It has been a hard week. The joy and cleansing that I experienced after I broke the Yom Kippur fast was in spite of some difficult things that have been going on in my family life and in my school life. I have things I do for self-care. I have a metaphorical tool-box of distress tolerance skills, distracting activities, and good friends. However, sometimes you just need a break.
I was cranky today. I didn’t chat up every cashier that rang me up. I didn’t ask my friends about their lives. I had room for nothing else but my junk. If my life were a plate, then I had filled up my plate with junk. Grades, gossip, and things just don’t amount to much substance. How do you take a plate of junk and make it worthwhile again? You scrape off the junk, wash your plate and make room for the good stuff again.
That is what Shabbat is for me. People who don’t know anything else about Judaism know about Shalom: peace. A few more people may have heard “Shabbat Shalom.” It’s translated as “peaceful sabbath” but that phrase is almost redundant to me. Sabbath, in and of itself, is peace. I needed that peace this week. In his book, Minyan: Ten Principles for Living a Life of Integrity, Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro shys away from many of the super Jewish concepts. He doesn’t say you have to keep kosher or obey the commandments of this or that, but he does dedicate an entire chapter to keeping the sabbath. It’s almost as though, if you are going to abandon everything else regarding Jewish ritual, maintain Shabbat, maintain the sabbath.
Why is it so important? Why, of all the ritual, of all the commandments, is this the one that tombs upon tombs are written, sermon after sermon is given on?
Today, I had my “ah-ha!” moment regarding Shabbat. Shabbat is an extension of our interconnectedness with God. There is no separateness. We are one in the same. God rested on the 7th day from all labors, and so do we. We don’t observe Shabbat because we are told to. We observe Shabbat because we were built to. When we fight our souls intrinsic need for Shabbat, it is like skipping a meal or pulling an all-nighter. Can we get by? Sure. Will we function our best? No. Why? Because our bodies are created with sleep and nourishment being non-negotiables. They are assumed. Why would our souls not function the same way?
Can our souls function without observing a sabbath once a week? Sure. Will they be the strongest they can be? No. Our souls, breathed into us by Hashem, are our divinity. To nourish it, we break from our labors. We have Shabbat. We restore our souls by resting from the chaos of our world.
Must we observe shabbat according to traditional rabbinic interpretation? That’s up to you. As a reform Jew, I consider Shabbat on my own terms. If the purpose is to rest my soul and separate myself from the chaos for 24 hours, I can do that without giving up electricity, gardening, driving a car or lighting a match. Sometimes it’s a road trip, reading a good book, ignoring a phone call, making a phone call to a dear friend, or spending some time with my dog.
Going back to Rabbi Shapiro’s book (which I recommend for those who may be interested in slowly introducing Judaism into your daily lives), he goes above the fray of specific rules. He guides us to this one, simple exercise that will help us to observe Shabbat:
Live for one day as if you were at home in the universe. Live for one day without trying to control the people around you and the situations in which you find yourself. Live for one day in a state of total acceptance.
I’m going to end this post with a few pictures of some of my favorite shabbats that I’ve managed to capture over the years.
Shabbat during Sukkot, I think I was 16.
Shabbat in Tel Aviv. Sitting in the sand. I was eating strawberries and drinking wine with a lovely woman from Berlin.
Visitng my sister in Atlanta
In Charlotte, with my parents
Meeting my niece for the first time, the day after she was born.
For some of these I knew it was Shabbat, others were amazing things that just happened to fall on Shabbat that were cleansing to my soul. Meeting my niece was particularly well-timed. There are few things more cleansing than welcoming a new life into the world.
And You Shall Love 