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I

t was Sept. 20, 2016, and I was 
sitting in a lecture at Partners in 
Torah in Detroit alongside my 
cousin. As South African Chief Rabbi 
Dr. Warren Goldstein, founding 
director of the Shabbat Project, got 
up on stage, I whis-
pered to her, “This 
is the person who 
brought us together!”
Let me tell you how 
it happened.
I first heard about 
the Shabbat Project in 
2014. In the buildup 
to the event, many 
people were talking about the proj-
ect in Detroit. I liked the sound of it 
and told my husband and my then 
14-year-old daughter I was going 
to keep that Shabbat with people 
around the world. I hoped they’
d 
be as excited as I was. This was my 
opportunity to break it to my family 
that I wanted to experience a full 
Shabbat and more deeply connect to 
Judaism.
 That Saturday, I took the day 
off from work. The Thursday night 
before the big Shabbat, I attended 
the community-wide challah bake, 
sitting at a table alongside my 
daughter, my sister and my niece. 
It was so amazing to be there with 
hundreds of other Jewish women and 

girls.
As we were watching the braiding 
demonstrations, a young woman 
approached our table with a friendly 
smile and asked if we’
d like some 
help with braiding. It turned out she 
was our cousin on our mother’
s side. 
The family hadn’
t seen or spoken to 
each other in many years.
 The next day, I pored over the 
checklist in the Unofficial Guide to 
Keeping Shabbat booklet. I went on 
to keep Shabbat in full for the first 
time in my life.
About six weeks later — the 
Shabbat of Chanukah — I was 
invited to a bar mitzvah. It was a 
last-minute invitation. At the lun-
cheon, in walks our cousin from 
the Challah Bake! “Mazel tov!” 
she exclaims. She had recently got 
engaged and wanted to invite me to 
her wedding. A week later, the invita-
tion arrived in the mail. I cried when 
I opened it. I thought to myself, “I 
have family that keeps Shabbat, too.” 
I felt like it was a personal gift from 
God.
The wedding was in the middle 
of January and was indescribably 
beautiful. We met so many new 
cousins and found out we all live 
within a few miles of each other! 
The uncle of the bride came to find 
us during dinner to join them for a 

family picture. Later that evening, he 
invited us to his daughter’
s engage-
ment party. We went and when we 
received the invitation in the mail 
for the wedding in New York that 
June, we all drove to New York and 
celebrated together.
Fast forward to the Great Challah 
Bake of 2015. My daughter, my sister, 
my niece and I are seated at a long 
table. The table is filled with cous-
ins we now know, and all of us are 
preparing challah. I had recruited 
more friends to join us. I told them 
our amazing story. I told them how, 
during the 2014 Shabbat Project, I 
kept Shabbat for the first time and 
that I’
ve kept it ever since. And 
I hoped that they too would feel 
inspired to keep just one Shabbat.
 My cousin and I talked that 
night about getting a table together 
for even more family for the Great 
Challah Bake in 2016. And that is 
exactly what we did.
The Shabbat Project of 2018 in 
Michigan was my fifth consecu-
tive year participating. It began on 
Thursday night making challah with 
close to 700 other women and girls 
at the Royal Oak Farmers Market. 
This challah bake was as profoundly 
moving for me as the others. From 
three or four of us at the first challah 
bake, we now had 30 people joining 

us, family and close friends, at four 
different tables. The cousin who ini-
tially connected us surprised me at 
the challah bake, so there was also a 
sense of coming full circle. 
Making challah with these new-
found family members for the past 
five years has affected my life in an 
indescribable way. Our extended 
family and my immediate family 
have been brought together no less 
dramatically — both my daughter 
and my husband have begun keeping 
Shabbat. 
There is an urgency to erev 
Shabbat — especially Friday after-
noon — which I’
ve come to under-
stand. I look forward to preparing 
each week — to the mania of rushing 
around making sure that everything 
that needs to be done is done — and 
especially to the calm that descends 
as soon as those candles are lit. 
While I was excited to celebrate 
Shabbat in its entirety for the first 
time in 2014, we are now together 
as a family, enjoying the peace and 
beauty of Shabbat. It is something 
that we look forward to all week. It 
all started with one Shabbat. ■

Marilynn Yarbough, an office manager from 

Huntington Woods, will take part in the sixth 

annual Great Big Challah Bake Monday, Nov. 

11 at the Royal Oak Farmers Market.

It Started From One Shabbat

views

essay

Marilynn 

Yarbough

