It's Friday morning. I've just finished davening and
getting my daughter off to school. I'll take a look at my
email and have a cup of coffee before I start my Shabbos
preparations.
Before the water has a chance to boil, before I'm able to
reply to an important message, the electricity fails.
"No problem," I think. "I'll just have to flip the switch in
the fuse box." I look at all the switches. None have
fallen.
"Maybe it's a problem in the main fuse box around the corner
from my Old City courtyard," I think. Sometimes I just have
to flip a switch there to restore the electricity to my home.
I put on my coat, grab the key and hurry over to the
electricity room.
A frightened black cat scampers out the door as I open it. I
raise the cover to the fuse switches of our apartment.
Everything is in order. Now I start to worry. I see my
neighbor, Sarah, in the courtyard.
"Do you have electricity?" I ask.
"No. No one in the neighborhood does."
I walk heavily up the stone steps. Goodbye to my cup of
coffee; my tea kettle is electric. Goodbye to replying to my
email messages.
"Okay," I think. "I'll begin preparing Shabbos already."
But my oven runs on electricity; I can't roast the chicken. I
can't make my favorite raw carrot salad; my processor won't
work without electricity and I gave my hand grater to a
gemach years ago after noticing that I hadn't used it
in at least two years.
I can't make cole slaw, my husband's favorite salad, for the
same reason.
I should call the electric company and find out what's going
on. But I have cordless phones that run on electricity. I
can't call out or even receive calls. I console myself that
others will be calling the company in my stead.
I go upstairs, but, of course, there's no point in my putting
another load of laundry in the machine; it won't work without
electricity! I can't even turn on the boiler for a hot
shower.
Can't hear the news: are enemy forces conducting a siege on
the Jewish Quarter? No tape or CD player to play soothing
music to calm my nerves. No coffee -- and no toast from my
electric pop-up toaster to go with it. I feel the
disorientation of one who has suddenly been catapulted into a
previous age.
How did people live before the Age of Electricity, I start
wondering. Then, background music to breakfast or to cleaning
and cooking was not even a dream. They used a gas primus and
placed a blackened tea kettle on it. Did they eat toast?
They boiled kettles of water, not only to make pots of tea or
coffee, but also for a warm bath and for the laundry that
they scrubbed by hand. And very often, especially when water
carriers drew and sold buckets of water to the residents
before the days of running tap water, the bathwater was
recycled for the laundry and floor washing.
Here in the Old City, they used communal ovens -- if one was
lucky, in one's own courtyard, or in one of the more
centrally located places. I've even heard stories of Sephardi
families sending their children for the pickup, and ending up
with their Ashkenazi neighbors' cholent from the
community oven on Shabbos, thinking it was their own spicy
hamin, and vice versa. I have heard of communities
becoming familiar with each other's style of cooking as a
result of those mixups.
They used an icebox in place of a fridge. Parents gave the
older boys the job of emptying the basin of freezing water
from the thawed ice.
Where would our world of instant communication, email and fax
be without electricity?
I am glad I could at least pray without electricity and
handwrite a few lines. But at the same time, I am forced to
stand still and take a moment to recognize Hashem's goodness
in planting the discovery of electricity and its development
into the field of electronics in the mind of Man.
The electric heater has returned to life with a low hum. The
light has just crackled back on. The phone rings.
Thank You, Hashem, for electricity!
