At Vilna Shul, Shabbat is a Big Dill
It’s 5:45 p.m. on a Friday, and our calves are straining up Beacon Hill. The air here is peaceful, and we feel so far away from campus.
Our Google Maps promises that somewhere, nestled amongst the neighborhood’s brick townhouses, is a synagogue. It is hard to imagine that it’s really there until it is — set back from the sidewalk behind an iron gate. We tilt our heads toward the sky to meet the stained glass Star of David, illuminated by the light inside. A security guard lets a stranger in, and we follow close behind.
We’re here for Shabbat service and dinner, a Jewish practice of commemorating the end of the week and celebrating the day of rest from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday. For observant Jews, this means abstaining from work of any kind, from using the phone to turning on the stove. For secular Jews like us, Shabbat is often just a good excuse for Challah French toast.
Tonight, the main draw is pickles. We’re heading to a pickle-making workshop and deli-themed dinner at Vilna Shul, a Jewish cultural center in Boston.
Part of the impetus for our journey is a desire to engage in a Jewish community beyond Harvard’s campus. With national attention trained on Harvard the past few months, engaging in Jewish spaces on campus has felt like more of a political endeavor. Pickle-making, gimmicky in all the right ways, was enough to get us out the door.
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Vilna Shul is a contemporary Jewish cultural space, but it’s also a relic of Boston’s early 20th century Jewish immigrant community. Founded in 1893 by Eastern European émigrés, the synagogue moved around the West End before settling into its current building in 1919. The Shul was the centerpiece of the West End Jewish community, but the synagogue’s fervor dissipated over time as families moved to the suburbs.
In 1985, Mendel Miller, the only remaining member of the congregation, held a service in the synagogue for what would be the last time. The synagogue was left to decay for over a decade until 1995, when philanthropic groups began a renewal of the building. The community revived.
Sitting in the pews of the synagogue, the sense of history is palpable. The walls are filled with weathered murals, and unpolished Judaica glimmers in the chandelier light. It’s grandiose and ornate, yet the peeling paint makes it feel homey.
The Rabbi’s service takes us back to the present. We sing the “swing version” of an ancient Hebraic text. Her dvar torah is about “dressing the soul,” and she explains how traditional rabbinical garb was “some serious drip.” She holds for laughter, then continues, telling us about her “Challah-back girl” socks. We join together to sing the nigun — a lyricless melody — and the music fills the space, waves swirling around the bima. The melody engulfs us and we feel for a moment that we have been missing out.
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Afterwards, we head downstairs to bless the Challah bread and wine. More than 40 of us quickly fill two rows of plastic folding tables. Most of the people we meet over deli sandwiches and canned beers heard about this on Facebook or Instagram. One girl admits she’s looking to meet “new people” or “someone,” and her mom suggested she turn here. Some are regulars. There are also quite a few fermented food fanatics, drawn by the promise of fresh cucumbers and a new Mason jar. They are accountants, master’s students, Jewish youth group coordinators, and just about everything in between.
The chit chat of strangers becoming friends fills the room, but many here already know each other. One group of 20-somethings told us that there are a lot of Shabbat events to pick from. For next week’s dinner, many will migrate to the Chai Center in Brookline, which hosts Shabbat on the first Friday of each month. Moishe Houses — subsidized co-living spaces for young Jewish adults — have open Klezmer soirees, wine tastings, yoga classes, and Mezuzah-painting workshops.
Many grew up within the structure of a synagogue, but now they meander from Jewish space to Jewish space:, whatever strikes the fancy. Tonight, clearly, the mood was pickles.
“Shul” is the Yiddish word for synagogue, and it implies a sense of structure. However, Vilna Shul’s Director of Operations and Finance Geo I. Poor tells us that “it often ends up being people who haven’t found their place yet, a reality of being in your 20s and 30s.” He says, “We’re a place you can connect to without the pressure or baggage of being your place.”
The kinds of Jews that find themselves in Boston, Poor tells us, are there for the cultural enrichment of city life. In addition to the 20s and 30s demographic, Vilna Shul also has programming for empty-nesters. Like young adults without spouses or children who moved to Boston for school or work, they don’t quite fit into the conventional synagogue model centered on family life. “The traditional synagogue isn’t for everyone and until the last few decades, we didn’t recognize that,” Poor tells us.
Soon, it’s time to do the thing we came for. There are buckets of cucumbers in an ice bath, stacks of mason jars, and bags of green beans. Each person measures mustard seed, red pepper flakes, and heaping tablespoons of salt. We slice and combine, pour in water and a black tea bag (for crispiness, we’re told), and the whole thing is over faster than we thought. Over the course of the next week, the cucumbers will become pickles.
— Associate Magazine Editor Sage S. Lattman can be reached at sage.lattman@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @sagelattman.
— Associate Magazine Editor Dina R. Zeldin can be reached at dina.zeldin@thecrimson.com.