Experiential Shabbat
Shmuel Shalom HaKohain
Jerusalem, Israel; Eugene, Oregon
My family belonged to a conservative temple which is where I read from the torah for the first time after being bar mitzvah (coming of age to be obligated to do the mitzvot). What I had learned about Judiasm up to that point were two things: From my parents I learned it was to be a mensch (a good person), and also from my parents, as well as from hebrew school, was that the jewish tradition was full of empty ritual in a language I did not understand. So after becoming bar mitzvah, I wandered away from our tradition and around 20 years later I found a woman who taught a celtic shamanic path. It was during my time with her that I had my first shabbat experience.
I had gone to my teacher because I was having trouble focusing on some meditations she was having us do. When I asked her for her help on how I could keep my mind from wandering during the meditations, she answered by asking me if I lit shabbat candles. I was a little taken aback because a jewish practice seemed to be so very far away from what she was teaching us to practice! I told her no, and I also told her that I was surprised by the question considering she was not teaching a jewish practice. Her answer was that this is what her spirit guides were telling her to tell me, and that I needed to go and find out how to light shabbat candles and do it. A friday night or two later, I had gotten two white candles and found the blessing, and was ready to bring shabbat in (though I didn’t know at that time that this is what I was about to do). I took a few deep breathes and lit the candles and waved my hands over them and said the blessing, and the most amazing thing happened: I felt a curtain of calmness fall over the apartment. I was amazed at how peaceful I felt and how different everything appeared. And best of all, the next morning I was able to concentrate on the meditations again!
For a long time, that was the extent of my shabbat experience. However it was a profound experience, and one I still look forward to every week. The celtic shamanic path, like most shamanic paths, had me start to explore my ancestral roots which meant I had to come to terms with what it meant to be a jew. I found myself reading the torah, and then starting to read the rest of the bible. I also moved up to Eugene, Oregon and started to learn with a group led by a jewish renewal rabbi, R. Hanan Sills. In this group was a woman who was orthodox and had been a chassid (follower) of R. Shlomo Carlebach. I spent many hours talking with her, and one thing I remember her telling me is that a person cannot experience shabbat just by doing it once – a person needs to do it every week for 2 or 3 months before s/he will begin to understand and relate to what shabbat is. I don’t recall if I believed her at the time, but I was open to the concept. It was during this time that I read a book called, “The Sabbath,” by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Now, in this book, it describes Shabbat as being an experience out of time. I understood this to mean that as soon as shabbat starts (as soon as I lit the shabbat candles), everything that was on my todo list was now perfect and complete just the way it was. The dishes in the sink? They are exactly where they are supposed to be. The pile of unpaid bills? For the next 24 hours, they were right where they needed to be – sitting on my desk, unpaid. There was nothing to do, there was only just being.
Now, this did not mean that I was keeping shabbat according to the halachah. I wasn’t. I wasn’t ready to even consider keeping shabbat in such a fashion. Friday night I would cook dinner, light a fire, smoke a joint, and sit and be with the fire. To me, what was important was not having to *DO* anything; just *BE* in the moment. If the moment had me walking past a corner store and buying a doughnut, so be it. On the other hand, I felt (and I still have issues with this) that walking 2 miles to shul to pray or to eat at someone’s house was not appropriate for shabbat because it meant having a plan and carrying it out. I also felt (and still feel) that study was not right on shabbat because it implied that a person did not think their knowledge was perfect and complete just as it was, and shabbat is about experiencing everything as perfect and complete, just as it is. Getting back to my shabbat experience during my time in Eugene, shabbat day I would make a cup of tea and sit in each room of my house and just experience the energy of each room (I lived alone at the time). The first time I did this, I felt tremendous anger in my home office, and I realized that this is were I was putting my anger, and why I had such a hard time being in that room during the week. And as hard as it was, I sat in that room, drinking my tea and experiencing what the anger was about and accepting that in that moment, it was perfect (of course I dealt with the anger during the weeks after that shabbat). I also found myself walking around outside my house enjoying the yard. I found that when I could look at a dandelion in the middle of my lawn and see it as perfect and beautiful right where it was (and not as something that needed to be pulled out), then I was starting to get into the experience of shabbat. Sometimes I found myself walking around and admiring other peoples yards. Sometimes I found myself sitting in a cafe, drinking tea and reading the paper, or people watching.
Regardless of what I did, my intention was always the same: Over the 24 hours of shabbat, everything was perfect and complete just as it was. My todo list had nothing on it. The beauty of this is that as soon as shabbat is over, I could pick up my todo list right where I left it just before I brought shabbat in. What this meant, and this is what I understood from reading Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book, is that you can remove the 24 hours of shabbat from time, and put the moment just before shabbat up next to the moment right after shabbat, and they will match up perfectly (in regards to doing things and todo lists). What this means is that shabbat is outside of time – shabbat is outside of time/space/this world – it is in its own time/space – it is about being in sacred space!
