#sonja sharp

Sonja and Tal represent that most elusive, and in some circles, terrifying subset of the Jewish population: the unaffiliated.

Unaffiliated not because they did not live their lives as Jews. Or choose to live a neighborhood where it was possible to live life as an observant Jew. 

But because they felt that mainstream Jewish organizations had no place for them.

In Crown Heights, where Jewish life centered around the Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway—and, in truth, around the late Rebbe—they discovered a world of fellow searchers, a mix of Jews of all backgrounds, devotion, races, ethnicities, approaches of prayer, piety.

All of whom were, like Sonja and Tal, searching for something powerful and seemingly just out of reach: The New Jerusalem. 

On September 22nd, Sonja’s story of her spiritual journey will appear in Tablet. The story is a joint project of Tablet and The Big Roundtable, an online publisher of ambitious narrative nonfiction.

We are delighted to bring you this week and next, previews of Sonja’s remarkable story, one that we hope will kindle a discussion among those who are searching for their Jerusalem.

Part 1 

Every year, just before Rosh Hashanah, my Crown Heights apartment becomes a war zone.

I don't mean that a few tears are shed during a volley of invective over dinner. When the Sholklappers fight, we go to the mattresses. Heads roll.

 It's the lamb's head or yours.

My husband's maternal family is Persian, and just as I've learned to crunch chelo and spice gondi, I now painstakingly prepare the massive Mizrahi seder for Rosh Hashanah, severed heads and all. Like almost everything in Judaism, the lamb's head — a graduation of the whole fish head I've used for the past two years — is a symbol. Of something. I'm 90 percent sure. 

The lamb's head says our faith is not fucking around. This is some Old World Benya Krik shit here, some Kabbalistic kung fu. I am a spiritual gangster, and this head on the table is my message job.

It's a ripoff, says Tal. No lamb's head. End of.

It's been like this since he and I got married three and a half years ago. Most couples we know fight about sex or money or how to keep house — look, all right, it's not like we've never argued over who should bleach the toilet, but those are street skirmishes compared to the wars we wage over G-d. Each year, we prepare for the High Holidays with military exercises and a test missile launch. We've yet to use lethal force, but the leaflets have been dropped.

It starts with the guest list, how we are absolutely not having 30 people again this year. (Undoubtedly this year we'll have more) Soon we are arguing about how late we can reasonably turn up to shul, whether he really has to make all those blessings and if we'll serve non-kosher wine half our guests bring or regift it later. As the date draws near, we fight over which ceremonial foods might be omitted and how we can possibly cook them all, how many of the round challahs to roll with raisins how many to leave plain, whether the pumpkin can be curried or the rubia canned and if the dutch oven should stay parve. As soon as I say the soup bowls can be paper he insists we need plastic; the debate about how far to push back the bed becomes a diatribe over having no space to stash the rugs and why after three years in the same place we still don't own real chairs.