True Elegance by Yaeli Vogel | Please reach out to hello@yaelivogel.com for more information. https://yaelivogel.com/
When the moving truck pulled away from our Brooklyn home of twenty-three years, I stood alone on the sidewalk feeling utterly unmoored. My husband, Dovid, had passed away just seven months earlier, and now I was leaving behind the neighborhood where we had raised our children, celebrated simchahs and built our life together. The decision to move closer to my daughter in Monsey, New York, wasn’t just practical—it was necessary. The emptiness of our apartment had become unbearable, each room filled with memories that both comforted and haunted me.
At sixty-two years old, I was starting over in a community where I knew almost no one except my daughter’s family. The small two-bedroom condo I’d purchased felt sterile and impersonal compared to our Brooklyn home with its worn furniture and walls that had absorbed decades of laughter, tears and the everyday sounds of family life.
“You’ll adjust,” my daughter Miriam assured me, while helping me unpack kitchen items that first day. “You’ll make friends. The community here is warm.”
I nodded but didn’t believe her. How do you transplant yourself at my age? After losing your life partner, your best friend, your other half? The prospect felt as impossible as trying to replant a fully grown tree and expecting it to thrive.
During those first weeks, I established a tentative routine. I’d walk to the local shul for weekday Minchah. I’d shop at the kosher market where the young cashier would smile politely but couldn’t possibly understand the effort it took for me to cook meals just for myself. I’d visit Miriam, her husband Eli and my three grandchildren for dinner twice a week, careful not to impose more often despite the magnetic pull of their warm home.
What I couldn’t establish was Shabbat. That first Friday night after moving, I lit candles in my new dining room and burst into tears before the first blessing left my lips. For twenty-three years, I had watched Dovid make Kiddush at our table, his voice strong and melodic, his face illuminated by candlelight. Now there was just silence after my solitary “Amen.”
“Come to us every Shabbat,” Miriam insisted when I confessed how difficult that first Shabbat night had been.
“I need to figure this out on my own,” I told her, not wanting to burden her young family with my constant presence. “I’ll come for some meals, but I need to learn how to do this.”
What followed were a series of experiments in Shabbat solitude. I tried eating Friday night dinner alone, but the quiet was deafening. I invited myself to neighbors’ homes after Miriam connected me with families in the community. These were lovely people who welcomed me warmly, but I felt like an awkward addition—the widow who needed a place.
“Are you Miriam’s mother?” someone would inevitably ask midway through the meal. “How wonderful that you moved here to be near family.”
I’d smile and nod, careful not to mention Dovid too often or let my grief show. No one wants a mourner to dampen their Shabbat joy.
After six weeks of this unsettled existence, I received an invitation that would change everything. It came from Mrs. Bernstein, a woman about fifteen years my senior whom I had met briefly at the shul kiddush.
“I host a Shabbat lunch for women only,” she explained after approaching me one morning. “Mostly widows, some divorcées, a few never-married. Would you join us this week?”
My instinct was to decline. A table of older women sounded depressing—a reminder of what I had lost rather than what I might gain. But something in Mrs. Bernstein’s confident manner intrigued me.
“We meet at my apartment,” she continued. “Everyone brings something. Nothing fancy. But the conversation—that’s what keeps us coming back.”
As weeks turned into months, Sheila’s Shabbat table became my anchor.
That Shabbat, I walked to Mrs. Bernstein’s apartment carrying a homemade kugel, feeling oddly nervous. Upon entering, I was surprised to find seven women of varying ages gathered around a beautifully set table. Some were in their seventies or eighties, a few were closer to my age, and one surprisingly young woman couldn’t have been more than forty.
Mrs. Bernstein—Sheila, as she insisted I call her—made the introductions. “This is Shirley Parker, newly arrived from Brooklyn,” she announced. “She’s joining our Shabbat table.”
“Welcome to the club no one wants to join,” said Esther, an elegant woman with carefully styled silver hair. The others chuckled knowingly.
