Shabbat is the Jewish 25 hour weekly observance from sundown Friday through nightfall Saturday, a time of exhale, rest and presence after a week of work. As post-Soviet Jews who are the first in our families to reclaim Judaism, we share the experience of having felt like imposters during Shabbat at synagogues, local organizations, and friends’ homes. While many American Jews who grew up even somewhat observant take for granted that we know the prayers, songs, and procedures of Shabbat, this tradition wasn’t practiced in our households. And yet, even as we have been taught Shabbat is dangerous (as a signifier of visible Jewishness), we have continued to long for it. 

In our Шаббат, we continue the legacy of Soviet Jewish self-education, further queering the tradition by developing it in our own way. Within all of our practices, we imagine a post-Soviet audience and reify our commitment to decolonization. We bake challah, create our own ritual objects, and paint our own сидур/siddur (prayerbook). In the сидур, we claim Russian as a Jewish language and include transliteration and translation in English to make it accessible, rather than assuming that our audiences read Hebrew. Lacking candleholders and inspired by the Soviet tradition of самодеятельность (self-made), we create our own ritual object by melting anti-Zionist Narrow Bridge Shabbat candles onto a found tin can. 

Our Шаббат is a larger connectivity to our spirituality, to our ancestors, and to our values-- a pathway back to ourselves.