Shtiah Shel Shabbat

This man was clearly not a vacationer. His gray knit vest, white polyester button-down shirt, and pressed khakis had been laundered lichvod Shabbat in a hotel sink, laid out to dry on one of the many drying racks I had noticed in the stairwells of the lower floors, those designated for mefunim.

His clothing told one story, but his body language told a different one. There was something very settled about him, none of the air of restlessness and agitation I would have expected from a person displaced from home for nearly 500 days.

So I found some vague reason to engage him in conversation (What time is Shacharis?), and he answered with generosity (We start at 7:45, but we say Korbanot — if you’re in a rush, daven with the Ashkenazim in the next room), and then, I seamlessly pressed on, asking him where he was from.

He was from Shlomi, a beautiful community near the Lebanese border, and he — along with his wife and two daughters — had been living at this hotel for over a year.