The creation of rest . . . Sarah’s miraculous Shabbat lamp . . . Bread from heaven . . . “Work” defined . . . The invention of cholent . . . Sacrifice and martyrdom . . . Candle-lighting campaign . . . The World to Come . . .
As the sun slides down the sky and the air fills with a golden haze, a small crowd gathers in front of a gray house just south of the University of Oregon campus. It’s Friday night, and they are here to celebrate Shabbat
With a theater enterprise, tottering is its normal gait. Sometimes it does
totter to ruin, and sometimes it totters to great prosperity. But I cannot
honestly ascribe either result to my observing the Shabbat.
In the endless conflict between earth and spirit, sheer weight often
wins out. Shabbat is a reunion with our inner selves, a return to the
primal oneness of our souls
On Shabbat morning I would sit beside my grandmother in synagogue, and the exhaustion of the week would melt as we prayed. But as soon as Shabbat ended I would go back to my struggle to create a picture perfect life instead of a real one...
I love the Shabbat experience, but why so many restrictions? All that "don't do this" and "don't do that" -- sounds more like a prison than a day of rest!
A person invites guests for dinner. He introduces the guests to his family, sits down at the table—and then not three minutes later, before the first morsel of food is served, the guests are shown the door...
Without really even noticing, Shabbat settled in and the vibe of our whole house shifted. It was a quietude that was defined by the fact that we knew it would last, even for only a day. All the pressure was gone...
A challenge was recently issued to me by a Jew who describes himself as “positively oriented.” The G-d of Torah, he maintains, is one of wrath, vengeance and prohibitions, whereas his G-d is filled with love...
We know that Shabbat is the most delicious day of the week, and the midrash tells us, in fact, that Shabbat is precisely that: a taste of a perfect, heavenly world.
Prior to the birth of my oldest child, I actually found myself looking forward to this rite of parenthood, waiting to be introduced to diaper changing. At first it was not bad, not much of a challenge. More recently, however, as my son approaches his second birthday, the stench emanating from his diaper is unreal.
What is “work”? If life is synonymous with creativity, is Shabbat a time outside life? What is the deeper significance of the curious Talmudic phrase, “forty labors minus one”?
What is that smell I love . . . the smell that cries out to my soul? It’s the smell of Shabbat cooking, whether it’s matzah-ball soup or Moroccan fish, cholent, t’fina or kibbe hamda. It’s that smell of something special and familiar. The smell of Shabbat. The smell of home.