Stop, Look, Listen: Celebrating Shabbos through a Spiritual Lens

Shabbos is about the recognition of human limits, acceptance of individual boundedness.

Rather than sedentary relaxation, Shabbos calls for maximum alertness and focused awareness. This is the time to ponder what really matters in one’s life and how to increase the scope and clarity of one’s vision.

The preparatory work for Shabbos enables us to be worthy of Shabbos. The opportunity to prepare is part of the gift, transforming weekdays into times of preparation, pathways that lead to Shabbos, the Shabbos to come.

The disposition of generosity – not just sharing material resources, but also the humble, non-critical acceptance of the variety of ways of being human – is what the entirety of Shabbos practice leads to.

For newcomers to the Shabbos modality presented here, I suspect the main innovation – actually an ancient practice waiting to be revived – is Shabbos as destination, involving arrival at a location on Friday afternoon before sunset, settling in, and remaining at that location until nightfall the following

the problem with gossip is that it is talk that remains on the surface, and the antidote is the endless quest for deeper layers of meaning in ourselves and in others. As the Sefat Emet assures us, the deeper we dive, the higher we soar.

Vayekhulu is not termination but achievement, an ending not because the string has run out but because the work of creation – the cosmos we inhabit – is glorious.

The main point is always the opportunity to look at the world at a slower pace, to observe, to sense, to appreciate, and, most of all, to share leisurely, agendaless conversation with those we love. 1.

Tosafot explains that going to sleep at night is an act of trust; we deposit our ruaĥ, our breath-spirit, with God, confident that we will awake in the morning refreshed, released from the previous day’s weariness.