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This article is part of\u00a0<\/i>Upstream,<\/i><\/a>\u00a0The Daily Wire\u2019s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories \u2014 from our featured writers to you.<\/i><\/p>\n ***<\/i><\/p>\n The Levin family Seder was a <\/span>throw-the-gates-wide-open<\/span> sort of affair. <\/span>There was something different about crossing the threshold of the house in Ann Arbor on days like that \u2014 kicking your shoes into the pile of Sambas and hanging your jacket among the others steeping in lived-in smells of the day: brisket, soft wood, chicken baked in parchment paper, and the faint, sweet perspiration of college kids in spring.<\/span><\/p>\n Tables stretched diagonally through the living and dining rooms, pushed together to accommodate 20, 30 people, sometimes more, and empty plates were set out for latecomers, stragglers, strangers, and Elijah, the long-awaited prophet.<\/span><\/p>\n Dan, the family patriarch and kibbutz cook-turned-scientist, would be standing over a pot of broth or pulling a Pyrex, brown with age, from the oven. \u201cStir,\u201d he\u2019d say when I\u2019d peer in (he liked to communicate in declarative sentences and smiles), handing me an olive wood spoon. I\u2019d watch him mix the matzo balls from a packet and roll them between his hands.<\/span><\/p>\n People giggled and drank wine and played music until it was time to sit. Matriarch Aviva handed out worn copies of the Haggadah, and led us in her favorite prayers. We passed the food and ate our fill. Aviva and Dan ate, too, looking at each other softly across the table. They served and talked but never worried, that I can remember.<\/span><\/p>\n And then came Aviva\u2019s favorite part: the poetry. \u201cThere is a beautiful hum,\u201d she once said, describing that time of night, when papers were passed and we were given time to write our pieces for the group. I would pause to listen to the whir of thinking people, the soft graphite wearing down, the candles snuffing themselves out. We\u2019d go to sleep full that night, thinking of next morning\u2019s bagels and lox and coffee with real cream.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Even years later, after I\u2019d moved to New York, I wanted my home to feel like that. I wanted to invite people in and to have them show up. I summoned the courage to invite 11 friends to a Friday night dinner party for which I cooked all day, making brussels sprouts, crispy potatoes, and <\/span>Ina Garten\u2019s roast chicken<\/span><\/a> from scratch. I spent more money than I\u2019d made all week.<\/span><\/p>\n Turns out, I wasn\u2019t the only one trying my hand. The art of \u201cgathering\u201d is surging, perhaps as a response to the disconnection of what\u2019s been called the \u201cloneliest generation.\u201d According to Pinterest\u2019s 2024 Summer Trends <\/span>report<\/span><\/a>, searches for \u201cdinner party\u201d rose 6,000% year over year.<\/span><\/p>\n Riding that resurgence, Martha Stewart re-released her 1982 classic, <\/span>Entertaining<\/span><\/i><\/a>, extending her \u201c<\/span>reign of relevancy<\/span><\/a>.\u201d In it, she looks backward to the banquet scenes of Sir Walter Scott, the Roman punch dinners of Edith Wharton, and the country weekends of Leo Tolstoy\u2019s <\/span>Anna Karenina<\/span><\/i>. These are not casual meals; they are worlds unto themselves \u2014 ordered, aesthetic, and exacting.<\/span><\/p>\n And if Stewart walked, it was so Instagram accounts and Substacks such as <\/span>Isabel Heikens<\/span><\/a> and Bright Moment Co.<\/a><\/span>\u00a0could run, adding paper menus, homemade garlands, and handwritten letters to elaborate, multi-course meals.<\/span><\/p>\n Just watching these reels makes me nostalgic for a simple Shabbat at the Levins\u2019 house. With content like this filling our feeds, the expectation our work-worn mothers pushed against is seeping in again, more polished, more visible, and harder to ignore. If the dinner party is back, so too is the tacit requirement that we know how to host one. We are left with big shoes to fill, leaving us to feel as though we have failed an unspoken class in the domestic arts.<\/span><\/p>\n My first attempt was an abject disaster. Only two people came. A tense few hours later, after everyone had left and the heaping piles of leftover food were packed into plastic bags, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. I was exhausted, overextended, and embarrassed. Mostly, I was hurt.<\/span><\/p>\n What had I done wrong? Where was the warmth I remembered, that glimpse of heaven Dan and Aviva had created in their living room?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Looking back, the problem was what it almost always is: a skewed motive of the heart. If I\u2019d read <\/span>Entertaining<\/span><\/i> more closely, I might have seen it. The word <\/span>entertain<\/span><\/i> comes from the Old French <\/span>entretenir<\/span><\/i>, from the Latin <\/span>tenere<\/span><\/i>: to hold. To hold together. To maintain. To keep appearances intact \u2014 as if I could keep the evening from coming undone. What I called hosting had become a performance, and I was a one-woman show.<\/span><\/p>\n Our Lord of hosts offers a different vision of hospitality. The word <\/span>host<\/span><\/i> comes from the Latin <\/span>hostis,<\/span><\/i> which means the stranger, even the enemy, the one outside the circle. And yet from that same root comes <\/span>hospes<\/span><\/i>: a word that means both guest and host. They are not opposites. The stranger is brought near, received, and honored. Our job then is to share who we are and what we have with whomever God sends.<\/span><\/p>\n