I’ve done a lot of blogging this week, about Hurricane Gustav, about New Orleans, about Haiti.
It’s Friday night, and I’d like to write about something that doesn’t have so much to do with current events and politics.
Although I am no longer an observant Jew, I was brought up in the Jewish faith and still have a great love for it.
In my family, my mother would light the candles every Friday evening to begin the sabbath. My mother wasn’t always a happy person and she had a terrible temper … but when she lit the candles, no matter what mood she was in, it was an awesome sight to behold.
She’d put a white silk scarf over her head and take a match to the two white candles, then make a gesture with her hands over the candles as if beckoning the flame. She did this three times. Then she put her hands over her face and recited the blessing. She’d stay there a little longer after making the blessing and I found out later from her that she used that time to pray for specific people who were having troubles, or for something on her mind.
She always looked so peaceful while saying the sabbath prayer, after she took her hands away from her face, it glowed.
She learned the Jewish prayers from my grandfather on my father’s side, who was a rabbi, but worked as a shoe store salesman and didn’t ply the rabbinic trade. She had a great love for him and told me he was a wonderful teacher.
When I asked her what she said in her prayers, I found out she said very simple things, like “may she be well,” or “help him with his problems, please.” She was always a woman of few words, so I wasn’t surprised by that.
“On the seventh day He rested.”
From my understanding, the Sabbath was a time to rest but also to reflect upon the week gone by. To maybe see what you might have done better and decide to work to do better the following week. It was a way to empty out the distractions of the world that so often make us forget what is important and good in our lives.
In Orthodox Judaism, you aren’t allowed to do much of anything at all on the Sabbath. You couldn’t write or even light the stove. In our home we were Conservative Jews and my mom lit the stove, but we weren’t supposed to write or even use a scissors. I wonder what blogging would come under, lol.
Sabbath started Friday at sundown and ended the following Saturday at sundown. Friday dinner was supposed to be special, with the tablecloth on the table and more elaborate food than usual. My mother made a mean chicken soup! I miss it to this day, she was a great cook.
My father would say the “kiddush,” the Sabbath prayer. I have to say we weren’t always very reverent — I often lip-synched him and made faces as he said the long prayer and sometimes he played along by chanting it very dramatically. He was a supposed agnostic, but he insisted we follow the Jewish traditions. Go figure.
It’s good to have the time to let it all go and appreciate just being alive. I am sad that so many people in this world do not have a place or the time to do that for they are suffering so badly. And it couldn’t hurt to hold them in my heart and wish them well and send out my love to them.
I think the concept of Sabbath is a good one — it refreshes the spirit and gives us energy to strive for what we believe in when we return to our day to day life.
Sabbath is sacred, “set apart.”
I’ve learned a lot here from Winter Rabbit about sacred spaces and how they are threatened and too often have been destroyed by those who don’t understand their importance.
I think we all have something in our lives that is sacred, even if we don’t think about it … something we feel is so beautiful and true that we set it apart from other things and give it more reverence, more attention, more value.
I hope that whatever you all find sacred remains a source of joy and strength to you.
Happy Friday, everyone.
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… Robyn’s glorious essay.
Just what the doctor ordered.
A time to touch ourselves in places we usually neglect. What the ritual is doesn’t seem to matter that much.
Yeah I know that sounds dirty.
And btw, I find you to be very observant!
of thinking about what is sacred to me. And I find all kinds of things in the corners of that question.
Like the fact that although I was raised christian, I tend to think of Saturday as my sabbath. As much as possible, I try to not have any expectations of what I’ll get done that day. It gives me time to just be. And that’s sacred to me. And even though I don’t believe in god, I think the idea of a “day of rest” is a pretty cool one to observe.
I find reflection to be a very important part of life. Whether it be after a day, week, year, or a life time. I like to try and figure out how my views have changed, and what were the influences that changed them. Contemplation can open up so many things that otherwise we just don’t take the time to think about.
You recall so much for me. From what I came to know or understand of my background (I say this, because everyone is dead, fairly young at that.) In Chicago, where my grandparents, whose memories I don’t recall or know (sad, isn’t it? They came to Ellis Island — apparently, both “Cohns” from Kiev, but who never knew each other in Kiev and met in Chicago and married.) What a story! I wish I could have gotten to know them, but they were dead when I was three years old and my parents had divorced before that (they were young, my mother 18, my father 19). But I did hear wonderful stories about my grandparents, nonetheless. It seems they were orthodox Jews, and pork was absolutely forbidden. On Friday nights, as told to me, everything was clean and papers were strewed about the kitchen floor, in observance of the Sabbath. Candles lit — that was Shabos!
My mother was, apparently, an obstacle — not understanding, kosher laws or whatever, and my grandmother was “forced” to set many plates out on the porch to “purify” themselves from the impurities of mixing “fleshe mit milke” (SP?)
There is a great deal more to this story, but I’m leaving it here. Suffice it to say, that some of these rituals ring a bell, and a good one at that, even if we have transcended to a different point of view!
Emotions!
Thanks, NPK!
Now there’s something. “Shabbat shalom” means “sabbath peace,” and it’s the greeting you offer to others on Shabbat.
The other thing you’re supposed to do on Shabbat is make love.
Shabbat Shalom!