The Laughs On Me

it is 8:00 P.M.. in the holy city of safed.  i totally lost track of days and spent all of Shabbat cooking and cleaning and blogging.  i even polished my silver candlesticks on Shabbat.  while the Sephardi family downstairs was making the ritual prayer to end Shabbat; i was making Kiddush to usher in the Shabbat.  i spent the morning saying my Shabbat prayers and started to read the laws about the pesach seder.  i took the dogs out and didn't see many people outside.  i did see gas balloon deliveries and garbage pickups and people driving their cars, who i know are Shabbat observant.  i couldn't make sense of it.  it seemed like any ordinary weekday to me. i was very distressed that so many of my neighbors were not keeping Shabbat.  i truly had no inkling that it was already sunday. 

i took a short nap in the early afternoon and then the dogs got me up to go out.  i noticed that even the Sephardi mother's car was gone and then i panicked.  i had heard the news from a radio downstairs, earlier.  it reminded me of when we were in the gulf war and were allowed to keep our radios tuned  to the news on Shabbat.  on one particular Shabbat i made a mistake and turned on the wrong channel.  i can still remember rock and roll music playing all Shabbat long from my bedroom.   i actually thought that perhaps we were in a war now against another country and people were driving off to get gas masks and supplies..

i have tried very hard to figure out where i went wrong.  i remember talking to the Sephardi mother from my balcony on what i  thought was Thursday. i jokingly, asked her if she had already made shabbat.  she is kind of a last minute person.  she looked at me strangely, and said that of course; she had.  the daughter knocked on my door last evening and asked for grape juice.  i thought they were making Kiddush for Shabbat.  i had no idea that it was already Saturday night.  i saw the brother and the other sister driving away and i felt desolate that they were breaking Shabbat.  i wonder if they heard my television running on Friday night.  of course, they must have.  what a joke.  i was the one breaking Shabbat all along.

i hope that some time in the future after the rona is behind us; i can tell my grandchildren about the time that their grandma forgot it was Shabbat.  it might just make for a children's book title.  right now i'm not ready to laugh about it.  i ask myself how was it possible that people in the holocaust; kept track of the holidays while despite today's technology, i lost track of Shabbat in the quarantine?. may we all merit to keep track of the time until the Messiah comes.