Day 9: Breaking Bread, Together

Growing up in Tenafly, NJ, I remember on the weekends my family would always go to the local mosque in Teaneck to break fast with our community. A group of three or four families would host each Friday, Saturday and Sunday and cook for about 200 people. My mother would team up with Shaheen aunty and Parveen aunty, plan a menu typically consisting of chicken curry, a bhaji, pea pulao, and kheer – with dates, mango lassi and cholay for iftaar. The kids would help with set up, laying down white plastic table cloths in straight rows on the carpet, placing a date on each paper plate, and pouring water into white plastic cups. After breaking our fast, we would pray Maghreb together, then socialize, kids running around in the hallway, parents catching up. It probably doesn’t sound very exciting (and it wasn’t), but it was one way our parents instilled in us a sense of tradition and community during Ramadan.The memories came flooding back this past Saturday, when I took my own family to break fast at the newly established Islamic community center in Potomac. As we drove up to the ranch style white house on four beautifully wooded acres with a white tent and tables set up under a moonlit sky, kids of all ages running around, I could already sense that this could be a place our family could call home. The effort was initiated by a family who would rather maintain a low profile, to keep the focus on what’s really important, summed up beautifully by our hosts that evening – to establish a community center for all Muslims of moderate viewpoints with quality programs and women active on the management board that will become a place our kids will want to come to rather than feel they have to.Ameen.Day 9, Tradition 9: Breaking bread, together