Opportunities

Recently, I took part in a day-long symposium at the New York headquarters of the Reform movement on the topic of Shabbat observance. We spent the day looking at a variety of Shabbat activities including worship, learning activities, congregational programs and individual/family practices. While Friday evening service attendance is pretty good throughout the Reform movement, that is often the sum total of Reform Shabbat observance. This is reflective of both people’s engagement with their Judaism and engagement with 21st century American culture.

A part of the discussion centered around the issues of obligation and commended-ness. Both are concepts from which many Reform Jews recoil. And not just Reform Jews — contemporary American society tends to shun the idea of obligation. Shabbat observance is, of course, commanded in the Torah. Failing to disengage from weekday activities is punishable by death.

We do not, of course, kill or ostracize people who continue their workweek activities on Shabbat. And ceasing those activities is sometimes difficult to do in our 24/7, instant communication, choice-filled, workaholic world. Yet for that very reason, our need for Shabbat has perhaps never been greater. With non-stop work and activities, the importance of setting aside separate time — sacred time — is only more urgent. Holiness means separation, setting something aside for a special purpose. God rested on the seventh day and called the seventh day “holy.”

If we resist the idea of being commanded or obligated to rest on the seventh day, then how else can we view that time? In the Reform movement, we teach the principle of informed choice: understand all of the mitzvot/ commandments and incorporate into your life those which increase your sense of holiness. Someone at our symposium characterized the mitzvot as opportunities to encounter God. I like that. How many of the mitzvot surrounding Shabbat serve not only to counterbalance our chaotic, spinning-outof-control lives, but offer a possibility to look beyond the mundane and have an experience with the Divine? To what extent do we need to stop for a moment and appreciate the world around us in order to give meaning to the work on which we expend so much energy?

We all spend so much time doing. When I talk to families and listen to their schedules, I’m exhausted. Work, school, sports, professional appointments, volunteer activities, cultural and social events — a non-stop list of “doing.” Shabbat, on the other hand, is a time of “being.” Shabbat is not about prohibitions or requirements. Shabbat is a time when accomplishing gives way to accomplishment, seeking melts into having, the need to have becomes satisfaction.

What is the goal of all that “doing” anyway? Do we really need to have more? Are we obliged to accomplish more? In the grand scheme of things, how will all that doing make us better people or the world a better place?

Shabbat is about looking around and appreciating our blessings. Shabbat is knowing that — at least for the moment — all we have is all we really need. We don’t labor on Shabbat; we enjoy the fruits of our labor.

During the 16 years I worked as a professional musician in Seattle, I directed several musical organizations, conducted scores of concerts, planned countless services, worked hard on lots of programs. After my farewell concert, many of the people I’d worked so closely with over those 16 years came to a reception at which they talked about the work we had done together. As I listened, I suddenly realized that, in all that time of trying to accomplish so many things, I’d never once stopped to ask myself if what I was doing was effective. After each concert or service or program, I was immediately planning and executing the next one, always trying to do better, accomplish more.

Something of the work is lost if we don’t stop long enough to give it meaning. Whether Shabbat means a 25-hour period from Friday to Saturday sundown, or it is a special time set aside, not to accomplish but to appreciate, we need the break in order to allow the work to become significant — to become holy.

L’shalom,
Andrew Bernard
Cantor