Let us glance into the long ago of wondrous miracles. A lovely young girl and her mother have just left the ritual bath (mikveh) and are headed towards home.
The beautiful Mary and her mother, Ann, dressed in garments of Sabbath white, hurriedly place the food they have prepared earlier that day into two huge baskets and make their charitable rounds.
After the golden broth of chicken – freed of blood and salted for purification – has been ladled out to the widows, widowers, the orphans, and the invalids and they are no longer ‘hungry’ physically or spiritually, mother and daughter return home to bless the Sabbath candles. The delicate hands of Mary follow her mother’s winged movements as each of them recites the Sabbath benediction over their individual set of two lit candles.
‘Please, Infinite Creator, Almighty G–d’, Mary whispers, her luminous dark eyes closed and the long lashes vibrating with the intensity of her commitment, ‘provide strength of survival and peace to the People whom You have chosen above all others; and, dear Lord – if this be Your wish – give strength to the one I love to reveal himself...’
Wrapped in a delicate shawl, her chestnut cascade of shining silk demurely hidden, Mary follows her mother out of their home. It is dusk now as they silently enter the women’s section of the synagogue. Mary, her fluttering dark lashes casting purplish shadows over the blushing coral of her cheeks and chiseled features – her heart the drum of a bird – dares to peer through the thin muslin curtain partition; and, as if in response to the subtle fragrance of a rain-washed garden, Joseph, the gentle carpenter, birthed ten years earlier, raises his eyes – and in their gaze are the vows of an eternal first love ...
When both young people have left the sanctity of the synagogue, Joseph manages to control the wild thudding of his shyness. His eyes dare to caress this lovely lily of a girl and he wishes her, in Aramaic:
‘Shabbat shalom, a Sabbath benediction of peace upon thee and upon thy parents’; and the firmament under which they stand in their first exquisite confusion of love, turns indigo from the brilliance of a six-pointed star which seems to shine over Bethlehem.