My Big Fat Italian Rosh Hashanah

“Rabbi Hazan?” I asked meekly as I opened the door and 17 surprised faces met my sheepish one. It was Rosh Hashanah and I was Jewish in Rome, home of all things Catholic.

An Orthodox woman dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and below-the-knee skirt approached the door. She looked confused. “I spoke to Moshe,” I said.

A pause.

“Moshe? Chi è Moshe?” she said.

Earlier that week, I had phoned Rome’s Chabad House, a chapter of the movement that promotes Jewish culture and community in cities around the world. I’d asked about celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, with a family in Rome. Moshe, a Chabad representative, then arranged for me to eat with Rabbi Hazan. I had arrived at this home expecting a warm, Jewish welcome from my host family. Instead, there I was, staring into a room of confused strangers when all I’d wanted was a bowl of Matzah ball soup.

Scrounging together bits of English, Hebrew, and Italian, I attempted to explain my intrusion.

I was in my third week in Rome and the winding, cobblestone streets had left me lost and alone. I had spotted a few men sporting yarmulkes—traditional Jewish skullcaps—near the metro stop. I had explained about Chabad, about Rabbi Hazan, and about Rosh Hashanah dinner.

“È niente. We will take you there,“ one said.

Now I stood on Rabbi Hazan’s doorstep. The woman glanced at her full table, each chair already occupied. Turns out, I had the wrong Rabbi Hazan.

“It sounds like a bad Yiddish joke,” my friend Clifford said after I told him the story. But I saw “The Case of the Mistaken Hazans” as a beautiful realization of “mishpacha,” the Yiddish word for family, in its largest sense. It’s a word for your mother’s father’s sister-in-law’s great-uncle’s cousin Saul, who looks just like you.

Of course, the “wrong” Rabbi Hazan insisted I stay. I felt like Elijah, welcomed to the Seder during Passover. The guests at the already-full table looked at me in disbelief, but the Rabbi’s wife quickly found an extra chair. We were mishpacha, and when in Rome, we scooted our chairs closer and celebrated the Jewish New Year together.

I am from a very Jewish hometown, I attend a Hillel-friendly university, and I studied in Jerusalem last summer. But during my fall semester abroad, I found myself living 20 minutes from the Vatican. Beginning with that fateful Rosh Hashanah dinner, as I traveled around Europe, I felt more Jewish, more connected to my mishpacha, than I ever had before.

In Paris, I spent an afternoon searching for Goldenberg’s. My dad, who lived in Paris during his 20s, suggested I visit this famous Jewish deli. I followed his directions through the Marias, a traditionally Jewish quarter, but Goldenberg’s was no where to be found. My roommate and I walked into the first Jewish bakery we found and asked a random American man for directions. I discovered that Goldenberg’s had closed. I also discovered that the random American man and I had both graduated from Spanish River High School in Florida, albeit 13 years apart. Mishpacha.

In Rome, my roommates and I visited Michelangelo’s Moses statue at the church of San Pietro in Vincoli. I had just finished a 10-page paper entitled “Michelangelo on the Couch: Freud’s Analysis of the Moses Sculpture.”

“Notice how Michelangelo depicted Moses with horns,” I said. “While it looks like anti-Semitism, most historians believe he included the horns because of a mistranslation of a Hebrew word that means both ‘rays of lights’ and ‘horns.’”

A twenty-something man in a blue North Face jacket inched closer and closer toward our group. He listened, hesitant to approach.

“Yes, that’s right,” he said finally, nodding enthusiastically. “‘Keren’ means both of those things.”

I was inwardly pleased to encounter another Jew in a church. He pulled out his Hebrew language guidebook, which contained the relevant passage from the Torah. He began to read it but I cut him off.

“I can read Hebrew,” I said. He looked shocked. “I’m Jewish,” I offered in explanation.

Gilad was a former officer in the Israeli Defense Force. He had studied at Hebrew University and had lived in the Mount Scopus dorms, next door to the building I had called home last summer.

“Let’s meet up,” I suggested. After all, he was mishpacha.

Two days later, we met again for services at Tempio Ashkenazita—this time, to see the “real” Rabbi Hazan. The ceremony was particularly meaningful that night because miles away in Mumbai, Pakistan-based terrorists were holding a Chabad Rabbi and his wife hostage.

Several weeks later, on our second to last day in Rome, my gourmand roommate and I ate at La Taverna del Ghetto. There I introduced her to Rome’s famous Jewish dish of fried artichokes, Carciofi Alla Giudia. As we left the restaurant, two middle-aged Englishmen approached us. They asked about the restaurant. My roommate described our meal passionately, detailing the history, preparation, and complex flavors of each dish.

As she and I began to walk toward Largo Argentina, to catch the number 40 bus toward home, the taller man called out. “I’m not Jewish, but he is,” he said. “Is that alright?”

I smiled. “No problem,” I said to him. I turned to his Jewish companion. “Just give ‘em the handshake and you’re in.”