Ten days took hundreds of lives. Ten days had families sleeping in bomb shelters overnight, waiting for the next siren. Ten days of rockets and missiles pouring down on innocent lives, instilling paralyzing fear. Ten days reignited hatred towards Jews around the world; ten days fueled a divide between Israelis and Arabs. Ten days ripped apart countless Palestinian families and destroyed their homes. Ten days without hope, ten days of despair, of violence, of destruction. For me, something felt different in these past ten days. There have often, sadly, been difficulties in Israel, and yet in these days the magnitude felt more intense.
I exhaled when I heard the news of the cease fire yesterday. I had been holding my breath, essentially waiting for each piece of bad news that continued to come. But last night, I was finally able to breathe. Shabbat.
The cease fire, like Shabbat, matters, but it doesn’t solve the problem. There is still so much work. The sages teach that each week we should enter Shabbat - K’ilu M’lachtecha Asuya - as if the work is already done. In this phrase there is an acknowledgement that of course the work is not done, it can never be done when we enter Shabbat. We go into Shabbat knowing the work is incomplete, often entering Shabbat frazzled, harried, burdened with work.
This is a much needed Shabbat for us as Jews, and for all those that care about the future of Israel and Palestine. There is so, so much work to do. There is healing, there is dialogue, and there will be political moves. But before that, we rest. We take Shabbat to re-enter the work changed. We try to let the rest offered by Shabbat change us so we re-enter the work with a shift in focus, with the ability to re-engage in the work differently. Renewed.
The cease fire is temporary, just like Shabbat. But we need a Shabbat in order to move forward. We don’t know what that path looks like. But we have an ideal, a hope, and we need Shabbat because without it, we cannot tend to the work of the world.
We know there is so much work to do. I pray that this cease-fire holds long enough for us to figure out that work, and to re-enter, different, ready for change.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sarit
---------------------------------- At tomorrow morning’s service, we will be welcoming Audrey May from Jewish Family Services to speak about JFS’s food service programs. There is still space if you’d like to join us in person! We hope to see you tonight at Kabbalat Shabbat at 6PM (you can bring your own picnic dinner).
Please click here to join our Shabbat morning service, live-streamed from our sanctuary at 9:15AM on Shabbat morning.
