Shalom my friends. Welcome again to the Light Lab Podcast! My name is Eliana Light, I'm here with my good friend Cantor Ellen Dreskin.
Hello again, everybody.
And that's it! And we're having a lovely time doing these episodes together. We were joking, before we started recording this happened last time too, we were worried that we wouldn't have enough to talk about. And of course, there's so much depth and richness and all of it.
And good morning to Josh Warshawsky. Wherever you may be at the moment that you are listening to this, we are also we're missing you and looking forward to your return.
Amen. Amen. Hey, Josh, wherever you are. And hello, dear listeners. Our question today is about time. What helps you make time sacred or set aside sacred time?
Oh, well, I think it is about kavanah. For me, it is about intention. And when we talk in a few moments about the meaning of the word for us. If I approach something with a particular attitude, then I'm sure that many of us will find that that shapes the way we think about it. And so I'm often amazed that for me, I confess that sometimes, for example, I'll go into the kitchen to cook dinner. And I'm just not into it. I want to do takeout. But we're not going to do takeout, because I have felt guilty and et cetera, et cetera. And then I say, wait a minute, this is a gift, you have the time to cook dinner, you are nourishing yourself and other members of your faith. Amen. Thank you, for letting me make dinner, and it becomes a high for me. And I realized that I can turn on music and I have, can have fun, and I can be creative. And if I look for the gifts in a particular moment in time, I'm probably going to find them.
That's beautiful. I think I needed that reminder today myself with with so much about our heritage. When we talk about things like awe, and wonder, and gratitude. There are moments where it comes upon us when we are overwhelmed, and it is overflowing. And there are also muscles that we can exercise, and perhaps our liturgy helps us exercise them, but then we get to put them to work in different parts of our life. And your answer made me think of a couple of weeks ago, I guess it was like Christmas break week. And I was at home. And I had been talking to my friend, Cantor Mike Weiss, who was encouraging me to write more letters. I've never been a letter writer, but I've always kind of wanted to be the kind of person who writes letters, eo I have a lot of stationery. I mean, I'm still using my Bat Mitzvah stationery. I still have hundreds of cards, you've definitely received one for me, Ellen. It's like the the purple red and the gold with the weird font. Yeah, with the moon's at the bottom, because I had a Rosh Chodesh Bat Mitzvah. But I was writing thank you notes to communities who had brought me in to do artists and residencies over the year. And I stopped it at one point and I thought, Wow, I'm putting this in the mail. Someone else is going to get this. And it's not going to be a bill. And it's not going to be a newspaper. It's going to be a sweet little note. And maybe that'll make them smile. And then it made me smile. It was the same sort of thing where I was like, Oh, wow! I get why people write letters now. I get it, you know, will I be the kind of person that writes letters now? I don't know. I'm trying to not put that much pressure on myself. But it was a really beautiful moment of realization that yeah, this is really special right here.
Ugh, I love that. And now I'm thinking about the Daily Mail. And how wonderful it is, how really wonderful it feels, like that's not like you say, longer. Yeah. And the chain reaction.
Yeah, passing it off. Because of course, Mike sent me a note and I opened it in the mail. It's just so sweet. Ah, it works! It worked on me!
It works and it's now in the moment the if we want to call it sacred, the sacred moment happens at two different times. The kind of the writing of the sending of the receiving is a gift that keeps on giving. The moment that you had then in a couple of days becomes a sacred moment for someone else.
Hmm. Oh, I love this so much. Wow, wow, wow. And what a great way to start our conversation today. As you might know, listeners, we are on our sweet and cozy journey through Shabbat at home, we lit the candles, and we sing Shalom Aleichem, and we offered blessings to whoever was at the table, whether that be ourselves or members of our family or friends or pets. And now it's time to say kiddish.
Yay!
