Last Friday night we welcomed Shabbat with fifteen of our family members who had come in for seder a day early. It was an unseasonably warm evening, and we enjoyed dinner together on my porch. I had spent the day cooking and cleaning. In addition to the food for Shabbat dinner, I had begun cooking for seder at my in-laws and Sunday morning brunch back at my house. It had been a long day. Finally we put dinner on the table and joined in song and prayer as we welcomed Shabbat into our home.

“Where are my Shabbat pajamas?” my daughter asked at bedtime. In the rush to get everything together for company, I suddenly realized we had neglected to do the laundry. “Strike one against Shabbat” I thought as I handed her another pair for the night. When I finally collapsed into bed that night, I went through the list in my head of what still needed to be done. I kept wondering how many eggs and boxes of matzah you actually needed to make matzah brei for twenty-five people. Somewhere between thinking I should send my husband out for more eggs for Sunday morning and wondering if I had wiped the counter dry, I fell asleep.

At 7 a.m. I was awakened by my rambunctious four-year-old, Ezri.

“Is my cousin Elijah here?” he asked. “No,” I answered, “He and his family are staying at Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

“Is it Passover yet?” he asked. “No,” I mumbled into my pillow, “Not until sundown tonight.”

“Can I watch TV?” he asked. “Yes – YES! It is Shabbat!” I gleefully cried. I sent him off to the other room and curled back up for another hour of rest.

I couldn’t do it. I woke up only thirty minutes later, still wondering if I had enough eggs. I tried reading a book. I tried not to think. I forced myself to watch the sun trickle through the blinds. By 8 a.m., I simply couldn’t stay in bed any longer. “I think I am losing a Shabbat to Passover,” I told my husband as I got up.

My kids asked for a big Shabbat breakfast. My little one cried when he found out we had eaten the entire challah the night before and didn’t have any left for French toast. “I wanted French toast!” he cried. “Why didn’t you buy two challahs for this week!?!”

“Mommy was thinking too much about Passover,” I said.

“You should have been thinking about Shabbat,” my four-year-old answered.

From the mouths of babes…

I found a half hour that day to snuggle with my kids on the couch and read a book. I played a fifteen minute game of cards. I turned on my favorite music and sang my way through the last of my cooking. It was, after all—as Ezri had pointed out—Shabbat.

Several weeks ago, I began my writing for Eilu V’Eilu by saying, “Like Jews everywhere, I do hear the invitation and find myself pulled toward the sweetness that Shabbat offers.” There are Sabbaths when the sweetness is obvious and the rest comes so easily to me. It is natural and a gift. And then, there are other Sabbaths when the rest itself takes effort and thought, and I seem to fight it the entire time. But each of us, I believe, deserves Shabbat. We deserve a time when, as Jim reminded us with a teaching from Abraham Joshua Heschel, we “turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation, from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”

Over the last three weeks, I have enjoyed hearing how other Reform Jews are “turning to the mystery of creation” and striving to transform Saturday into Shabbat. For some people, Shabbat is celebrating with their community at a morning minyan; for others, it is a day at the park with friends; and for others it is staying in their pajamas until noon. Each of us deserves to explore what the Sabbath means for ourselves, and find meaning and holiness in our own definition of rest. Even if we are nowhere near our ideal Shabbat, we all deserve to be on the journey.

It has been a joy to learn and share with you – thank you.

The questions we’ve confronted on observing Shabbat in the past few weeks are part of a much longer conversation for Reform Jews. Rabbi Yoffie’s Shabbat Initiative is not the first time we have tried to tackle how to make Shabbat a central practice in our observance. As far back as the beginnings of the Reform Movement in Europe in the 1800s, Shabbat observance was an issue. The 1846 Rabbinic Conference in Breslau, Germany called for enhancing celebration of the Sabbath, as well as for making accommodations to modern life. In 1885, the Pittsburgh Platform enacted by radical Reform rabbis not only rejected laws of dietary restrictions and priestly purity and dress. It also avowed to “maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives….,” which included abandoning prayers and rituals associated with traditional Sabbath observance.

Fast forward to the end of the twentieth century, when in 1991 the CCAR issued Gates of Shabbat, A Guide for Observing Shabbat by Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro. This lovely book aims to help individuals and families observe Shabbat at home and in the synagogue. Today the internet abounds with tools and suggestions for making Shabbat, not the least of which is our own URJ website.

Perhaps we might adopt the Nike slogan to our task: “Shabbat—just do it.” But it’s easier said than done, I’m afraid. Rabbi David Thomas, my teacher and congregational rabbi, responded to my first column about my struggle with Shabbat by offering a suggestion he heard about making exercise a daily routine: “Do something thirty times (good or bad) and it will become a habit. You know what? It’s true. So I scheduled it like I would a meeting.” Can you schedule Shabbat? Of course you can.

But I fear the greatest impediment to “Shabbat—just do it” is our inability to stop the pace of our lives. There is so much to do that we can’t take the time to be. We can plan a thousand little things in our lives, but somehow we can’t seem to fit in the planning that would help us to enjoy a Friday night and a Saturday that changes our routine, and that might actually change and enhance our lives.

I also believe that we feel—if we don’t do the “whole enchilada,” well, then we’re being inauthentic or half-hearted. It becomes easy to dismiss Shabbat if we take the “all or nothing at all” approach. We focus, as I’ve said here before, on the negative aspects of Shabbat—the things we’re not supposed to do, rather than the things we can and should do.

Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, who I quoted a couple of weeks ago, has an interesting take on the distinction between Jewish work and rest:

“The ‘work’ that is forbidden by Jewish law on the Sabbath is not measured in the expenditure of energy. It takes real effort to pray, to study, to walk to synagogue. They are ‘rest’ but not restful. Forbidden ‘work’ is acquisition, aggrandizement, altering the world. On Shabbat we are obliged to be, to reflect, to love and make love, to eat, to enjoy.”
To be, to reflect, to love, to make love, to eat, to enjoy. When put that way, it sounds pretty appealing, doesn’t it?
So I’m advocating for what I’m going to call “Shabbat-By-Degrees.” Maybe it’s just going to Torah study on Saturday morning. Or planning a Shabbat luncheon with a group of friends once or twice a month and making the blessings and Birkat HaMazon a part of it. Or forgoing the trip to the mall, and instead going to a museum with the family. Take a walk together with family or friends. Take baby steps if you must, but find something to do that is different from what you’d normally do, and do it with intention. Do it consciously for Shabbat, on behalf of Shabbat. A midrash says, “The Sabbath is given to you, not you to the Sabbath.”

It’s a gift, and a gift is not something that’s hard for most of us to accept. Why not accept it?