A Nice Piece of Cake and a Kibitz

ABSTRACT

This article examines a weekly Sabbath tea that takes place at a Jewish retirement home in Toronto, Canada. Unable to comfortably entertain more than one person in their apartment, women in the complex reconstruct earlier patterns of home visiting in the communal “Fireside Lounge.” Through their performance, the women take ownership of the public home-space while they act out what it means to be a Jewish woman at “home.” At the same time, they must adapt their own notions of tea and hospitality to suit the institutional ideal, thus attempting to create a heimish (“homey,” unpretentious) “private” gathering in an otherwise institutionalized “public” environment. Certain compromises must be made, such as using disposable table settings (kosher) instead of the patterned china they have in their apartments. While paper plates and Styrofoam cups appear to be drastically different from the cups and saucers they have upstairs, in fact, the material objects are secondary; instead, what counts is the notion of home and the spirit of hospitality with which the offerings are made.

KEYWORDS:

• Sabbath tea
• women
• Jewish identity
• hospitality
• institutional space