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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