Confessions of a Shabbos Goy: Reflections on Friendship

Last updated on: February 10, 2016 at 9:08 pm by Alyce McKenzie

Confessions of a Shabbos Goy: Reflections on Friendship 2016-02-10T21:08:27-06:00 Alyce McKenzie

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I recently read a quote by the Lebanese American poet Kahlil Gibran posted by a friend from High School on Facebook. She wrote it on the occasion of saying goodbye to beloved friends whom, in her travels, she had to leave to return home.

“For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations, are born and shared,
With joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence,
As the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.” Kahlil Gibran

It made me think about friendship, from the mundane to the profound, How good a listener was I when I had lunch with a friend recently? Did I spend more time talking about my activities and concerns than I did listening to her? It made me think of the current presidential race in which people who once were friends were now pitted against each other in their competitive pursuit of the same goal.

It made me think of a quote from John 15:13

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Gibran’s quote makes me wonder, ‘What will my friends grieve, or what do they grieve, in my absence?

You know how the mind works-when you have a theme in your mind, everything that happens to you that week is drawn to it. I had this friendship theme in mind as I attended an evening lecture at SMU recently. I happened to sit next to Howard Cohen, a Jewish dentist with a theological degree, who regularly teaches about Judaism at churches in the DFW area. We began to chat about this and that. And I mentioned that I had had a lot of Jewish friends in college, a couple of whom were orthodox in their upbringing and observance. I told him how I used to go to Hillel with them on Friday nights and how one of them used to want to spend time with me on her Sabbath. “What kinds of things did you do together?” he asked. “Errands mostly. She would ask me to turn appliances and lights on and off for her, to carry her purse, and drive if we were going somewhere.

“You were her Shabbos goy,” said Howard. (A Shabbos goy is a non-Jew who performs certain that Jews are not to perform on the Sabbath.)

“I guess you’re right, I was!” I said. I think I sort of knew that, but a lightbulb went off when he named it for me. Every now and then I think about my college friend and wonder why we haven’t kept up. And now it dawns on me that perhaps what she valued most in me was my ability to turn lights on and off and to drive! I say this with a smile, not bitterness. I still have good memories of her, and maybe I’ll try to find out through other friends how I can get in touch with her. In the meantime, I am keeping Kahlil’s beautiful sentiment in mind, as I consider what I love most in my friends while they are still present in my life.

Gospel of John

friendship; Shabbos goy

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