And, as Ellen knows, and maybe some other people listening, I love Kiddish, it is maybe my favorite ritual of all time, I don't know. I, I could share a little bit about why at the top, and then we'll dive more into it. But kiddish to me feels like opening a portal in spacetime. Where we are connecting to the first Shabbat and the Exodus, but also every Shabbat that has ever been, every Shabbat that is happening around me, around in my community. and in the world, and every Shabbat that's ever going to come after because what we're really doing is blessing time, which is just a wild and beautiful notion. So let's jump in. And we'll come back to my, my Kiddish excitement all throughout, I'm sure. Before we even jump into the text, maybe something about the word Kiddish itself, or Kiddush, one might say. What does that evoke for you, Ellen?
The word Kiddish when I asked other people about the word because you know, we've already asked something about making time sacred. And you say well, what is -osh? Or that it's separate? And then some people say no, it's the opposite. It's the inclusion of everything. It's the it's the raising the normal up. There's so many different interpretations of it. I had a student a number of years ago, who defined the word Kadosh, as intentional, and it changed my whole perspective. So that idea of when you when, you make Kiddish, your being, like we already discussed this morning, intentional about a moment in time. And also, when you marry somebody, you know, Kiddushin, when you meet somebody, you're remembering somebody that's Kaddish, that it's about taking whatever moment that is and looking at it differently, in a very heart held personal way. And I think that's what it does for me to make something holy. I really do, I think Kiddish is intentional.
That's beautiful. I'm thinking of, you know, in my notes, I say A Setting Apart. There's this great book on my shelf, I have a lot of Jewish books on my shelves I've never read because one time my family sent me all of our Jewish books out in 14 boxes of books. That's a story Ellen has heard, I'll tell you later listeners, maybe but you can ask me about the 14 boxes of books. But it's this great book called A Day Apart. And it has each of the things that happen in the home over Shabbat with different readings and commentaries and poems and pictures, and talks about how we kind of start our day or we move into sacred time with Kiddush, played on the idea of Kadosh as set apart, because of Havdalah, which we end Shabbat with, means to separate or a separation. So it's kind of book-ended by these brackets that are saying we're taking this out of the regular flow of time. And it makes me think of this line that I've brought up before when I did Aqua Nia when we a different instructor for water aerobics, and we were like moving our hips and she said, isolate to integrate. And I think about that all the time. Because there's something about, right, we separate Shabbat, but we don't stay there. We reintegrate, maybe hopefully, what we discovered or learned or felt about Shabbat into the rest of the flow of the week. And I think about a lot of Jewish practices like that. There's something particular about it. We say a blessing over one thing and maybe not another thing, but the moments of blessing allow us to put brackets around a moment, kind of take it out of time, out of the flow of time. But then we, we integrate it back into the flow of time hopefully so that something has changed. Because there's something about the particularities, right when you were bringing up like saying Kaddish for a loved one. We say Kaddish for particular people in our family we had a relationship with. We don't say Kaddish for everyone who has passed. That's too much to hold hold for one person, right? So as a community, we hold each other, we also do Kiddushin, a wedding, with one other person, right? We're not expected to love everybody in the same way that someone might love your partner. There's like brackets, there is a choosing, but there is also, can this separateness, this, in being this moment, this intention that I'm having right now, can the ripples of that have an effect in my regular life too, and the rest of it.
Mhmm, we're really getting deeper here into the whole purpose of everything that we're saying is, involves active participation, in terms of saying: Yes, I set this time, or this person, or this place, I'm going to, the blessing that I say, or the the amount of thought or preparation that goes into it, is what makes it different. So I imagine where and we've been talking in a few minutes about, you know, this idea of who made Shabbat holy? Is that something that that G?d did that first time? Or is that something, and what is our role each week in actively making that time sacred? Is it Shabbat if I don't do anything? Kind of, or if I don't not do anything, you know, it really is about my own heart, and I make something sacred, perhaps.
Yeah, it's almost as if, you know, with all that talk about writing letters, it's almost as if the rituals that we have baked into our sacred calendar, whether that's daily, weekly or around the year, I don't know it kind of feels like our spiritual ancestors inviting us like, Will you accept this invitation to sacred time? And you know, it can be very easy to say a blessing and say Kiddush, say whatever, and not be in the moment with intention, and not be separating it as a special time. Sometimes we turn down invitations and that's all right. But they keep coming and we get to choose to say yes, why thank you. I don't know if I would have thought that this could be a sacred special moment but I'm going to bring my intention and attention to it and accept this invitation that is being held out for me.
