Meet the Shiva Plate: A gorgeous gift, An Old-New Tradition + 7 Hard Boiled Eggs.

The Shiva Plate: An Old-New Tradition Coming Soon to Lab/Shul. 

Amichai Lau-Lavie

What’s a Shiva Plate? 

Eight months ago, while sitting Shiva for my father in Jerusalem, my old friend Drori Yehoshua told me of an unusual gift he wants to give me: a Shiva Plate, specially designed to hold seven hard boiled eggs that are served to the mourners upon their return from the burial and the official start of sitting Shiva. The eating of eggs (or round foods) is an ancient custom for this fragile lifecycle moment, reflecting on the actual circular nature of life and death. The Shiva Plate for eggs is a custom of the Kurdish-Jewish community in which Drori grew up. Once the Shiva is over, the bereaved family keeps the plate until the next family in the community needs it, and so forth, hand to hand, family to family, mourning to mourning, sustaining grief and support and the ongoing ripples of mortality and community. 

And so yesterday, Drori took me to the lovely SaramicArt Studio of Sarah Shuraki Zisken on a quiet street in Jerusalem, just two minute walk from my mother’s house. He commissioned the plate from Sarah, a gifted artist, had a verse from Proverbs inscribed on it, and added a moving dedication to my father’s memory. 

I plan to bring the plate with me to NYC when I return next week, to serve the Lab/Shul community in our hours of grief and in our delicate and nourishing process of building a communal circle of care and support. 

I’m grateful to Drori for the gorgeous and generous gesture; to Sarah for the artistry. And we will use, and when we will mourn, as eventually we all will – may we be there for each other, with the best of what old and new friendships have to offer, with the comfort of beauty and art, using inherited and invented  traditions, and the sacred simplicity of a hard boiled egg.