Thoughts at a picnic

On the first day of Shavuot, my synagogue had its annual picnic.

We walked to Riverside Park, not very far away from Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. The shul’s beautiful in a dramatic, richly colored, urban-synagogue way, smaller and more intensely packed than its more sprawling suburban counterparts.

It’s striking when we leave that intimate interior space for the openness of the park.

Monday was a spectacularly beautiful day. If it were possible to plan all the elements of a picnic, Monday would have been the result. It was warm enough for us to sit outside, but it wasn’t hot. The breezes weren’t enough to blow anything off a plate but they were strong enough to move the leaves overhead. Those leaves were lush, bright green. The sun was pure gold, and because the breeze moved the leaves overhead, the shadows danced. The Hudson sparkled, not too far in the distance.

The section of park where we always sit was filled with our friends. We always tend to sit in tribes, groups of families who’ve been friends nearly forever, and we always pay visits to other tribes. The occasional dog wanders around, leashed, looking hopeful. So much food on the ground! So little of it for dogs! But the thing about dogs is that they are eternally hopeful.

But the other thing is that the shul building was guarded, as it always is. The New York City Police Department has a presence there. They and the security guards are always friendly, but you know they’re serious. Walking in, you (okay, I, but probably you too, if you were there) feel safe and protected, but also less safe, because in a safe world, we wouldn’t need police protection just to be in shul.

The picnic, though — it wasn’t guarded. There were no cops. There was no security. Just us, in the park, like every year. But this wasn’t like every year.

The day before, a deranged shirtless man threw Molotov cocktails at people at a Run For Their Lives meeting. Those people — among them a Holocaust survivor — had gathered, as they did every week, to remember the hostages Hamas still holds in Gaza, and to remind passersby about them.

Their failed murderer shouted “Free Palestine” as he set them on fire.

(It must be noted that just as it’s unlikely that gathering every week to remember the hostages will help secure their release, it’s even more unlikely that setting people on fire will incline others to the assailant’s wishes for Palestine.)

But there we were, the next day, like so many other Jewish groups, guarded in shul but unguarded at the picnic. Like my friends and family there, I had a wonderful time. Being surrounded by natural beauty (that you don’t have to trek to get to) and by people you love as you eat truly amazing cheesecake is a real approximation of heaven. (And I’ll add a humblebrag here — my husband takes raw salmon and cures it, using a New York Times recipe, to make extraordinary lox that vanishes, no matter how much of it there was at the beginning, with the speed of a prop in a magic trick.)

That tension between safety and danger, fear and inhibition, is new to us. It’s a realistic reaction to the world around us, but how much better the world would be if we could just picnic is security and joy.

We’re in for an interesting summer.

—JP

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