And it takes it from our head to our heart, that's what I love, I love the way every gland in our heart and not just be in our heads.
Yes, 100%. We could talk just about the word Kiddush for hours. No this is good. This is this is why we dive deep. Let's get into this of Friday night Kiddush which begins piece from a spreadsheet but even before we talk about that, Ellen I'd love for you to read it for us in the Hebrew not chanted just read it so we can see what we what we might hear.
I'd be happy to read it. It starts like this, again from Torah. Vay'hi erev vay'hi voker
yom hashishi.
Vay'chulu hashamayim v'haaretz v'chol tz'vaam.
Vay'chal Elohim bayom hash'vi-i m'lachto asher asah.
Vayishbot bayom hash'vi-i mikol m'lachto asher asah.
Vay'varech Elohim et yom hash'vi-i vay'kadeish oto,
ki vo shavat mikol m'lachto asher bara Elohim laasot.
Let's just talk about the Hebrew for a second.
Yes.
If we maybe yes and notice because, you know, this is the kind of text that maybe we hear with trope being chanted in the Torah, or we hear it with the melody being chanted, but we don't often just get to hear it read, and it was really the shh sounds that were coming out to me. Vayishbot. Shvi'i.
Hashem. Oh that, I love that now, that shh, shh, everybody just settle in here for the next 25 hours, it's all gonna be good.
Right?
I love it.
And that sound, that Shin sound, shh, like really actually slowing down our nervous system, feeling it in our bodies, and the letter shin being open to the heavens in the shape, this I learned I did this class with Victoria Hanna on really like the spirituality of the Hebrew letters and looking at Sefer Yetzira, the Book of Formation. I think I've talked about it on the pod before, but Shin as being grounded from above, which is an interesting concept even, what does it mean to ground through your connection with what is above? And that sound and the openness of that letters, especially as we'll talk about connecting to Creation, that feels really, really resonant here.
And I had not thought about the shape of the Shin, and it lifting up towards the heavens, because now I'm thinking about the Yom Hashihi, that, that that that day that we might call the completion of creation, although we might consider Shabbat, the completion of creation, but that, that whole sixth day as a connection between heaven and earth.
Okay, and now I'm getting into the word Shabbat, right? Because, right? Okay, so the Yud and the E sound are like internal, it's what is secret. So if the like sh is grinding, it's like pulling from above and then into us and then above and then into us especially as human beings. And Shabbat, okay, so the shin, right we start with this is what gets me.
Eliana you only thought you loved Kiddish before, now you're really gonna like it.
Oh my G?d, I'm gonna lose it the next time. In real life, it's gonna be gonna be a puddle on the floor. Okay, so sh, sha, we are connecting with the shin, ah, that our sound is all things. It's all around. It's everything. Ah, you can even try it with your mouth, Ah, you see how it like opens in every direction. And then bet is actually like the creation letter. Bet is what brings us into into creation. You can imagine like the scroll of the Torah was the first letter of the Torah is Bereshit, and it like opens to the left, there was nothing, there was nothing and then Bet just kind of comes in and makes the world. So we're still in the world with everything with that ah sound and then Tav. And then fullness and completion. And this is enough. It's the end of the aleph bet. We can just like sit here and be in this now. Yeah.
Wow, I think I'll just sit here and be in that now.
Yeah! That's great. Yeah, a whole episode on the word Shabbat. Maybe someday we'll be brave. I'll be brave enough to go that slow. But, yeah, let's read the translation of that bit from Genesis chapter two verses one through three and a little bit from Genesis chapter one at the end.
