The joy of living in a big city is the sharing of cultures

Celebrating Sukkot with a friend in Brooklyn is a reminder of how religion can bring people together, writes Holly Baxter

(Getty/iStocphoto)

I’ve always been a sucker for a ritual. In London, my flatmate was Muslim, and we used to celebrate Eid together – her after a long period of fasting and me out of greed. In New York City, my next-door neighbour is Jewish, so I broke the Yom Kippur fast with her last week and last week we went out to celebrate Sukkot.

I was brought up in that religion-free, casually Christian way a lot of Brits are brought up: christened because it was the done thing, sent to a C of E primary school that held occasional assemblies where we sang “This Little Light of Mine”, and then exposed to my first deep existential crisis when I asked each of my parents, “Do you actually believe in God?” and they each, in turn, looked up from a book or a TV show and said, “Not really, why?” My paternal grandfather, however, was a converted Buddhist after spending most of the Second World War in southeast Asia, and I’ve always found a lot of comfort in Buddhist rituals. Nirvana, rebirth, meditation – it always made a lot more sense to me than, say, transubstantiation.

This week was a reminder of how religion can bring people together even when you’re not a part of it yourself

In Brooklyn, I live near a large community of Hasidic Jewish people (and indeed interviewed some of them for an article during Covid.) Their presence is obvious by the clothes that they wear but also by their quintessentially American habits remodelled for pious people: the iconic “mitzvah tank”, which travels round on Thursdays and Fridays playing Hebrew music, decorated in colourful artwork, and occasionally reminds anyone listening through a megaphone that Shabbat is coming up; and the Hatzalah ambulances, which provide a free service to and from hospital for ultra-Orthodox Jews and are deployed after someone calls a special number (not 911.) When I open my windows on a clear Friday night, I also hear the “Shabbat siren” – a repurposed air raid siren set up around the Crown Heights synagogues – which sounds just before sunset to remind members of the Hasidim to return to their homes in time for the beginning of Shabbat (or, as the Yiddish speakers among them say, Shabbos).

Though they are a community that likes to keep themselves to themselves, the Hasidim provided some of the most joyful moments for me during lockdown. In the holiday season of 2020, I trudged through the snow to watch the nightly lighting of the gigantic menorah in Prospect Park and was provided with baked treats from children in hats and gloves in return (they were proud to let everyone know that although Manhattan tried to build a bigger menorah, it failed). In the springtime, I stopped to converse with teenage girls who had been sent out to give Shabbat candles to any passers-by who wanted them. Their smiling faces and weekly rituals were something to look forward to at the end of some very hard weeks.

This week was a reminder of how religion can bring people together even when you’re not a part of it yourself. My neighbour and I stopped to observe the latest holiday, shared a coffee and some delicious snacks, and took a few minutes out of our busy days to play with her kittens. We talked about what the holiday means and how people atone for their sins in day-to-day life, whether they’re religious or not. The day gave us cause to pause and consider a particular subject, for which I was grateful.

I often think that the joy of living in a big city is being involved in such cultural exchanges. Of course, there are terrible problems with antisemitism in the US – the upcoming anniversary of the Tree of Life synagogue massacre and, even closer to home, the 2017 burning of the mitzvah bus in Brooklyn are testament to that – but there are also, throughout the city, quiet moments between friends. These moments, though they rarely make the news, are the antidote to prejudice. Long may companions such as my neighbour invite me into their homes to share with them.