Santa Barbara Shabbat

Yom Kippur 5785, October 11, 2024

            My first Yom Kippur sermon was as a 24-year-old student rabbi in Calgary, Alberta in September 1981. In the 43 years since, I have written and delivered approximately sixty Yom Kippur sermons.  Nuclear Weapons. Sexual Ethics for College students. The Meanings of Fasting. Intermarriage. Going Barefoot. Two Kinds of Solitude. Our Relationship with the Muslim Community. Apology and Forgiveness.  Running Away from God.  Leonard Cohen.  Sixty different sermons. I have loved the challenge of finding something new to say, year after year. OK, over the years I think I have reused three or four.  But that’s all!  Interestingly, there is one Yom Kippur sermon in particular which more people seem to remember than any other.  Tonight, for this last Kol Nidre sermon of my career, I would like to share that sermon from Yom Kippur 2010…revised and updated for this turning point in my professional life.  Here it is:

Medieval Christian Europe produced the miracle of the great cathedrals: vast, complex, awe-inspiring architecture which took centuries to build.  Even a Jew from California in the year 2024, stepping into one of those towering wonders, cannot help feeling humbled, fascinated and transported by the soaring space, the cool silence, and the pure genius of the old guild craftsmen.

Judaism’s great cathedral, according to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, was not built of stone, glass and mortar.  Our great cathedral is Shabbat, the Sabbath, built of minutes and hours, of words and music, of disciplines and pleasures.  Twenty-five hours carefully and lovingly carved out of each week. Twenty-five hours of stillness, of prayer, of holiness, of study and singing and love…every seven days.  Shabbat was invisible, a structure in time, not in space.  And within that invisible, spiritual palace in time, our people encountered God.  The feminine God, whom the Jewish mystics called the Sabbath Bride. Our cathedral was built not in space but in time…and therefore was indestructible by armies or by earthquakes.

But in our day and age, our cathedral the Sabbath lies in ruins.  Devastated by our migration to America, the Sabbath for most American Jews is just a memory, a nostalgic scene in Fiddler on the Roof, a bit of lingering sadness, an impossibility.  Our Jewish cathedral, the Sabbath, has tumbled down.  We stand amid the ruins.

The cathedral was not visible to the eye, and neither are the ruins.  But it is a fact that in the lives of mostAmerican Jews today, not all but most, Shabbat been replaced by Saturday.  The majestic structure of the traditional Jewish Shabbat has tumbled to the ground.

This is not our fault.  Shabbat has not crumbled because we are wicked, or lazy or do not care.  On the contrary, we are basically good people, working hard to live responsibly, and we do care about Judaism!  But in places like Santa Barbara across the country, for the vast majority of Jews, Shabbat just feels impossible.  We know why: Saturday soccer, Saturday birthday parties, Friday night theatre in the high schools and junior highs.  Above and beyond all of the specific conflicts and challenges, the simple and inescapable truth is that we are not living in Fiddler on the Roof.

We live in a non-Jewish world.  Santa Barbara is not Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.  It’s not Brooklyn or Pico Robertson.  We have begun to build a strong Jewish community here, but still, we live in a non-Jewish place in which Shabbat is difficult if not impossible.

And yet.  Without Shabbat, we cannot be Jewish. Among the Ten Commandments, Shabbat is just as fundamental as “Thou shalt not murder” and “Honor thy father and thy mother.”  In modern times, Shabbat has been our best defense against the threat of assimilation.  The philosopher Achad HaAm put it bluntly “More than the Jewish people have guarded the Sabbath, the Sabbath has preserved the Jewish people.”   We stand amid the ruins of the Sabbath but our oldest and best wisdom tells us that without Shabbat, Judaism and the Jewish people perish.  What should we do?

Tonight is not only Yom Kippur.  It is also Shabbat...just as it was fourteen years ago.  Shabbat Shalom!

We need to begin, I think, by forgetting about the cathedral.  That towering, majestic, complex Shabbat was beautiful, is still beautiful today in Jerusalem and even in Pico Robertson.  But for most of us in Santa Barbara… it’s gone.  In its place, let us erect a humble but nonetheless sacred structure, a new Shabbat of the simplest, most elemental structure.  Four poles and a cover.   We can raise up a beautiful Shabbat chuppah, a wedding canopy.

What is possible here in Santa Barbara?  I mean realistically.  What could we here tonight agree to?  Not just the rabbis, the cantor and the Jews from orthodox backgrounds who know all the prayers and grew up with all the rituals.  All of us… soccer moms and retirement home residents, interfaith couples, and youth group teenagers.  What might be four simple, attainable Shabbat commitments which would connect us to each other and to our Jewish ancestors?

It will not be a traditional Jewish Shabbat. A broadly accepted Shabbat for Santa Barbara must make room for soccer and little league, for ballet and horseback riding, for driving, for the movies, for the Farmers Market… and though it pains me to say it, even for work.

Can we construct a Shabbat canopy for our community that makes room for all of those activities and yet still is even remotely recognizable as a Jewish Shabbat?  For many years, I would have said “no.”  But tonight I say yes.  We can construct a simple and humble Shabbat for Santa Barbara that we can all live with.  An invisible chuppah in time, in which we can encounter again the Divine Presence, the Sabbath Bride. 

Here we go.

To build this invisible chuppah in time, we will need four items in the material world: A tablecloth. A favorite food. A nice shirt or dress. Two candles.

Tonight, when you return home, look at your tablecloths and pick one to be your Shabbat tablecloth.  Before going to bed, put it out on your dining room table and leave it there until three stars are visible tomorrow night.  Next week on Friday afternoon, before sundown, lay out your Shabbat tablecloth again and leave it there for 25 hours, until three stars are visible Saturday night.  Do it again each week on Friday afternoon, for the rest of your life. 