What struck me immediately was the absence of that cautious sympathy I’d grown accustomed to receiving. These women looked at me with understanding rather than pity. They asked about Dovid without lowering their voices, wanted to know how long we’d been married, what he did, how he died. And when I mentioned that we’d been married for thirty-eight years, no one murmured “I’m so sorry” or awkwardly changed the subject.
“Thirty-eight years is a blessing,” said Ruth, who explained that she’d lost her husband after just twelve years of marriage. “You hold onto those memories.”
Over cholent and salads, the conversation flowed naturally between topics sacred and mundane. These women discussed the week’s parashah and then seamlessly transitioned to complaining about their doctors’ appointments. They debated whether the new kosher café in town was overpriced and shared tips about which pharmacy delivered medications most reliably.
Most surprisingly, there was laughter—genuine, uninhibited laughter. When Esther described her disastrous attempt to fix her own leaky faucet, ending with a flooded bathroom and an emergency plumber visit, the whole table erupted in giggles.
“My Seymour would have fixed it in five minutes,” she said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. “But I’m learning.”
“We’re all learning,” Sheila added, refilling water glasses. “Every day is an education in this new life.”
As the meal progressed, I learned that Sheila had started this Shabbat gathering ten years earlier, after she lost her husband. “I couldn’t bear the silence,” she explained. “So I decided to fill it with women’s voices.”
What had begun as four widows sharing a meal had grown into this rotating group that met every Shabbat. Some came weekly, others monthly. There were no obligations, no expectations—just an open invitation to share food, conversation and understanding.
“The world doesn’t know what to do with us,” said Marion, who, at eighty-two years old, was the eldest at the table. “We’re uncomfortable reminders of mortality. But here, we don’t have to explain ourselves.”
By the time we bentched, I felt something I hadn’t experienced since Dovid’s passing—a sense of belonging. These women weren’t replacements for what I’d lost. Rather, they were guides on a journey I was just beginning.
As weeks turned into months, Sheila’s Shabbat table became my anchor. I still joined Miriam’s family regularly, but now I had another place where I belonged. I learned that Ruth taught art at the local elementary school, that Esther was a retired accountant who now volunteered helping seniors with tax preparation, and that the youngest member, Dina, had lost her husband to cancer at just thirty-seven years old, leaving her with twin boys to raise alone.
Each woman had constructed a new life from the broken pieces of the old one. They showed me that widowhood wasn’t just about loss—it was also about discovery. Sometimes painful, often challenging, but occasionally surprising in its gifts.
One Saturday night in winter, about six months after my first visit, my phone rang.
“Shirley, it’s Sheila.” Her voice sounded strained. “I’ve fallen and broken my hip. They’re taking me to surgery tomorrow.”
Within an hour, our Shabbat group had mobilized. One woman contacted Sheila’s children who lived out of state. Another arranged for cleaning help. I volunteered to organize meal deliveries.
Standing in my kitchen the next morning, preparing a pot of soup for Sheila, I realized something profound had shifted. The condo no longer felt like a temporary stopping place but like my home. And these women—with their shared experiences, wisdom and unfailing support—had become my community.
When we gather now at Sheila’s table, I sometimes look around in wonderment. None of us would have chosen this path. Yet somehow, in the aftermath of our greatest losses, we found each other. We have created something precious: a Shabbat table that belongs to us all, where our stories—both of what was and what might yet be—are honored and held sacred.
Shirley Parker lives in Monsey, New York, where she writes personal essays exploring Jewish life and community. Her work examines the intersection of tradition, family relationships and the renewal that comes through shared experience.
More in this section:
The Artistry of Shabbat Lights by David Olivestone
Shabbat Candles: Halachot and Customs by Rabbi Dr. Ari Z. Zivotofsky
The Sacred Pause: Finding Shabbat in a World That Never Stops by Charlene Trino
The Shabbat Table That Found Me: Filling the Silence with Women’s Voices by Shirley Parker
Shabbat in a Changed Israel: How Israelis Have Embraced Shabbat Since October 7 by Carol Ungar