The Modern Jewish Mom's Guide to Shabbat

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

A Little Kabbalah to Go with Your Challah

I think it's important to understand the reasoning behind the rules. I'm more likely to do something if I understand the rationale behind it. It's the child in me asking, "Why?" and craving more of an answer than "Because I said so." For example, when I was in Hebrew school and we were learning the laws for keeping kosher, I asked why we separate milk from meat. My teacher explained that this was because we shouldn't boil a baby animal in its mother's milk. That answer struck a chord—it spoke to me on a humane level and is one of the reasons I keep a kosher home (the other being that it's what my mom does).

So knowing that most of us like more of an explanation than "because that's just how it is," we're going to talk about why we do what we do on Shabbat and get into a little "kabbalah lite." It's not true kabbalah (the mystical branch of Judaism), but some of the explanations for the rituals we perform on Shabbat—lighting the candles, blessing the wine, and eating the challah—are based in kabbalah and the Torah. Other explanations I will share are from the Talmud, written by the great rabbis in the second and third centuries CE. (The Talmud is made up of the Mishnah, the oral law, and the Gemara, the commentary on the Mishnah.)

Let's begin with the basics. Shabbat technically begins eighteen minutes before sunset on Friday night and ends when there are three stars in the sky on Saturday. I love the idea of watching the night sky to signal the beginning and end of the Sabbath. It draws our attention to the heavens.

Shabbat falls on the seventh day of the week. Why the seventh day? According to the very first chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Torah, God took six days to make the world. In chapter 2, we read that on the seventh day God did not work but rested and took pride in what He'd created. Even more than simply resting, God blessed the world on the seventh day: "And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy . . ." (Gen. 2:3).

Now, if God can do anything, did He really work for six days and then say, "Whew, I'm pooped. I'll stop now and pick this up again tomorrow"? He may have chilled out on Shabbat, but there is also a great mystical or kabbalistic reason for Shabbat being the seventh day, which I learned during a Torah study with Rabbi Yaakov Lipsky. The rabbi told us to think about a book (after all, Jews are also known as the People of the Book). How many sides does a book have? Your instant answer might be six: top, bottom, left, right, front, and back. But that's not so; a book also has an inside—the seventh side. We cannot understand a book until we look inside—that's the most important part, where it all comes together. The outside of the book gives you the immediate, superficial information—what kind of cover it has, what the title is, and who wrote it—but to gain true knowledge of the book, you have to go inside. In the story of the Creation, on the seventh day, God rested and looked and appreciated. This is what we are supposed to do on Shabbat—look inward.

This concept of looking inward to find meaning, to eliminate the distractions of the outside, is especially important in the crazy world we live in. Modern reality is to focus on the outside, the material, and then . . . to feel empty. We need to come inside to appreciate the outside. Connection is not found by going out and acquiring more, but by going in. Shabbat allows us to stop doing and appreciate what we have, to connect with our family. This is where we truly find fulfillment.

Exodus, the second book of the Torah, continues with the concept of Shabbat. Exodus tells the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt and slavery for freedom. Slaves, by definition, work. Only once they were free were the Israelites able to rest. Shabbat, therefore, is a celebration of freedom. When the Israelites were in the desert, God gave the people the Ten Commandments as well as codes of ethics and rules of worship. The commandment to have Shabbat is given twice in the Torah. The first time the commandment is given is in Exodus when God commands Moses: "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy" (Exod. 20:8). In this verse, the commandment is written using the Hebrew word zachor, for "remember." Moses reiterates the commandment in Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Torah: "Guard the Sabbath day to keep it holy" (Deut. 5:12). Notice that the commandment is slightly different. This time the Hebrew word shamor, "guard," is used. So which one are we supposed to do—remember or guard? And what's the difference?

The explanation is found in the song "Lecha Dodi," which we sing during the Friday evening service. Composed in the sixteenth century by the great kabbalist Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, the song begins with the line: "Shamor v'zachor b'dibur echad." This means "Guard and remember uttered as one." The rabbis of the Talmud explain that when God gave these commandments to Moses, Moses heard and understood the words guard and remember at the same instant. We can take from this that these two concepts are equally important. They are two halves of a whole. Without one, you cannot have the other. The two candles we light to signify the start of Shabbat represent these two versions of the same commandment—to remember and to guard the Sabbath.

Each word has its own special meaning. When we "remember" (zachor) Shabbat, we do things that show that this day is different from the others. We perform acts that we do only on Shabbat—as our bubbies would have said, acts that are shabbesdik (in the spirit of Shabbat). We light candles, drink wine, eat challah, sing, pray, talk . . . all good things. This active remembering by signifying the day with ritual is probably what many less observant families do, even those of us like myself who describe ourselves as Conservative or even traditional.

Excerpted from The Modern Jewish Mom's Guide to Shabbatby Meredith Jacobs Copyright © 2007 by Meredith Jacobs. Excerpted by permission.
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