It’s Thursday in the Holy Land and that means I have started preparing for Shabbat.  Part of my responsibilites of being The Kosher Dad is preparing the meals for Shabbat.

The smells wafting through virtually every building in my neighborhood on Thursdays and Fridays are intoxicating.   I try to imagine what each person is cooking as I walk by and smell the aromas.

For me, my wife and my children Shabbat is our favorite time of the week.  Between school, after school activities, my wife’s career and my unorthodox work schedule, Shabbat is the one time during the week where we are all together, uninterrupted, as a family unit.  It also means a temporary respite from constantly following all of the horrors going on around us.

From sunset Friday evening until the stars come out Saturday night we are totally disconnected from the world.  No smartphones, Ipads, TV, electronic games.  It’s just us, our prayer books, an amazing spread of delicious food, family, friends, parks and shull (synagogue).

As much as I love to prepare the meals for Shabbat, my wife takes even greater pleasure in baking challah.  I am truly spoiled.  My Eshes Chayil bakes fresh loaves of the most delicious challah every week.  She learned this from her mother, who learned it from her mother and so on.  It’s a tradition that my wife is already starting to pass onto our young daughter.

Spend a few minutes this week with your husbands/wives and children.  Make some challah dough, braid them, bake them and then bring them to your table. Prepare a special meal ( I made roasted chicken with thyme, lemon, garlic and mustard rub with roasted potatoes and onions.  Shabbat lunch is a meat lasagna). Turn off your electronics, sit, eat and enjoy each other’s company.  Get to know one another again through food and thought.  Make this a new tradition.  Your children will not only love you for it, they will remember it and thank you for it later on in life.

Sephardic or Ashkenazi, Yemenite or Polish, we all have a memory and a tradition.  We can all remember a favorite food our grandparents (or parents) once made or a special holiday gathering that brought the entire family together.  Just thinking about my Nana’s chopped liver and brownies makes me drool.  Why not create your own recipes and traditions to pass on?  Start now.