Interesting to note that, as we already said, this comes from Torah, preamble, perhaps, to Kiddish. And it's not only from Genesis chapter two, but the last verse of Genesis chapter one. So it's 1:31 that says, Vay'hi erev vay'hi voker yom hashishi, there was evening, morning, the sixth day, and then it goes into chapter two. We'll come back and talk about that. My translation says, And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day, the heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. On the seventh day G?d finished the work that G?d had been doing. G?d ceased on the seventh day from all the work that G?d had done, and G?d blessed the seventh day and declared it holy. Because on it, G?d ceased from all the work of creation that G?d had done. Is now a good time to say why on earth would you start with the last verse of chapter one?
Yeah, let's start there.
Okay, this has to do again back to the Hebrew more than the English but it's interesting that our ancestors thought of this. Why not start just with vayechulu at the beginning of chapter two? Because the last verse of chapter one ends with yom hashishi, day six, but the first two letters of that of yom hashishi are yud hey. Chapter Two begins the first two letters of those words. And so we're bringing you in Hey involved, Hey, vav hey, together in the realization of Shabbat, and there really is no distinction. You know, our chapter partitions and divisions in Torah came much, much later.
And it wasn't a Jewish invention.
And it wasn't a Jewish - no! Okay, we'll start Chapter two here. And then our ancestor says, Wait a minute. Let's not separate those two, day six and day seven quite so much. Particularly when we can bring Yud Hey Vav Hey together in the transitions to Shabbat. I love that.
I love that too. I love a hidden tetragrammaton. First of all, Yud Hey Vav Hey in all places. And also, like you said, it connects us to the creation story. It it reminds me of a shoe or a class that I took with my held at Passover Ramah Darom, where he teaches all these wonderful classesm on Torah for the climate crisis, and about the, you know, somebody in the class said, Well, you know, the chapter ends with the sixth day. So that must be the apex of creation is the creation of human beings. That's like the fulfillment of the promise of creation. That is the most important thing. And Rav Shai reminded all of us that again, we didn't create the chapter system. And that actually, maybe the apex of creation is Shabbat, and all beings living together in, on Earth. Instead of human beings at the center and domination at the center, what does it mean for maybe Shabbat to be what the world is yearning for and aching for? And I feel that. I think one of the powerful reasons and we've talked about like, Why start with this, in particular? Is that one of the traditions around Shabbat is that it is like, I think, what is it 1/60 of Olam Haba? That it is a taste of the world to come, and think about the world to come, but there is a tradition and the one I usually hold which is, Olam to come as the world that we could create here on Earth. On Shabbat, right? G?d ceased, creation was done. And nothing more needs to be done. So we enter Shabbat like nothing more. We don't do any acts of creation, and if it is Olam Hab. But of course, and I think I've said this before, because it's been really my connecting point to Shabbat. Like, we know it's not Olam Haba we actually have a lot of work to do. We don't stay in Shabbat forever. When we leave Shabbaty, we are then asked to, I think, shrink the space between Shabbat and the rest of the week. What would it take us to get to that Olam Haba? And so we have a reminder at the beginning, the world and creation and nothing more needs to be done. What would it be like to live in a world like that?
Hmm. Beautiful, beautiful, and then that little time of pretending we can have a sense of this is what it would feel like. I don't know when you say bridge the gap Eliana it makes me think of and you can clarify for me the idea of during the rest of the week, oh, it could be like that, and maybe when I do during the week, could help that Olam Haba. And also that it's Olam Haba, that it's constantly it's on its way it's on its way, it's coming, coming, it's coming! I really love that thought and it reminds me when we sing Lecha Dodi. This has that Shabbat is sof ma'aseh b'machsava t'chilla, that even though Shabbat was the last act, perhaps that G?d took in the creation of the world, it was bamachsava t'chilla, it really was from the beginning. The first in thought was I'm headed for that Shabbat, if I'm going to G?d's mouth now. I'm heading for that very first Shabbat, if the last thing that you're going to see. But I but it's what's in my head from the very beginning. Sof ma'aseh, final action, b'machsava t'chillah, but the first thought.
Gosh, that's making me think now about experience design and the idea that people really leave with, like, the last impression being one of the strongest impressions. Or like, backwards design, right? Where we're planning the lesson based on what we want the ending to be. You know, Hashem is the ultimate experience designer, backwards design, according to this story.
