Eating, fasting, hanging with the Jewish community

[Fat Guy]

A little while back, looking at our son's nursery-school calendar (his nursery school is in a synagogue here in New York City), we noticed that the confluence of Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Columbus Day and his unusual Monday-Tuesday-Thursday schedule meant that from two Tuesdays ago until the following Thursday he would have no school. An even happier coincidence: our Gastonia, NC-based friends, who have a beach house in (on?) Oak Island, NC, would not be using the beach house at that time. So, with the 14-hour drive being the only barrier to an autumn vacation at the beach in North Carolina, we set off for the Cape Fear Coast.

The nearest urban center (though it is hardly urban) to Oak Island is Wilmington, so we did some Googling and found not one but three synagogues in town. Ellen called each and learned that at least one, B'nai Israel, had a nursery school attached to it and therefore would be doing a children's service on Yom Kippur in addition to the regular adult service (for those unfamiliar with the liturgy, the Yom Kippur service is hard-core and all-day -- not do-able by a three-year-old). The woman on the phone was very welcoming and also invited us to join in the break-fast after sundown.

Wednesday night just before sunset we grilled some burgers and had our last meal before the Yom Kippur fast. We spent some time at the beach collecting shells Thursday morning and then drove into Wilmington. Congregation B'nai Israel, we learned, dates to 1898 and has 211 families in its membership. Out front of the synagogue are several seriously old magnolia trees. A leaf from one of the trees fell and hit me on the head and almost gave me a concussion.

By noon I was pretty thirsty (the Yom Kippur fast is comprehensive: no food or beverage from sundown to sundown) but was doing okay on the appetite front. My bodily reserves of fat could probably sustain me on a transatlantic voyage in a life raft, but I need water like everyone else. In between the children's service and the break-fast, we visited two lovely museums in Wilmington (the Wilmington Children's Museum and the Cape Fear Museum) and fed PJ (little kids, sick folks, et al., are not supposed to fast). I was envious of his pizza.

We returned to the synagogue at 6:30pm, ravenous. The service, which was supposed to end by 7pm, ran late and the shofar (ram's horn, blown like a trumpet during the high holidays) wasn't sounded until about 7:30pm. I was about ready to pass out by the time we were led into the social hall for a break-fast prepared by the synagogue's sisterhood.

Long tables were laid out with a cornucopia of breads, salads, spreads, locally smoked salmon and beverages. There was also a groaning board of desserts at one end of the room. As I walked from our table to the dessert buffet, several times, people would call out to me, "Are y'all the folks down from New York City?" (Word had traveled.) We sat opposite a lovely couple from Cincinnati, Bernie and Judy, who had chosen Wilmington for their retirement. In addition to the expected transplants, there were members of the synagogue who were real Southerners. One particular character, who told us he was third generation in that congregation, was going around whispering to his buddies, "I got some ribs on the grill. They'll be ready in about an hour. Come over."

Revived by the break-fast, we headed back to Oak Island. A few days later we decided to spend another day in Wilmington. This time our objective was lunch at Wilmington's only kosher restaurant (yes, it's surprising that there is even one), a nominally Moroccan place called Nagila.

Apparently at dinnertime there are servers and other trappings of a restaurant, but at lunchtime the chef-owner, an Israeli-born gentleman named Shai Shalit who seems out-of-place enough in Wilmington that it causes me to wonder whether he's in the witness protection program, cooks and serves all the food single-handedly. You get your own beverages and otherwise participate in the service of food. Prices are quite low. "The restaurant doesn't support me; I support the restaurant," said Shalit as he sat outside with us after the meal, smoking a cigarette and talking about his family's pita bakery in Brooklyn. (He also seems to broker diamonds via cell-phone while working in the restaurant.)

The food at Nagila is astonishingly good. Shalit bakes his own pita. He does just about everything himself, in part because he's a perfectionist (he alluded to being a cook at a fancy hotel in Israel before coming to the US) and in part because local availability of kosher products is limited. If he didn't bake his own pita, it's not like he'd be able to get it from a local bakery. He starts prepping at the crack of dawn. I had lamb meatballs, which were juicy and delicately spiced, served with a variety of Middle Eastern salads and spreads including absolutely first-rate hummus.

Most of the other lunch customers appeared to be local workmen who arrived in pickup trucks with the names of sheetrocking, plumbing and other contracting companies printed on the doors.

We also had dinner with local food-writer Liz Biro, who it turns out had recently written a newspaper story about Nagila.

[Shelby]

Hey, ya can't go wrong with a guy that multi-tasks diamond selling and cooking!

I enjoyed this!

[Marlene]

I enjoyed this as well. Steven, are 3 year olds required to fast as well? I can't imagine how well that would go over and they wouldn't really understand at that age either!

[Fat Guy]

Well, there are various levels of observance. Needless to say, we drove to synagogue and engaged in other activities that day that more observant Jews would not approve of. So there may be a range of answers here. But as I understand it children are not required to fast until they reach the age of bar mitzvah (13). I believe starting at age 9 they're supposed to do a partial fast. There are also prohibitions against sick people fasting (if it will endanger their health), and I believe women who have recently given birth are not permitted to fast.