Shabbat on Tuesday

The value of asking questions

I’m still getting over Covid. Not the disease but the lockdown. Prior to Covid, I traveled regularly to speak and teach. Then all that stopped cold. Only once I couldn’t do it anymore did I realize how much I benefited from the contact with people, being in conversation with them, sharing what was important to me. Zoom is great, but the problem with Zoom is that I can’t look into people’s eyes and that’s where the real connection takes place.

Last week I shared one question I got at a talk – if I had to give one message to teens today, what would it be? This week I got one that seemed to originate from a farther reach of the universe.

All my talks focus in one way or another on Shabbat, because Shabbat is the ostensible focus on my new book, The Shabbat Effect. I say “ostensible” because it only focuses on Shabbat at one level. At another level, what it is about is the intersection of religion and spirituality in Jewish thought and practice.

Shabbat is an excellent frame in which to explore that crucial subject because, on one hand, Shabbat is such an important commandment, taking a place in the all-time top ten, The Ten Commandments. But on the other hand, the intent of Shabbat is spiritual: rest, peace, pleasure, joy, connection, etc. What’s the relationship between the structure of the religious obligation and the spiritual goals it is meant to accomplish? That, too, is what the book is about.

In an earlier post I shared a metaphor that I wrote into the book, likening the structure to the cup we use to make kiddush and the wine to the spiritual contents that we bless to welcome Shabbat. Wine without a cup dribbles away; a cup without wine is nothing but an empty vessel.

Sometime after I published the book along with that metaphor, I was thinking about the fact that kiddush is actually not the first ritual we do to initiate Shabbat. That honour goes to lighting candles. And then it struck me that the symbolism of cup and wine actually extends to the candles as well, in the form of wax and flame.

If you have a candle and a flame but you do not bring them together, you can’t say the blessing, which explicitly calls out “l’hadlik ner” – kindling the candle.

In one hand what you have is a lump of wax and a piece of inert string. In the other, you have a match that is dancing with a volatile flame that will very soon expire. Only when we bring the solid matter to conjoin with the unstable, igniting power of the flame – form and spirit – are we entitled to say the blessing.

So we see the same identical symbolism is present in the ritual of lighting candles as we find in the ritual of sanctifying the wine. The symbolism reveals a deep and important paradigm of Jewish thought and practice. It calls on us to maintain a strong and solid structure, but we must not lose sight of the fact that what is most important and what is, in fact, the goal, is spiritual.

As I explained this paradigm, which I have come to appreciate in my own life as I have explored and experimented at the interface of the religious and the spiritual, someone sincerely asked a question:

“If I accept everything you are saying about the structure and the spirit and the way the two interact in the context of Shabbat, why do I need to create that space from Friday evening to Saturday evening? If it suited me, I could set up a very effective structure and pursue spiritual goals on Tuesday or Wednesday just as well as Friday-Saturday? What’s wrong with that?”

The audience laughed. The question seemed so absurd. But, in fact, it was a good question because it revealed another deep paradigm of Jewish spiritual practice: we don’t do it alone. We are not a people that developed a culture of monks and monasteries and ascetics in caves in the desert.

No sooner did I hear her question than I thought, and then replied, “What you would lose by doing all the activities of Shabbat on another day of the week is the connection to all the Jews, all the communities, all the history that is tied up in that 25 hour period that begins just before sundown on Friday and ends just after sundown on Saturday. You would be alone, and weaker for it.”

I pointed out that this, too, is a paradigm of Jewish practice that appears within the frame that encircles Shabbat. “Do not separate from the community” is the advice given to us by Hillel the Elder in Pirkei Avot (2:5), that wise guide to first principles for living.

“And this isn’t true only on the human plane. It was God who sanctified the seventh day and called on us to join in its consecration. You may get a good rest on Tuesday or Wednesday, but no way will it be Shabbat Kodesh—holy Shabbat.”

How much I appreciate someone who is willing to ask what others might think an absurd question, even if it makes everyone laugh. That off-the-wall question revealed a significant fact about Jewish practice that I had not mentioned – the role of the community in supporting individual practice. I am so grateful for that good question and the willing heart of the questioner.

I invite you to send me any of your Shabbat questions as a comment on this post. You’re probably not alone with your questions, so let’s share them together.