It's almost Shabbes. My house is clean, my dinner is ready, my cat and I are all ready to get our nefesh on. I love Shabbes. I love the idea of it, I love the practice of it, and I'm both okay with and in love with the many ways people find Shabbes for themselves. Or how people and Shabbes find each other at various life-stages, as a Rabbi I know likes to say.
Some are completely Shomer Shabbes. Some stay in and light Shabbat candles and have a family meal. Some have a family meal, light the candles then all go their different weekend directions. Some people light candles and hang around the house and rest for the week ahead. Some go to shul. Some keep Shabbes unless there is a special circumstance or event. Some take a small time out. Some take the full 25 hours. And sure, some don't mess with any of it.
And, in my book, that's all okay because maybe what makes Shabbes the time of re-nefesh (my English tag word for "re-ensoulment") is a matter of doing your heart's desire. It's perfectly okay to keep shomer Shabbes, and it's perfectly okay to not observe Shabbes at all and whatever lies between, if your kavanah and action-ideas don't, can't or won't line up. Don't get me wrong. I think Shabes is a good idea, I do. I've done Shabbes just about every way there is to do Shabbes and I've found meaning each time. I try, really try, not to get caught up in too many have-to's and just let my Shabbes evolve with what feels right year after year. (Which is not to say I don't do many of the activities traditional of Shabbes, just that I really feel my way through Shabbes and check-in with myself to do what feels honest and right to me. Because, though I see the value and stability of rote, I can't help but feel like a fraud when I find myself in rote mode. Another post for another day. I digress.) I keep Shabbes, and small rituals I have ebb and flow and change and evolve over time and I like that. I like feeling like there is room to evolve, I like putting activities on the Does-this seem-Shabbesey?-Is-My-Heart-in-It? Scale as a sort of finer filter on what I do and don't do on Shabbes.
For example, officially there is a prohibition from sewing on Shabbes. Well, there is the work prohibition, and once upon a time, and still to some now, sewing is a means of making a living. So, sure, yes, best to take the day of rest off from sewing! But, what about to the busy professional with little personal time who loves to sew? What if sewing is a family tradition, passed from one generation to the next? Wouldn't sewing on Shabbes make someone, then, think of fond memories and be refreshed with an activity that s/he takes the time to savor? Wouldn't, then, sewing be feeding the very soul we're allowing to glow on Shabbes by feeding it something with such deep, personal meaning? Isn't that more meaningful than not sewing in that case? (This very issue is addressed far more in-depth in one of my favorite books, Jewish With Feeling by Rabbi Zalman Schachter.)
Part of Shabbes is re-ensoulment. A large part. Reconnecting to yourself to be the best you that you are capable of being so you are fueled to make the world as good of a place as you are capable of making it. Isn't there some sacredness in that?
I found a few of these quotes that I thought were interesting, all collected on RitualWell (read the whole collection there, if you like, they're really lovely), and collected from various female leaders within the Jewish community that seem to be in the same vein of what I'm getting at, but this one in particular, I really liked:
"As someone who is committed to social justice, to ending oppression, I often feel that there is too much to do, too little time to fix it all, that I can't stop yet…And then Shabbat comes and with its arrival twenty-five hours in which I get to notice how beautiful the world is, how perfect it is, and that there is nothing that I need to do in that moment to change it. I am reminded that it is crucial for me to stop, to rest, to celebrate the beauty of the world, the richness of my relationships with family, friends and G-d. A time of noticing what is already right and whole and good rather than what isn't. And with that deep knowing, that inner quiet, I can go back out for the rest of the week and fight like hell."
And, speaking of Shabbes. It's upon us and I have candles to light. Shabbat Shalom. Peace of re-ensoulment, however you find it.
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