L ifestyles /C ulture
H eadlines
Wawa Holocaust
sang a song from Fiddler on the
Roof. Then everyone went and
ordered Shabbat dinner from
the Wawa touchscreens.

“I wasn’t expecting a free
hoagie,” Harris said.

Other musical interludes
included a group rendition
of “Shalom Alecheim,” whose
lyrics were printed in Hebrew
and English in the perfor-
mance program.

“It’s B’nai Wawa,” joked
attendee Norman Yanovitz,
who was wearing a sweatshirt
that read, “Moses was the first
person with a tablet download-
ing data from the cloud.”
“I’m pleased to see they’re
taking different steps to bring
the Jewish community together
by having it in a casual environ-
ment,” said Yanovitz, who lives
on Washington Square Park.

The communal vibe was also
important to Center City resi-
dent Brett Rubin, 32, who came
at the suggestion of her brother,
who organizes OneTable events
in Charlotte, N.C.

“He said, ‘You have to go.

It’s Shabbat in a Wawa. It’s a
riot,’” said Rubin, whose five
years in Philadelphia have con-
verted her into both a Wawa
fan and an Eagles fan. “I’m
not too involved in the Jewish
community, but I’m always
looking for opportunities.”
pairing of Wawa and Shabbat
was inspired. Feldman agreed.

“It’s a happy convenience —
pun intended — that the two
worlds kind of work [together]
due to the Wawa fandom and
people’s strong connection to
Judaism,” he said.

As the event winded down,
Feldman reflected on how it went.

“It had a very Philly vibe,”
he said. “We didn’t talk about
politics once. The first question
people asked each other wasn’t,
‘What do you do?,’ which is
a very D.C. question. It was
more, ‘We’re having Shabbat at
Wawa, how cool is this?’”
The Philadelphia Shabbawa
really brought it back to the
spirit of Shabbat, Feldman said.

“It made it less about transac-
tional relationships or career
advancement or networking.

In light of everything that’s
been going on in the world
and in the Jewish community,
sitting down together in such
a public location and saying,
‘We’re proud to be Jewish and
we’re not afraid of anything,’
I think that’s a good thing.” l
survive,” Winston said. “It
wasn’t meant to be something
that was meant to be framed
and put on the wall and survive
for generations.”
And yet, he hopes, it’ll soon
find a home.

An anonymous seller con-
tacted Winston over the sum-
mer. Though not the original
collector, the seller was keen
on seeing the collection sold
as a whole, a sentiment that
Winston shared.

Collections like the archive,
Winston said, don’t come
around frequently.

“It’s easy to take one apart,
it’s difficult to put one together,”
he said. He compared selling
off the individual parts of the
collection to taking apart a
vintage Aston Martin. Bloom
added that he would consider
it unethical to break apart the
collection in any way.

Regardless, appreciating the
totality doesn’t preclude picking
favorites. The aforementioned
ketubah has held Winston’s fas-
cination, “written in longhand
on a piece of notebook paper
that’s been folded a few times,”
he said. “It’s the best sort of
example of a piece of ephemera.”
There’s also a 17th- or
18th-century Hebrew book,
a rare printing for the period,
bearing the official stamp of
the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee. Of
everything to survive centu-
ries, he said, “that this little
square pile of paper stitched
together is still around
is remarkable.”
As for the auction itself — bid-
ding is estimated to go to between
$100,000 and $150,000 — Bloom
expects interest to run high.

“When an archive that rep-
resents a little known aspect of
the period after the Holocaust
becomes available, you know
there’s going to be strong inter-
est in it,” he said. l
lspikol@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0747
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
Continued from Page 19
Continued from Page 9
Brian Feldman, Wawa Shabbawa’s host and producer, talks to the crowd before dinner.
Tess Liebersohn, 28, a
Northwest Philly native, is also
on the hunt for Jewish activities.

“I’m constantly trying to fig-
ure out how to be Jewish in this
day and age, in my late 20s,
being raised secular,” she said.

“This felt like an interesting way
to do a traditional thing with a
modern twist. I love Wawa a lot.”
Like Liebersohn, Natalie
Zighelboim is a Wawa enthusiast.

“I’m obsessed with Wawa,”
said Zighelboim. “I was born
and raised in Philly and
Wawa is very Philly.”
Zighelboim and her hus-
band José, a Venezuelan Jew,
took a break from their Center
City pet care business Z Dog
and brought their 3-year-old
son Bo to Wawa Shabbawa.

Despite all her memories of
growing up with the conve-
nience store, she said, “I’ve
never done Shabbat in a
Wawa, and we’re obsessed with
Shabbat as well.”
Pretty much all the gathered
guests seemed to think the
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JANUARY 24, 2019
31