The beauty of all this, on a practical level was threefold: First, I found myself raring to go and get back to doing things when shabbat was over. Second, I discovered that I had gained some perspective regarding my todo list. I found that by Friday, I was no longer working on the most important things; rather, I was working on the things that had clammered the most for my attention. The perspective of stepping away from my todo list allowed me to re-order my todo list and get back to doing the most important things. And the third thing I noticed is that time slowed down. A week now became a meaningful length of time. What I mean by this is that I no longer found myself saying, “We are in June already? Wow, wasn’t it just February last time I looked?”
I came to Israel in January of 2001 to try and understand what is this thing we call Judaism, and for the first time I started keeping shabbat according to the halacha. Now one of the things I found living here is that shabbat is not just another day. What I mean is that people start to prepare for shabbat on Friday…or Thursday… or even start on Sunday or Monday. In fact, in hebrew, we don’t say Sunday or Monday; we say “Day 1″ or “Day 2,” with an unspoken implication that this means day 1 or day 2 in regards to shabbat. Shabbat is actually the center of people’s lives here in many ways. People will send their clothes to the cleaners to be ready to wear for shabbat, houses are cleaned to look nice for shabbat, people will buy fancier food and wine for shabbat. I live near the biggest open air market in Jerusalem and it is a frenzy Thursday night and Friday. Friday itself has a frenzy and anticipatory quality to it. Then, about 2 hours before the sun sets, things start to quiet down and by the time the air raid siren sounds telling people it is time to light the shabbat candles, there is such a calm and peacefulness on the streets. At sunset, I walk to a nearby shul to welcome the shabbat by singing psalms and dancing, and by the time I finish praying, I find that no matter my mood going into the shul, by the time I leave, the spirit of shabbat, the goddess, the bride of shabbat has come down and joined me and I am happy and joyful. This has happened to me every Friday night I have been here! After welcoming the shabbat and praying, people gather for dinner and sing a song to the angels that accompanied us to the house, and another honoring the women in our life, and then we say kiddish and eat and sing more and talk about torah…often for 2 or 3 or even 4 hours. It is such a joy! No telephones to answer. No thinking about papers to write, or running off to the office to put in a couple of hours. No sitting in traffic. Just being with friends, enjoying their company and good food and no fear of interuptions. For 24 hours! Shabbat day, I tend to eat by myself or with a few close friends just so I can have time to BE with the perfection around me, or I gather with friends at a nearby park and have a picnic shabbat lunch. Frequently, I eat a 3rd meal upstairs on my balcony, watching the sun set. “Oh, 3 stars are out? I guess I can finish the meal and end shabbat.”
What I have found is that with a whole city making shabbat, it is very easy to get into the bubble of sacredness that is shabbat. When I visit my mom and my friends in the states, I find it takes much more work to create that shabbat bubble. I also tend to agree with the Shlomo Carlebach chassid I mentioned before: you need to experience shabbat a few times to start to understand it. I find that it also helps to have a community around you keeping it. Now, this does not mean that everybody is keeping it the same way. I know of many people who seem to think shabbat is about praying and eating and learning and sleeping. And I find those that like going to the park and throwing a frisbee around after a picnic. And still others who feel it is about drinking and singing. And others… What is in common is the respect of shabbat, and the not doing on shabbat so that there is time to be with friends and family, and in seeing the world in a different way, in a way that can only be experienced from within shabbat. And believe it or not, food does taste different when cooked for and served on shabbat following the hallacha! And for a lot of people, shabbat is a weekly dinner party followed by a brunch gathering the next day. Imagine setting up your life around weekly dinner parties and brunches instead of phone calls and commuting to and from work!!
I must admit though, I sometimes miss my old way of keeping shabbat. It had a peacefulness that I have not found here in Jerusalem. I also have issues with keeping lights on and having a hot plate on for 25 hours every 7 days - is wasting energy like that really what Hashem/god/divinity/creator really wants us to be doing? On the other hand, I now feel how turning on an oven to cook something pulls me out of that bubble of being and back into the world of doing. So, I sit with these issues, and I wonder how I will keep shabbat when I return to my house in Eugene, Oregon. What I do know is that I am grateful that I am part of a family/people that was giving this gift called shabbat, and I am grateful for experiencing it both within the bounds of halacha and outside of those bounds. Because if I didn’t, I feel I would have missed so much richness and understanding and joy and peacefulness and connection to divinity and my ancestors and my people and my place and my people’s place in the world. Thank God/dess for Shabbat!
