Sanctifying Time
It is so good to see all of your faces. Even those of you who have your videos turned off; just seeing your names at the bottom of the screen brings me much joy. Because like most of you, I look forward to Kabbalat Shabbat! Since also, like most of you, I spend my days at home.
Every morning, I change out of my night pajamas and into my day pajamas, unless of course, I have zoom meetings,
in which case I dress up – to go on what I call —zoom Television.
So Kabbalat Shabbat is a moment for me—a moment I look forward to.
Because all of our moments these times, seem to be bleeding into the next. Time is so peculiar under these circumstances. It’s just hard to know what time it is! What day it is?!
I think I really realized this, when I read Rabbi Noa’s email to the community during one of our earliest virtual shabbats, where she suggested to everybody—to all of you-- that you try and move
to a different space in your home, a different space than where you normally sit to tune in for a zoom call, and join in for Kabbalat Shabbat from that space.
So I did it too. I tried it and it suddenly changed my mood. Suddenly the space I was calling from wasn’t my usual zoom work space, it was my Shabbat- space. And ever since then, I have dedicated different parts of my apartment, to different parts of my life. For example, where I watch television, is no longer also where I sleep; in other words, I won’t bring my laptop into my bedroom. And the table where I work from during the weekday, isn’t where I spend the day resting on shabbat.
And I bring this up, not only because I think it’s important
that we try to carve out space--and that we dedicate that space
to a certain moment in time; but because that is precisely
how our ancestors lived and their understanding of the word: holiness.
The Torah discussed creating a sanctuary for God to dwell.
And I always remind everyone to remember the wisdom of our biblical ancestors, people who went to sleep with the stars and woke up with the sun. They were in tune with the rhythm of time, through nature; that’s how they knew what time of day it was.
In fact, in Hebrew, each day of the week doesn’t have it’s own name. For example, Sunday is called Yom Rishon—Day 1, Monday, is called Yom Sheni—Day 2. Every day was a countdown to Shabbat—the only day of the week that has her own name. And this isn’t because all of the other days of the week or insignificant. But that we count up to the day where our soul is heightened, are spirits are moved, a day where the air feels different because we treat it differently. There’s something about Shabbat that makes it feel different.
In fact, the first time we ever hear about how shabbat is different, is in the book of Genesis when God blesses the 7th day and calls it holy.
And we hear of holiness again in Exodus when God tells Moses the burning bush is on holy ground and asks him to take his shoes off.
We also learn then that because God is holy, so we are also to be a holy nation onto God, several times, in the book of Leviticus of which we are reading from now. In fact this week, we also receive instructions on Kashrut, in the book of Shemini, on the animals that we can and cannot eat. Because holiness also has to do with what we put in our bodies, in addition to how we act.
It’s interesting—I have to share, that we just finished Passover, a holiday that is really challenging for me because of all of the food that I love, that I can’t eat. And no matter how many people send me cool and interesting recipes for matzah, it still doesn’t do it for me.
At the same time, this year was the first year where I really felt like it was Pesach.
Pesach is supposed to remind you of spring—you look outside and you see it’s time. But I haven’t been going out much.
Peach is also a time where you get together with family and friends, but like you, I didn’t visit family this year—so it wasn’t that which made me feel that it was Pesach.
It felt like Pesach because my food was different. I changed something that I normally do and I felt something was different and I was aware of it.
You see one of the main lessons behind how we treat food in our tradition has to do with the level of awareness we bring to what we put in our bodies. One of the days we do this in our tradition is by blessing our food before we eat it.
I remember my kabbalah teacher once saying, why do we bless food? Why do we bless God? Surely God doesn’t need our blessing—
Blessed are you Adonai our God for giving us this fruit from the earth.
The answer is, the blessing isn’t for God. The blessing is for Us.
When I have to eat something, and I have to remember where it comes from, I am connecting to something bigger than the food that is on my plate. I have to think to myself, “oh this is a cucumber. does it grow on trees? Oh no, it grows from the ground: borei pri hadamah—who gives forth fruit from the ground.”
Suddenly I am transformed and I give thanks, praise and gratitude to how there are fruits, vegetables and miracles in this world that allow things to grow—and it’s not just about how I picked this piece of food up from a shelf in the grocery store! But I give thought to how beautiful it came into this world, before I was able to eat it off of my plate, at home.
Friends, if you take anything away from what I am trying to say to you all tonight, on this Shabbat, it’s that time is fleeting. I mean time has always moved, but we have usually been able to move with it. In a normal day, we might get on the bus or get on to the Muni or Bart, walk into our offices and workspace, maybe meet up with friends for drinks or have dinner with family. We marked time differently by going out into the world and space.
Time is different now. It’s still moving! But we need to work harder to move with it. And more than ever do we need to listen to the wisdom our ancestors left behind about holiness.
Rabbi Joshua Heschel says so beautifully in his book The Sabbath that it is not by conquering space— in other words by traveling the world, or even going outside of our surroundings, that we will lead meaningful lives; but by sanctifying time.
How are you sanctifying space and time? Making sure one moment is not the same as the rest—making sure time is separate and holy, instead of mundane, bleeding into the next? How do you designate your favorite foods for certain occasions? Enjoy dessert because you saved it for a moment you could especially enjoy it-- instead of eating whatever and whenever you desired it? We have all been given time to spend at home—have you carved out a moment, a space within time, to connect with yourself? Or with our God?
It is not by conquering space that we live meaningful lives, but by sanctifying time.