Why I Started Lighting Shabbat Candles

Why I Started Lighting Shabbat Candles

As a Soviet émigré, I didn’t grow up caring about Jewish traditions. But a visit to a concentration camp changed my mind.

By Alina Dizik for Tablet Magazine

Toward the end of a semester abroad at a Belgian university, I went with a group of fellow college students—most of them not Jewish—to visit Breedonk, a concentration camp 30 miles away. The trip was planned as part of our study-abroad program, and I didn’t give it much thought until we walked through the entrance. It was empty and eerie. There was a train car that had been used to transport prisoners into the camp. We spent over two hours wandering the grounds, going into dimly lit barracks and walking in circles on the outside paths.

Visiting the camp, I suddenly felt a connection to the Holocaust—and to other Jews—that I never felt on American soil. Learning about the atrocities in the same place where they happened helped spark my own connection to Judaism, and made me want to celebrate my own Jewish roots. I’d always been proud to be Jewish, but I never made time to observe holidays or follow traditions.

When I returned home from Belgium the next semester, I started looking for a Jewish tradition I could incorporate into my life, as a student living on my own. I wanted something that would be a constant commitment and that I could do without going to a synagogue and pretending to follow along in Hebrew. I wanted a ritual where I didn’t feel judged for not knowing everything about the religion. I decided to start lighting Shabbat candles.

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