Dr. Silverblatt. “This has been an opportunity to rekindle our long-distance friendships.”
Vardi’s family lives in Israel and, while the time difference makes sharing a meal difficult, they now have family discussions that didn’t take place before the Zoom dinners. “I have a brother and a sister. Before that, I would talk to her, talk to him and, now with Zoom, I can say, ‘Let’s have a three-way conversation’ and we get together on Zoom and we have a family conversation which we couldn’t have had before.”
The meals been so successful at connecting family and friends across the U.S. and the world that they are unlikely to end when in-person services resume. “The nice thing about Zoom is the ability to transcend distance, so we can socialize also with friends who are not in Houston. I am sure that this will continue after the pandemic,” said Geyer.
And, we have discovered that there is one upside to Zoom dinners, said Vardi. “There is less cooking and less cleaning.”
“The challenge during a pandemic is how to capture some aspects of normalcy,” Geyer told the JHV. “For Moshe and me, Shabbat is not only about rest, but also about connecting with friends. This new tradition of Zoom dinner enables us to retain the social aspects of Shabbat.”
“We are members of Congregation Brith Shalom and around mid-March it was the last physical service, and we all went home. And, I was fairly bothered by the epidemic,” said Vardi, who understood early on what the pandemic meant. “I was wearing masks on planes in January. I stopped shaking hands around mid-February.” And then, Vardi saw a quote on social media by Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of Los Angeles:
“Every hand that we don’t shake must become a phone call that we place,” said the rabbi. “Every embrace that we avoid must become a verbal expression of warmth and concern. Every inch and every foot that we physically place between ourselves and another must become a thought as to how we might help that other, should the need arise.”
“So, I talked to some friends and I said we all use Zoom,” said Vardi, who, as a professor at Rice University has the professional license for Zoom, with unlimited minutes. “So, we decided that is what we will do. It’s a wonderful way to keep in touch with people. Everybody’s isolated; everybody’s stuck at home, so everybody was just delighted to join our Zoom meals and, apparently, they have become a big hit because some friends told us that they picked up this idea and now they are also doing it.”
“So, we are very happy to perhaps have started a new tradition,” said Geyer.
The couple started having dinner every Friday night, and it didn’t take long to realize that smaller Zoom dinners were better. “With a large number of people, it becomes very chaotic,” said Vardi. “You can’t just have a conversation with a person next to you, so we realized that two or three couples is the maximum. So, every Shabbat it’s a different set of friends.
“Now, we do Kabbalat Shabbat on Facebook with Congregation Brith Shalom, and at 7, we sit down with a couple of friends to catch up, to see how people are dealing with the current challenges. And, you cannot do it too long – after about an hour-and-a-half, you can get Zoom fatigue.”
Dr. Alan Silverblatt is a clinical psychologist who has attended the Geyer-Vardi dinners. He has found that the reaction diners have is akin to his patients who’ve experienced psychotherapy over Zoom. “It’s fascinating to watch people’s emotional response. They feel very connected. They don’t feel as isolated. There’s more to it that you don’t get with just a phone call. Everyone leaves these Zoom dinners feeling emotionally recharged.
“And, we were able to share Rosh Hashanah dinner with friends who live nearby and with others who live far away,” said Dr. Silverblatt. “This has been an opportunity to rekindle our long-distance friendships.”
Vardi’s family lives in Israel and, while the time difference makes sharing a meal difficult, they now have family discussions that didn’t take place before the Zoom dinners. “I have a brother and a sister. Before that, I would talk to her, talk to him and, now with Zoom, I can say, ‘Let’s have a three-way conversation’ and we get together on Zoom and we have a family conversation which we couldn’t have had before.”
The meals been so successful at connecting family and friends across the U.S. and the world that they are unlikely to end when in-person services resume. “The nice thing about Zoom is the ability to transcend distance, so we can socialize also with friends who are not in Houston. I am sure that this will continue after the pandemic,” said Geyer.
And, we have discovered that there is one upside to Zoom dinners, said Vardi. “There is less cooking and less cleaning.”