The Atheist Craving Hamantaschen in Berkeley

By COLlive reporter

On Purim day, a man visited Chabad of the East Bay in Berkeley, California. He was craving “freshest Hamantaschen in Berkeley.”

He soon ended up at the home of Rabbi Yehuda and Miriam Ferris, and they happily provided him with some.

Rabbi Ferris asked if he wanted to put on Tefillin and the man agreed. He noted that the last time he put them on was 50 years ago with the help of a Chabad Yeshiva bochur at the JFK Airport in New York.

After a photo of the Shliach and the Jew was posted on Facebook, a man named Avi Jacobson commented: “That was me.” He describes himself as a communications consultant, musician and actor and shared his own account of the encounter:

The strands from which the following tale is woven may have been inspired by the recent horrific events in the ancestral homeland of both of my maternal grandparents. Also key to the story is my renewed awareness (heightened by recent events in my own personal life) that I am as old as my grandparents were in my childhood.

This realization has stirred much profound rumination over the past few months, including keen recollections of my grandparents’ stories and traditions. Another strand is the fact that today is Purim — one of the primary Jewish holidays around which the totality of Jewish narrative was once paraphrased thus: “They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.”

Be the ingredients of the story as they may, around midday today I developed an acute hankering for fresh Hamantashen (pronounced phonetically in American English: HUM-in-tosh-in) – the filled triangular pastries that Eastern and Central European Jews traditionally eat on this day.

I certainly didn’t want the supermarket kind that you find at Safeway on the “ethnic” shelf between the Hanukkah candles and the Matzoh, just next to the tortillas. I wanted the real thing: a mouthwatering delicacy that had just been extracted from a pan of sizzling oil — like my grandmother used to make. I doubted I could find anything like that in the Bay Area, but then suddenly remembered Chabad.

I won’t go into too much detail (you can find more at Chabad.org), but Chabad is (among other things) a movement within Orthodox Judaism whose outposts (called “Chabad Houses”) host classes, lectures, and workshops on Jewish topics; religious services; Shabbat meals; and special events as needed in that community.

I went to the Chabad House on University Avenue and approached the bearded, Hasidically dressed proprietor, Matisyahu, who was about to lock up for the day.

“A freilichn pirim,” I said, and he smiled and emitted the smallest sigh of relief. “My name is Avi, and I’m looking for some really authentic, fresh hamantashen.”

“Well, if you don’t want something store-bought, you should try Mrs. Ferris. You know Mrs. Ferris, right?”, he asked almost rhetorically. (Jews, particularly Orthodox Jews, will always ask you if you know some other Jew you have no credible reason to have met. We call this “Jewish geography.”)

I admitted that I didn’t, and Matisyahu pulled out a cell phone, called Mrs. Ferris, and told her that I was headed over to her home.

When I arrived, I came up the stairs and pressed the Ring button. I did not expect to see a traditionally clad Rebbetzin (rabbi’s wife) open the door. “Hi, I’m Avi. Matisyahu sent me,” I said, extending my hand. She mimed shaking it; remembering Covid ettiquette, I offered my elbow. Again, she mimed touching it with hers, without actually doing so. Then, stupid me, I remembered too late what anyone who has watched Unorthodox or Shtisl probably knows: No touching between men and women who are not husband and wife.

All smiles and hospitality, she ushered me in, introduced herself, and her husband — Rabbi Yehuda Ferris — joined the conversation. They welcomed me into their kitchen and study, and before I knew it, I had switched the conversation into Yiddish. (It always amazes me when I decide on a whim to address someone in their own language and can actually pull off a prolonged conversation.)

As Mrs. Ferris gathered a baker’s dozen hamantashen into a decorative bag and supplemented them with a bottle of kosher wine, Rabbi Ferris proudly showed off his Purim paraphernalia, including an ancient carved-wood Scroll of Esther (the book of the Bible associated with Purim): His own grandfather had inscribed the whole book onto parchment and also carved the wooden casing.

When Mrs. Ferris was finished packing up my order, I asked her how much I owed her. She exchanged glances with her husband, and he said to me: “You don’t owe us anything; you have already done the mitzvah [sacred good deed] of making another Jew happy on a Jewish day of celebration. But if you want to make me even happier, you could “leg tfillin.” This expression refers to the observant Jew’s daily holy ritual of wrapping one’s arm and head in phylacteries. Phylacteries are a pair of black leather boxes containing Hebrew parchment scrolls. A set includes two—one for the head and one for the arm. Each consists of three main components: the scrolls, the box and the strap. The ritual consists of wrapping the straps in a precise manner and reciting a blessing and a prescribed passage of scripture.

I had been careful to explain again and again that I am a secular Jew and an atheist, but he shrugged it off. “Yarmulkeh or none, beard or none, you’re still a Jew,” he insisted. “A Jew without a hat is better than a hat without a Jew.”

He placed a silk yarmulkeh on my head and wrapped the straps, and I sped through the entire ritual, somehow rattling off the long text in Hebrew by heart, though it had been decades since I had heard or recited it. Mrs. Ferris snapped a quick photo. Rabbi Ferris handed me the package, they both thanked me (as if I had been the one giving the free gift), wished me well, and we parted ways.