Some people will say, you know, Shabbat is not the end of creation, because Shabbat, G?d created rest. Also heard that, right? So, so G?d was still creating. And I don't know, you know, I think about that. But that that whole idea of was your creation all for G?d, but there's not creation was all for us, need to be created, which I think we would all agree that.
Yeah.
That rest was created. And also you take this idea of Olam Haba. It's not only Shabbat, which comes at the end of each week, but the idea also in another on the seventh day, but also in the seventh year, Shmita. And then the seven times seven becomes the Jubilee Year, that all of these are, are longer and longer images of what we can prepare and how we can be so that we can get to that time. Are you going to do anything?
Yeah, yeah, in looking at this, I'm noticing kind of the the flow and the repetition of the text. It's a lot less rigid than the earlier chapters in Bereshit where it's like, and G?d did this, and then this, like, there's not a lot of repetition there. It's this thing, this thing, this thing G?d saw it was good, evening, morning, that was the day. And here it's like, everything was finished, G?d completed all G?d's work, G?d rested, G?d was working and G?d has done now and G?d blessed, and on that day G?d rests - a lot less rigid. It's got like an openness and a flow that the rest of the days don't have. And I'm also very drawn to the word vayishbot, making Shabbat into a verb, which, of course it is, right? Rest, completion, that's a verb, but we so often don't think about it. And it can be very easy to think of Shabbat as, like a list of things not to do. And we might talk about that more like, don't do this and don't do that. But rest being an act of vayishbot, and something that I have found to help make kiddush, to help make it come alive to maybe accept the invitation of our spiritual ancestors, when I'm chanting. I'll stop there like, and I'll do the beginning kind of quickly. I'll get there. So maybe it's like, Like Vay'chal Elohim bayom hash'vi-i m'lachto asher asah. Vayishbot. Bayom hashvi'ti, that deep breath, I need it so much. And it allows me right in that way to kind of click in to that rest as active verb mirroring the act of creation.
I love there's a quotation I found from Rabbi Rami Shapiro in his book Minyan that says G?d seven days holy, it's different from the other six, but not better than them. Which I think is interesting. Genesis does not suggest a laborless ideal. Labor is sanctified. Aha, there's that word again. Every time G?d looks at creation and says it's good, what they sought and what their descendants sought to institutionalize was the fundamental need everything has for cessation, non-doing, and renewal. Creation isn't complete until there is a time when nothing needs to be done. Because if there's always something left to better to be created, I mean, that's just that makes perfect logical. Creation isn't complete until there's a time when nothing needs to be done. And even our, our, our rest, we create time for that in order to get there. We'll never get there if we never take rests along the way. We never stopped to reflect and ponder and be intentional about things.
Yeah, it's getting me to think this quote, I don't know if this is helpful in any way, but about the difference between creation and labor, because G?d's creation is blessed and sanctified. But like human beings, Adam and Eve are kicked out of the Garden of Eden, where everything was kind of there. And what it might mean to move from an economic system of labor for the sake of labor, to create and give creation. I think, the many thousands and millions of people who, like have creative gifts, but are not in financial or familial places to be able to share those creative gifts, like singer in the universe, or the best actor or the best painter or whatever it might be, however you want to say best, like, works four jobs and takes care of her children and her ailing parents. And there's like some loss in there for me that creativity is often seen, or has to be because of the system that we live under superfluous or only for the privileged few, and what it would mean to create a world not just where nothing new needed to be labored for, but where everybody had the chance to be.
Hmm, I love, that's beautiful. I'm connect - you say that with also the word to labor in Hebrew, la'avod, which we take from that avodah which is a one point is seen as the word for the sizes in temple times. Also Avadim Hayinu and this takes us back to kiddish, we were slaves in Egypt, and this idea now of avodah and of being not necessarily a slave but a servant, and the act of labor as serving a purpose or even serving G?d, shall we say, serving a higher purpose some people would say that that my labors aren't just toil, my labors are serving something hopefully serving a greater good and even that takes a rest on Shabbat. Just so I can regroup, just so I can breathe. You know we're getting to Shabbat in general that that idea of I have an extra soul added for me on Shabbat, since an extra nourishment, but kiddish brings rise to all of that.
