A Lesson in Sabbath
When it comes to Sabbath- I somehow seem to always forget that this is a Jewish tradition. Sure, I’ve read Abraham Heschel’s The Sabbath, and of course studied scripture. “Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy!!!”
However, I can’t help but revert to the Sunday memories of my Christian childhood in Greenville, South Carolina. I can still envision my own little white socks, freshly bleached from the night before sweating in the summer heat under my patent leather shoes. I can smell the pot roast crock pot that my mother had prepped early that Sunday morning and I can feel the hard wooden pews pressed against my back as I waited for the long sermon to be over.
I’ve always been unaware, and frankly uncurious about what Sabbath might look like to any other faiths until I spent a day of rest with two Rabbis at an interfaith peace
We were an unusual group comprised of a Quaker seminarian, Buddhist prison rights activist, two Methodists seminarians, a theology of ecology scholar, one Asian Pacific Theology Christian professor from Berkeley, several non-denominational Christians, two Episcopalians, two Anglicans, two Muslims (one an Islamic Studies graduate student on track for Imam with a focus on mental health for Muslims, the other a leading Muslim mediator and reconciler), an Ashkenazi Rabbi and antiquities scholar, and a young budding Sephardi Rabbi from South London. Despite the religious differences, we genuinely wanted to learn from each other’s faith perspectives.
My Jewish peers taught us their practice of Shabbat. My own practice had gotten sloppy- devolving simply to a semi-hermitage on Sundays where I removed myself from world and reset my energy and spirituality through a full-day of rest. It was fascinating to learn the comparisons on Sabbath between the Sephardic and the Ashkenazic traditions, yet they both remained wholly rooted to the central themes of pure, uninterrupted rest.
77 percent of the Bible is Old Testament, meaning that 77 percent of our holy, sacred scriptures are Hebrew texts. It could be argued, however, that 100 percent of our scripture is tied to Judaism, as the Gospel, and Pauline Epistles and remaining New Testament scriptures are all based around the perspectives of Jews, Jewish culture and Jewish life.
My rabbinical friends taught me how they practice Shabbat through a Sunset devotion on Friday evening. We waited until the sun truly set (the sunset was noted through our cellphones) and the Rabbi blessed the challah that she had made earlier in the day. My rabbinical student friend David recited from the Torah in a beautiful way. We broke bread and tucked in for the night to recover from a week of emotionally strenuous work of interfaith dialogue.
Following Saturday, we gathered for scriptural reasoning with Cambridge University. My friend David explained privately to our small group that on Shabbat his brain functions differently, on a lower level and he does that intentionally. He explained that he might be quietly and less engaged than usual. I had never thought about the practice of showing up, but in a limited way like that.
David explained that on Shabbat, a part of him is fully reserved for rest and renewal and that he protects that part so that he can be more present later in the week. Once the sun had set the following day and 3 stars were visible in the English sky, we re-gathered for another reading of the Torah- then broke into games and fellowship. It was almost a moment of celebration together, kinship in brotherhood. For Rabbi Lindsey and David, I wonder what it must have felt like sharing their Sabbath with Muslims and Christians.
For us all, we felt very grateful to see a very private version of Sabbath between two scholars of Judaism, and religious leaders in their own communities back in London.
Through their lenses, I grew to love Sabbath. It is now one of my most sacred practices, and as I mature- Sabbath matures with me and I celebrate the many ways of loving rest.