Shabbat Shalom: My First Visit to a Synagogue

How a Friday evening in Atlanta introduced me to Jewish communal life—and why the date will always mean something to me

There are certain dates in one’s life that acquire an additional layer of meaning with the passage of time. Sometimes the significance is obvious from the beginning. Other times, it is the juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated events that makes a date unforgettable.

Friday, May 16, 2025, was one such date for me.

It would have been my father’s eighty-fourth birthday. It was also the evening I attended a synagogue for the very first time.

I did not arrive at Congregation Shearith Israel in Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland neighborhood expecting a life-changing experience. I was not searching for a new religious identity, nor was I attempting to make a grand political statement. I was looking for something much simpler, and perhaps much more important: an opportunity to learn about Jewish life firsthand, to encounter a community whose experiences I wanted to understand, and to express solidarity with a people whose right to live in peace and security had become increasingly important to me.

I would soon discover that my first Shabbat experience would give me rather more to think about than I had anticipated.

In the aftermath of October 7, 2023, I was constantly looking for activities in Atlanta that expressed solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people. I wanted to find opportunities to stand alongside people who understood that the Hamas-led massacre of Israeli civilians was not merely another development in an interminable geopolitical dispute. It was an assault on human beings, on Jewish life, and on the fundamental right of a people to exist without fear of annihilation.

Yet I found myself frustrated by the relative scarcity of the expressions of solidarity I was looking for, particularly amid the increasingly visible demonstrations against Israel.

What I witnessed as the real-time Palestinization of America struck me as a profoundly misguided response to the events of October 7 and their aftermath. Too often, I saw political activism that appeared less interested in understanding the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than in making Israel the embodiment of every grievance imaginable.

Let me be clear: Palestinian civilians possess human dignity and legitimate rights. Their suffering deserves serious consideration, and advocating for their rights is not inherently antisemitic. One can criticize Israeli government policy, oppose particular military actions, and argue for Palestinian self-determination without denying the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination.

But there is a difference between advocating for Palestinians and demanding the elimination of the Jewish state. There is a difference between criticizing a government and holding an entire people responsible for its actions. And there is a difference between pursuing justice and dressing up hostility toward Jews and Israel in the language of human rights. I had little patience for those distinctions being deliberately blurred.

I wanted to do something constructive. I wanted to learn about Jewish history, encounter Jewish traditions, and meet people whose lives could not be reduced to the political slogans being shouted in the streets.

I did not want my understanding of Jewish life to be dictated by people who might never have entered a synagogue themselves. So I kept looking. Eventually, I found my way to Shearith Israel.

My decision to explore Jewish communal life carried an additional significance because of my father. We shared a love of art and cinema, albeit to varying degrees. Maurice Henry Roberts was an artist himself, and his influence helped shape my appreciation for color, composition, and the visual possibilities of the world around me. Those gifts remain part of my life. They are among the things I will always associate with him. But we disagreed about plenty, and Israel was one of our most consequential differences.

My father had converted to Islam long before he met my mother. He retained his Qur’an, although he was no longer as observant by the time I came along. His religious history was one part of a much larger personality, and his political convictions were another.

When he was born in the spring of 1941, the British Mandate of Palestine was still very much in effect. Israel’s independence was years away. He was not yet a month old when the Farhud broke out–an intense pogrom which resulted in the murder of five hundred Jews living in Baghdad, immediately following the British victory in the Anglo-Iraqi War. The pogrom coincided with the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. My father was barely a month old when Nazi Germany broke into the Soviet Union, ushering in the Holocaust.

He held anti-Zionist views, along with antisemitic beliefs about Jewish influence and control. He also harbored a deep-seated aversion to white people. I came to reject those prejudices, not because I wanted to distance myself from my father for the sake of doing so, but because I could not accept hatred as a virtue.

I lost my father to a heart attack when I was only twenty-two. I cannot revisit our disagreements with him today, nor can I ask him to explain himself. But I can be honest about the differences between us.

At no point in my life have I disputed Israel’s existence. I was once distrustful of the country, largely because of my own ignorance. I had plenty to learn about its history, its society, and the circumstances that led to its establishment. But I could never accept the proposition that an existing sovereign state should simply cease to exist because someone objected to its existence.

The Jewish people did not become indigenous to the Land of Israel because the modern State of Israel was established in 1948. Their historical and religious connection to that land extends back thousands of years. Understanding that connection does not require one to endorse every Israeli government or every Israeli policy. It does, however, require taking Jewish history seriously.