That tablecloth will be your constant reminder, all day long every Saturday, whatever else you are doing, that it is Shabbat… a silent but powerful witness to the sacred day.  At some significant moment, after many years, pass that tablecloth on to your son or daughter, or a grandchild.  It could easily become their most treasured possession. One of them might use it for their wedding canopy. I would.  The Shabbat tablecloth will be our first humble, do-able, but powerful step in rebuilding Shabbat in our community.  And when you visit your friends’ house in Saturday afternoon, to drop your kid off or to play mah-jongg, and you see their Shabbat tablecloth out on the table… wish them Shabbat Shalom.

Next, think of some food that you love.  The traditional Jewish term for this special Shabbat food is oneg, which just means pleasure.  Fourteen years ago, I mentioned Judy Meisel’s chocolate chip meringues, Robin Himovitz’s chocolate chip cookies, and Judy Karin’s brownies.  Judy Meisel is now serving Shabbos dinners to guests in the Garden of Eden, but we will bake her meringues in the new CBB educational kitchen that we are naming after her.  Of course, the Shabbat oneg doesn’t have to be chocolate!  In the Talmud, Rav Yehuda said in the name of his teacher Rav “oneg is a dish of beets, large fish and heads of garlic.” 

But the essential thing is to not eat it on any day of the week except Shabbat.  Impose that restriction, that discipline, on yourself…you can!  And then eat it on Shabbat and declare in Hebrew “lichvod Shabbat,” “To honor the Sabbath!”  By the way, when considering what will be your “oneg Shabbat,” you might want to talk with Blake and Ruth Johnson about their very special Shabbatinis.

Can we agree to these two things…all of us here tonight?  A Shabbat tablecloth in every house, every Shabbat from sundown Friday to three stars on Saturday night, and one Shabbat food…to be picked by each person…which we will only eat on Shabbat accompanied by the words “To honor the Sabbath!”  If we could, I think we would begin to feel the presence of Shabbat in our city. 

One of Judaism’s most basic insights is that discipline and pleasure can go together. They must go together. The holiness of Shabbat requires some structure, just a little bit of discipline.  That structure serves as a container to hold blessing and love.  But the structure can be pleasureful, and delicious, and beautiful!  In fact it must be, if we want our children and our grandchildren to choose to carry it on after us.  A beautiful tablecloth.  A delicious food to eat only on Shabbat.

If those two are acceptable, we need just two more.  Pick a nice shirt or dress that you love and designate it as your Shabbat garment.  Wear it next week on Shabbat and then never wear it on a weekday.  My own custom is to only wear white shirts on Shabbat, and never on any other day of the week.  Our Jewish summer camps use the white shirt rule to teach the kids that it is Shabbat all day long; and the kids love it.  Could you wear a white shirt on the sidelines of the soccer field or a white dress at the Farmers Market?  Why not?  And when you see your friend wearing his or her white shirt on Saturday, greet them with “Shabbat Shalom.”

Now, a fourth pole of our Shabbat canopy.  Candles.  A simple ritual, to be conducted with honesty and without embarrassment.  On Friday evening, light your candles and take a minute to stop.  To look and to feel.  Bless them, if you know how.  If not, don’t worry.  With that gesture you have brought light, beauty and holiness into your home.  Do that every week for one month.  It will take intention and some planning in those first weeks. But if you are consistent for one month, you may find…I think you will find…that it has become a habit. A tradition.  It will take exactly one long, meaningful minute. At the end say “Shabbat Shalom.”

That’s all.  A Shabbat tablecloth, a Shabbat delicacy, a Shabbat garment, and the simplest possible Shabbat ritual of lighting two candles.  A humble beginning.  We don’t need a cathedral…a simple structure will do.  But we do need that.  A new Shabbat covenant, one to which we all can say “yes.” 

This is where my sermon ended fourteen years ago.  I have often wondered what real impact it actually had.  It definitely produced a run on Shabbat tablecloths at our CBB gift shop.  I do not know how many, if any, of those tablecloths are still appearing for 25 hours every Shabbat, or how many Santa Barbara Jews have embraced the four simple disciplines that I proposed.  But it must mean something that so many people have told me that this is the sermon that they remember more than any other.  I understand that people appreciated the low bar that I was setting.  But I think that they also were grateful for the vision of a Shabbat that felt both meaningful and realistic in this place. I also think that I left something out, perhaps the most important thing of all.

Tonight, before I retire, let me add one last essential element to our simple, sacred Shabbat.  I think we need each other.   Bodies, faces, voices, hands and feet.  We need to come together, to be in each other’s physical presence.  To greet each other, embrace and kiss.  To eat together and to laugh.  To look into each other’s eyes.  Not necessarily every week, but often. It does not need to be in worship or Torah study or any program at all.  We are all over-programmed, and Shabbat is meant to be a liberation.  But Shabbat is also a time for friendship and love.

So here is a new updated Shabbat chuppah, a simple and humble Shabbat structure for this Jewish community, the holy congregation of Santa Barbara.  Our four poles are still:  A Shabbat tablecloth, a Shabbat delicacy, a Shabbat garment, and the simplest possible Shabbat ritual of lighting two candles.  And over those four chuppah poles let us spread a canopy of time with loving friends.

Speaking of time together, here is something that I look forward to. On Friday evenings at CBB, while services are going on inside, a group of friends sits together outside, enjoying a drink and good conversation. Dan Habecker is one of the regulars out there, and I’ve told Dan that once I retire, I plan to be out there with him…at least from time to time.  I hear that sometimes the Sabbath Bride prefers it out there. 

Shabbat Shalom and gmar chatimah tova.