There are six kosher grocery stores within walking distance of Sylvia Fallas’s home in Midwood, a neighborhood deep in Brooklyn that’s home to a vibrant Syrian Jewish community. Kosher butchers here sell kibbe dough ready for cooks like Sylvia planning to make for Shabbat and housemade mazza, which are small delicacies like sambusak and flatbreads called lachmagine. In this community, Friday afternoon is a time for celebrations — whether it’s for the birth of a baby girl, an engagement party, or simply that Shabbat is nearly here. 

“We've always kind of toyed with the idea of leaving Brooklyn for more space,” says Sylvia, who is a cooking teacher and recipe developer. “But the community and the community life doesn't really exist outside of this little neighborhood.” 

Some families in the neighborhood mark Friday afternoons by gathering for a “taste of Shabbat” — a longstanding custom in some Jewish communities. When Sylvia’s husband Sammy was growing up, his family would go to his grandmother’s home before Shabbat for mazza. But it’s a custom that never felt quite right to Sylvia’s great-grandmother Sarina, who was born in Aleppo in 1910 and after living in Israel for a few years, settled in Brooklyn in the late 1920s. She felt it was more fitting to save Shabbat dishes for the holiday itself. 

Still, gathering on Friday afternoons is an important tradition in Sylvia’s family. “It's like a weekly pre-Shabbat catch-up,” she says. Even in her 80s, Sylvia’s grandmother Renee hosts the entire family before Shabbat for coffee made in a stovetop percolator and a showcase of Syrian pastries (instead of a savory mazza spread). Her grandmother bakes tiny biscuits flavored with anise called ka’ak, or semolina cookies filled with sweet dates, as well as more American sweets like blueberry cake and the she is famous for. 

The Friday get-togethers are “a beautiful and casual tradition that even my 2-year-old adores,” Sylvia explains. It started after Renee married Sylvia’s grandfather Meyer in 1959. And every Friday, for as long as Sylvia can remember, she has visited Renee’s home, which is where her mother grew up, and her great-grandmother Sarina lived until she passed away. “As kids we would have milk with a tiny splash of coffee,” Sylvia remembers, and she would help her grandmother make ka’ak from a seat on the counter or a high chair. 

During the summer, when the family relocates to a beach house in New Jersey, so do the Friday afternoon gatherings. And in the spring, her grandmother hosts everyone on her porch along Brooklyn’s Ocean Parkway. A parade of family members join, including aunts, uncles, siblings, and a cluster of male cousins in their 20s who Sylvia calls the “boys” — “everyone harasses them about a Shiddach [arranged marriage],” Sylvia says. Some of the kids come directly from art class or gymnastics, and “whoever doesn’t come, calls,” she adds. 

Someday, Sylvia hopes she will be the one to carry on the tradition. But, for now, even when she hosts the family at her home, she asks her grandmother to make the coffee. “She ‘percs’ the coffee the best,” Sylvia says.