Introducing everyone at the table to my father took place after the challah. He would ask everyone a friendly question: “Where are you from?” “How long are you here for?” “Where do you work?” My father was no schmoozer. He asked to show interest and care. If that same person returned, he would remember to ask a question referring back to their prior conversation weeks or even months earlier.
The most important part of the Shabbos table came when my father spoke. The frantic hustle and bustle that marks the run up to a busy Torah home was left far behind. Everything came to a standstill. The Heavens themselves seemed to stop spinning. What he would relate was not the latest vort he heard, it was something he thought was important to talk about at the Shabbos table – a message, a thought that we could ponder on and take into the week. At my father’s Shloshim, his chavrusa for more than thirty years, Rav Yaakov Asher Feldman, mentioned that he always asked my father to repeat what he said at the table.
Even the grandchildren who didn’t understand the language kept silent. I see him now, his bright blue eyes, his white beard, his Shabbos robe, his Shabbos chair. It was not the gashmius of it – we lived simply – but the deep attachment to His Creator and his dedication to his fellow Jew that made our childhood the powerful education that it was.
My father invested lots of time in preparation for the Shabbos table. In later years he would tell a story and translate it into either English or Hebrew and we all knew what came after the story. The familiar question: “So, what does this all have to do with the Parsha?” Then the discussion would start and we would all try to guess the best answer.
It was at the shiva that the story behind the story came out.
When I was a little girl there were no stories at the table. When my father started telling stories I thought he simply wanted to get the grandchildren’s attention. While we all sat around at the shiva, sharing, crying and remembering, my mother related that one of my siblings (I would never know who; my parents never shared other peoples’ issues with us, even though there were plenty) while doing well with his or her studies, seemed to be spiritually struggling. Father went to ask a shaila and was told that the best way to improve a child’s yiras Shamayim is with stories. This was a very big avodah for him; he worked on it all week, gathering stories so that he would have three different ones, all related to the parsha to “say over” at the Shabbos table.
If all three meals had zemiros, it was the third meal that was most special. My father had his favorite songs and we all sang them. Each week those same songs left us with a spiritual taste for the following week.
On this high note, he left us. Memories can never take the place of a beloved father figure, but he and my mother, may she live and be well, gave us much to emulate – most especially the way to create a Shabbos table the Shechina would want to visit.
L’illui nishmas avi mori Avraham Dovid ben Zeev Heller
