Jin tian wan shang wo he ba ge you tai ren zai zhe li chi wan fan. There were si ge Mei guo ren (including me), yi ge Fa guo ren, two Israelis (including the rabbi), and the rabbi's wife (who's from Michigan). Oh, plus their three small children.
Sorry about the Pinyin there. I'm practicing, so you'll have to deal with it :-)
On the way there, I had literally no idea what to expect. Would they be formal? Nice? Super-religious? I walked in and they were doing Ma'ariv. Everyone was in nice clothes, which immediately made me feel weird since I was wearing a t-shirt and khakis. (Plus some pre-existing metal in my ears.) But I was able to sing along to a couple prayers, which felt food. Then we ate dinner (after kiddush and n'tilat yadayim of course), cooked by the rabbi's wife and assisted by two aiyis.
Dinner was great. The main dish was some kind of stewed beef, but I didn't recognize most of the other food, except for the potato salad, haha. Then we sat around and talked, benched, and talked some more. I met one guy who's an automotive test engineer at Hella. I felt like I spent 30 minutes in some kind of sales pitch, actually. It was like we spoke the same language -- CAN, HIL, simulation, modelling, real time, The V. And strangely enough, this wasn't the first time I've done that in Shanghai! It was mostly informative though -- talking business on Shabbat can be construed as melachah and therefore is strictly forbidden by some, including this guy. But, you know, in 24 hours Shabbat will be over :-)
Anyway, everyone was nice, and I'm sure I will go back again and see them at some point. If anything, I want to buy some matzah from them on Sunday so I can make fried matzah ... and also to introduce my Chinese co-workers to it. It was fun explaining the concept of kashrut to them today at lunch. They seemed incredulous that we would not be eating any pork at dinner :-)
At any rate, I'll probably end up at their seder next Sunday night. Of course I'll most likely be the youngest ... better warm up my singing voice!
1 comment:
I can't believe your mom hasn't commented on this post yet ;-)
Great blog!
U. B.
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