Shabbat

The Holy Sabbath is a day of "this, not that."   By a profound act of pausing once every seven days, we open an empty space at the heart of our lives, inviting in a divine presence, the elusive soul.

            Thousands of years ago, our nomadic ancestors built a mishkan, or Dwelling Place, out of woven curtains and tapestries, and boards of acacia wood, precious metals and animal skins. They carried this physical structure on their journey through the desert, a traveling island of carefully constructed order in the midst of the howling wilderness. At the innermost center of the mishkan was an empty space.  The entire structure was for the sake of the empty space: “There I will meet you; and I will speak with you above the ark cover, between the two keruvim.”

            Like the mishkan, the tabernacle in space, the Sabbath is a sacred structure, a tabernacle in time, built from curtains of quiet and tapestries of song, all for the sake of opening an empty space at the heart of our lives.  In that empty space, our day of rest and no work, we may encounter the divine.

            The passage into the Sabbath is at once both simple and difficult. The doorway to the Sabbath stands open, requiring no password, demanding no skills or qualifications.  To enter, however, one needs to know how to let go: of buying and of building; of acquiring and achieving. 

This letting go may be supremely difficult at first, but it eventually comes naturally.  People find that the Sabbath becomes the highlight, the heart of their entire week.