And I came to understand that I had a responsibility to do my own learning rather than simply inherit somebody else’s conclusions. I knew exactly how my father would have reacted to my decision to attend synagogue and my support for Israel. He would have been furious. He would likely have regarded my position as something approaching a personal betrayal. I have never wondered about that.

But I was not going to allow his anticipated anger to determine the course of my own intellectual and moral development. I loved my father. I continue to recognize the ways in which he influenced me. But love does not require intellectual surrender, and honoring a parent does not mean preserving every prejudice that parent held. I could inherit his artistic eye without inheriting his antisemitism. I could appreciate his influence on my life without accepting his hostility toward Israel. I could acknowledge the complexity of the man he was without making his enemies my own.

I refused to make hatred a family heirloom.

That decision did not begin on May 16, 2025. It had been developing for years. But that Friday evening, I took a step that made my own convictions tangible. I walked into a synagogue.

As twilight fell that evening, I entered Congregation Shearith Israel for my first experience of Jewish worship. I will not pretend that I immediately understood everything taking place around me. I did not.

The service was relatively short, but I struggled to keep up because the Hebrew texts were not transliterated. I was unfamiliar with much of the liturgy and had to rely on observation, listening, and whatever context I could gather.

There is a particular humility in entering a place where everyone else seems to know the choreography and you are still trying to figure out the first step. You may recognize a melody without knowing its words, or hear a phrase repeated without understanding its significance.

You learn to pay attention. And I did.

One of the expressions I learned that evening was Shabbat shalom, the familiar Hebrew greeting wishing someone a peaceful Sabbath. Two words, carrying a sentiment that transcends the language in which they are spoken.

I also learned more about the rhythm of Jewish communal worship. Friday-night services are often shorter and more intimate than Saturday-morning services, which tend to be longer and more formal, although practices vary among congregations and denominations. I had approached the evening as someone who wanted to learn, and I left having learned something. That may sound like an unremarkable achievement. But I have always believed that there is value in experiencing something for oneself rather than allowing secondhand accounts to substitute for firsthand knowledge.

I could read about Judaism. I could watch documentaries, study its history, or speak with Jewish friends. All of those things have value. But there is a difference between learning that a community exists and taking the time to enter its space, observe its traditions, and begin understanding what those traditions mean to the people who practice them.

I had taken the first step. I would take many more.

If the unofficial Eleventh Commandment is “Thou shalt not get caught”, the unofficial Twelfth Commandment is this: “Thou shalt not leave unfed”.

Of course, my education in Jewish life was not confined to the prayers. I soon discovered one of the great pleasures of Jewish communal hospitality: the food. There is an unspoken rule of thumb in Jewish communal life that, if you attend a Shabbat gathering, you will not leave hungry or thirsty. At least, that has been my experience. The same principle applies when I visit Jewish homes. Especially during the High Holidays, I have found myself welcomed with an abundance of food and a generosity that makes it difficult to remain a stranger for very long.

The Jews aren’t just moon people; they are the consummate foodies.

I mean that affectionately. Jewish cuisine is extraordinarily varied, reflecting the histories and traditions of communities spread across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. There is a world of difference between the foods of Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi Jewish communities, and even those distinctions only begin to tell the story. I am still learning about that culinary universe. I am also learning that hospitality is more than the act of putting food on a table.

Food is a way of saying that someone is welcome. It is an invitation to sit down, participate, and become acquainted with the people around you. It can turn a roomful of strangers into a community, if only for an evening. There is something especially meaningful about that kind of welcome when you arrive as an outsider, conscious of how much you do not know.

You are not expected to become an expert overnight. You are simply invited to participate, to learn, and, if you are fortunate, to enjoy a good meal along the way. I have no intention of arguing with this particular tradition.

I have been “shul-hopping” ever since that first visit. I have attended Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative congregations. Each encounter has given me another opportunity to learn about the diversity of Jewish religious life, the different ways communities approach tradition, and the customs that distinguish one congregation from another.

I have not yet attended an Orthodox synagogue. That remains on my list, and I intend to remedy the omission someday.

I am under no illusion that a handful of synagogue visits makes me an authority on Judaism. It does not. There are centuries of religious thought, cultural development, communal experience, and internal debate to explore. There are Jewish traditions I have barely encountered and questions I have not yet thought to ask. That is part of the attraction.

I am a Black American who is not Jewish. I do not claim an identity that is not mine, and I do not believe that one must convert to Judaism to appreciate Jewish history, respect Jewish religious life, or stand against antisemitism. I can be an ally without pretending to be something I am not.

