Reflections Upon Completing the Tishrei Holy Days

Wow! We made it through the season of Jewish holydays…Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah. For those of us who have involved ourselves in the observance of each of these special days, there is no doubt that one of Judaism’s crowning accomplishments is the sanctification of time rather than space. We realize that these are special times because of the important events that transpired at those times. In these technologically advanced days, we seem to have lost an appreciation of time. If we have to wait 2 or 3 seconds for information to pop up on our computer, we feel we have waited too long. We often find ourselves unable to stop working, because we are always connected to our work even when we’re on vacation or at home. Tomorrow we will read the first part of the book of Genesis. It is a story inherently concerned about time and the sanctification of time. We learn about the Shabbat when we read about the creation of the 7th day. As Rabbi Shmuley Boteach says in his book, Judaism for Everyone, “Of far greater significance than the duration of creation is the fact that it was crowned by the Sabbath bringing rest and refreshment to the toiling world. The concept of a day of rest, sanctified by the divine example, is one of the greatest spiritual and social contributions to civilization made by the religion of Israel.” The purpose of Shabbat is not to make us more productive in our work week. The purpose of Shabbat is to cease productive work to focus on the meaning of our lives, the purpose of creation, and the direction in which we should be turning our lives. We are all so busy, that we often find ourselves forgetting to prioritize what is really important about living. Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan spoke about the Shabbat quite eloquently when he said, “An artist cannot be continuously wielding his brush. He must stop at times in his painting to freshen his vision of the object, the meaning of which he wishes to express on his canvas. Living is also an art….The Sabbath represents those moments when we pause in our brushwork to renew our vision of the object.” I will be the first to admit that it is a challenge to slow down and not work. It is hard to move into the mode that nothing is urgent on Shabbat. It can be difficult to recognize that one need not plan for the next day when it is Shabbat. As hard as it is, I do know that a cornerstone of Jewish thinking is to remember that we were once slaves in the land of Egypt and G-d redeemed us from there. It is important to remember that human slavery negates our freedom to rest while Shabbat reaffirms that freedom. Personally, I think it is easiest to focus on these ideas when others in my midst are also focusing on them. When an entire community adopts patterns of behavior that express an understanding that Shabbat is about perfecting our internal world rather than the external world, it becomes easier to adopt those kinds of behaviors in general. I hope that as the year progresses, we can help each other learn to use the Shabbat for elevating ourselves…using it as a day of study and prayer to help us live a moral life that also expresses our belief that G-d not mankind is the master of the Universe.