Living Room: Shrines
VANESSA L. OCHS
Wshe was pregnant and then added
“with twins” after a pregnant pause
hen my daughter phoned to announce
(which grew richer each time I relived the conversation), my husband reacted by resolving to
spend the next months without saying a single
word until, “Godwilling,” the babies were born.
I reacted by fainting (one of my stock responses)
with astonished joy. Our chosen responses — silence and swooning — left something to be desired. For a while, we turned to the God-fearing
and modest Jewish phrase, “b’sha-ah tova” (may
the babies come “in an auspicious hour”), which
we launched back when people said, “Aren’t you
excited?” or offered an altogether premature and
inauspicious “mazal tov.” But the phrase grew
flat after repeated use, with months to go.
forget Jerusalem? Those objects are displayed as
a 24/7 prayer for peace.
My mother, as a Jewish home shrine keeper,
keeps her archival stash in a ziploc bag. Her
mother’s Sabbath shawl, her father’s velvet
kip-pah: she activates them with prayer at moments
of risk, danger, and even joy. They summon all
the ancestors, who worry about us now, in the
world to come, as much as they did when they
were alive. When relatives ask my mother to use
her “powers” on their behalf, she faces in their
direction. She does not disappoint!
Our shrines are spiritual agents that construct
our religious and cultural identities, that prompt
ethical and holy response, and that foster
connections between oneself and the community.
Then I assembled a covert Jewish house
shrine to accompany me through the months of
waiting; it stood as the visual symbol of all my
hopes and prayers. Not altogether covert: it was
in the living room, alongside the fireplace. But I
figured that if I didn’t mention it was a shrine
until it had done its work, it could stand in the
open, looking like one of my assemblages of stuff
put out for decorative effect. Low profile because
Jews, in theory, don’t make shrines; in reality, of
course, we do — we just don’t talk about them.
Our shrines are spiritual agents that construct our
religious and cultural identities, that prompt ethical and holy response, and that foster connections between oneself and the community.
Sometimes we amass photos of our ancestors to
look over us, interceding with God on our behalf
at the hot moments of our lives. We may assemble the Rosh Hashanah cards we received on the
mantelpiece, with hopes that the wishes they
have extended for a good, sweet year will come
true. We may keep out various Israeli souvenirs,
trinkets, and ritual objects we have collected: the
Hebrew Coca-Cola can, the decoupage hamsa,
June 2009/Sivan 5769
the mezuzah purchased in the Cardo. It’s not that
To subscribe:
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we need those objects “lest we forget Jerusalem”
www.shma.com — how can anyone who reads the newspaper
My shrine needed to meld various symbols.
To represent the ancestors, there was the giant-sized Seagram’s bottle that my grandfather used
to display in the window of his liquor shop so
many years ago in Ridgewood, New Jersey. That
made a little nod as well to my husband, who
holds a Bronfman Chair in Jewish Thought. To
represent my daughter who would hopefully
grow with each month, there was a moon that
she had once carved out of wood for her father.
To represent watery healing of Miriam the
prophetess, I put out my bright yellow enamel
watering can. I added a red wooden birdhouse,
adorning it with hamsas my daughter had made
as a child.
Vanessa L. Ochs teaches at
the University of Virginia and is
author of Inventing Jewish
Ritual (JPS). She is the
grandmother of Harry Sidney
and Emanuella Natalie Dweck.
No one noticed the shrine; no one said a
word. I passed it many times each day as I
moved about the house. I cannot say I knew
what ritual practice might emerge. I don’t practice my mother’s minhag, and certainly don’t
have her “powers” of communication with the
ancestors. But I found myself sending off prayers
as the bottom of my bathrobe brushed against
the Seagram’s bottle, and again as I extracted the
watering can to feed my plants each week. The
physical objects linked me to Jewish women, in
times gone by and in the present, who have traveled to the shrines of saintly rabbis and to the
tombs of saintly ancestors in efforts to beseech
God for healthy children and grandchildren. I
cannot say that my own theological scheme permits me to ask God to do good things for me or
the people I love. I believe that good things, like
bad things, simply happen, that we turn to God
to hold us up, however things land. I started out
praying for the optimism of Miriam, and as the
due date came closer, I cast my theology aside,
and dared to imagine a happy and blessed ending — which came to pass.