For me, this has also been an extension of my commitment to the Black-Jewish alliance. That relationship has a complicated history, marked by moments of extraordinary cooperation as well as genuine disagreements and disappointments. It should never be romanticized as though the two communities have always agreed or their interests have always coincided.

But its history demonstrates the possibilities of solidarity between people who recognize that the dignity and security of one community need not come at the expense of another.

I believe that alliance deserves to be sustained through more than nostalgic recollections of the civil rights movement. It requires contemporary engagement, honest conversations, and a willingness to understand the experiences of people whose backgrounds differ from our own. It also requires resisting the temptation to turn solidarity into a loyalty test.

My support for Israel does not require me to endorse every decision made by its government. Nor does my commitment to Palestinian human dignity require me to deny Jewish history or Israel’s right to exist. I can hold those positions simultaneously without experiencing a crisis of conscience.

The same principle applies to my relationships with Jewish people. I do not need to agree with every individual on every political question to recognize the value of knowing them, learning from them, and defending their right to live without fear. I came to synagogue looking for a place to express solidarity. I found an opportunity to practice it.

And so I return to the date. May 16, 2025, would have been my father’s eighty-fourth birthday. It was also the evening I entered Shearith Israel and learned the meaning of Shabbat shalom.

The juxtaposition is striking precisely because I know how strongly my father would have opposed the direction my life was taking. I do not need to imagine his reaction or invent a hypothetical argument between us. Our disagreements over the Jews and Israel were visceral, and I knew how he would have regarded my decision. There is no need to soften that reality to make the story more sentimental.

Nor do I regard my first synagogue visit as a symbolic act of defiance against my father. I was not trying to provoke him, even in retrospect. He was not there, and my decision was not made for his benefit.

I went because I wanted to go.

I went because I wanted to learn about Jewish life at a time when Jews were confronting the consequences of the October 7 massacre, the anguish of the hostages and their families, and a renewed sense of vulnerability amid rising antisemitism. I went because I believed that solidarity should be expressed through something more substantial than a social media post or a declaration of political allegiance.

And I went because I refused to let prejudice decide whom I would encounter. The Jewish people have endured centuries of persecution, expulsion, discrimination, and violence. The Holocaust remains the bloodiest and most devastating modern expression of that history, but antisemitism did not begin with the Nazis, nor did it disappear with their defeat. Jewish communities continue to navigate the consequences of an ancient hatred that repeatedly finds new language and new political surroundings.

October 7th did not create that history. It added another terrible chapter to it.

I could not reverse any of those events by attending a service. I could not resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, return the hostages, or eliminate antisemitism by learning a Hebrew greeting. But I could begin by treating Jewish people as human beings whose history and experiences deserved to be understood on their own terms.

I could refuse to participate in the denial of their identity or the delegitimization of their national existence. I could listen, learn, and return. And I could do all of this without asking permission from someone who would have disagreed with me.

Perhaps the date reflects my lifelong curiosity about traditions and lifestyles beyond my own. Perhaps it represents my understanding that the Black-Jewish alliance must be lived, not merely praised. Perhaps it is a reminder that a person’s intellectual independence sometimes requires rejecting beliefs that have been handed down through the family. I imagine it is some combination of all three. What I know for certain is that the date has become part of my personal history.

My father taught me to look at the world through an artist’s eyes. I have carried that gift with me, even as I have rejected some of his deepest convictions. He helped shape the person I became, but he did not determine every conclusion I would reach. That distinction is not an act of ingratitude. It is a recognition that each generation must take responsibility for its own beliefs. We can honor the people who came before us without repeating every mistake they made. We can preserve their gifts without perpetuating their prejudices. We can love them without surrendering our consciences.

On Friday, May 16, 2025, I walked into a synagogue for the first time.

I did not leave with all the answers. I left with a greeting, a new experience, and the beginnings of a much longer education. I have returned to Jewish communal life many times since then, and I expect to continue doing so. There is still so much to discover. And whenever I hear Shabbat shalom, I am reminded of that first evening: the Hebrew prayers I struggled to follow, the unfamiliar surroundings, the community I had come to know, and the date that connected this new chapter of my life to the memory of my father.

I cannot change what he believed. I cannot ask him to understand what I have learned. I cannot reconcile every disagreement we had. But I can decide what I carry forward. I choose curiosity over ignorance, solidarity over indifference, and understanding over inherited hostility. And I choose to keep walking through doors that lead me toward people and traditions I have yet to understand.

May we all learn to make room for one another, without demanding that anyone surrender their history, their dignity, or their right to exist.

Shabbat shalom.