Dad’s birthday? It rather ballooned

After the Hebrew Shabbat prayers the rabbi also, thankfully, delivered a moving service in English and said some special words for my dad. And then we all moved up to the top floor for what I can only call a feast.

There was the usual kiddush nosh, plus a hot course of salmon, rice, potatoes and, because we are Adenim, boiled eggs and jachnun - my favourite pastry- and bizbaz, the hot chillies no Adeni can possibly live without. Plus, a big birthday cake and dozens of helium-filled balloons.

An Irish lady, Joan, and a Portuguese man, Jorge, neither of them Jewish, served the feast. Like the security guard Tyrone, they have worked at the shul for many years.

While I was speaking to them in the kitchen, Adeni ladies bustled in and piled food on them, telling them they must eat and take home as much as they wanted.

At one point, I went downstairs where Tyrone was being attacked by congregation members trying to feed him. Overladen with plates of food and birthday cake, he looked like a Buckaroo. I hoped terrorists wouldn’t choose this exact moment to attack.

When the feast was over my young niece and nephew and I said we wanted to take the helium balloons home. “Home?!” said my appalled mother. “We are not allowed to carry things on Shabbat.”

I remembered how once my mother once wouldn’t let me carry a tissue to synagogue on Yom Kippur when I had a heavy cold. I spent hours wiping my nose with my sleeve. So I had to get those balloons. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Tyrone plus cake

Tyrone with the cake (Photo: handout)

However, to appease my mother’s religious and moral outrage, we came to an agreement: Kevin and Nikky, the two non-Jews in our party would carry the helium bunches of balloons out of the building.

“Wait, am I not carrying these trays of food?” asked Kevin, who had already been instructed to do so and who was indeed holding six. No, we replied, you’re now on balloon duty. My mother had decreed that Jews could look at balloons but non-Jews had to carry them.

Kevin and Nikky, two grown men, began to walk coyly away holding dozens of balloons. “Take your kippahs off! Are you crazy?” screamed my mother after them.

Much to my mother’s embarrassment, Nikky fell down the last few steps, and Kevin got trapped while struggling to get through the front door with all the balloons while also trying to take his kippah off before the rabbi saw him.

He managed to get himself and some of the balloons out before the door slammed shut, trapping him outside, and half of them on the other side. Had he not been so weighed down with birthday cake Tyrone might have been able to assist Kevin before the rabbi saw him.

Happily, Dad found the whole episode highly entertaining, and when he smiles he looks even younger. Cosmetics companies really should sign him up. They’d just have to pay him in Kosher Kingdom vouchers.