Yeah, how can we live in a world where rest is not, not a collapse from being worked and over scheduled and depleted, but rest that is restorative. Not everybody gets that. And again, we, cues and clues, Kedush and Shabbat as to the kind of world that we can be working towards.
We try to get that internal rest. And because of the Exodus, that as we take that rest we remember precisely I guess, that internal rest is a beautiful thing, and, this is also a reminder us, reminds us that our rest also has to be extended to others as we go into our week, and as that all people need to be able to celebrate that time of Shalom, of love of internal rest and calm.
We are a great segue into looking at the second piece of Kiddish. How about, how about I read it in Hebrew and then you can have the experience of of listening and see what you notice?
Sure.
And I'll use the traditional blessing formula for this one. Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, borei p’ri hagafen.
Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’ratzah vanu, v’Shabbat kodsho b’ahavah uv’ratzon hinchilanu, zikaron l’maaseih v’reishit. Ki hu yom t’chilah l’mikra-ei kodesh, zecher litziat Mitzrayim. Ki vanu vacharta, v’otanu kidashta, mikol haamim. V’Shabbat kodsh’cha b’ahavah uv’ratzon hinchaltanu. Baruch atah, Adonai, m’kadeish haShabbat. What do we notice really just in the Hebrew itself, in the sounds?
Well what I do notice, it's because of the sounds, but that there seems to be two blessings at once, which is I think is worth noting. There's also listening with your ears perhaps now Eliana, all the ahs, the Shabbat and ratzon, ma'aseh, there's there's a lot behind, kidashta, ha'am, all this ah sound is like an exhalation into the day. And I appreciate that very much. There are a lot of individual words that I'm crazy about. But we can get into that.
Yeah, why don't you read us the translation you have for this part?
I do. It says Praise to You, I don't I are G?d, sovereign of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine, praise to You Adonai our G?d sovereign of the universe, who finding favor with us sanctified us. In love and favor, You made the holy Shabbat our heritage as a reminder of the work of creation. As first our sacred days that is from Egypt, You chose us and set us apart from all peoples, in love and favor, You have given us Your holy Shabbat evidence. Praise to You Adonai, who sanctifies Shabbat. Interesting, and we say that things are literal. And then we realize that any translation is by definition, an interpretation. Right? So in an attempt to be good with the English, we have at one point saying that Shabbat is a reminder of the work of creation. And then in the next station, it says it recalls the Exodus from Egypt. And remind and recall in Hebrew of course, are the same things, zecher, which has to do with the zachor, remembering. So the repetition of the words in Hebrew I think points as to things that perhaps the English might not.
Right, so the translation one of them that I have in front of me is by Rabbi Jill Hammer from the Romemu Siddur. And she says, I actually kind of want to read the whole thing then maybe we can we can think about the differences here. Blessed are You, source guide of the world, who creates the fruit of the vine. Blessed are You, Holy One who guides creation, who has made us holy with Your commandments, and taken pleasure in us and the holy Shabbat and granted it to us with love and favor, as a remembrance of the work of creation. Shabbat is first, of all the proclaimed holy days, a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt. So we are there. For you have chosen us and sanctified our peoples and invited us to keep in love and favor Your holy Shabbat. Blessed are You, source of life, who makes Shabbat holy.
Hmm.
I think it's playing with, right, this idea of, quote, unquote, chosenness. This idea that we have Shabbat as a gift. There are people that I know there's a tradition of saying kivanu vacharta v'otanu kidashta im kol ha'amim, who chose us and sanctified us along with all other nations, as opposed to from all other nations. It's interesting, though, to think about, really the countercultural nature of Shabbat. And just because it was a gift given to us does not mean that nobody else gets that gift. I think about labor organizers, who many of whom were Jewish, you know, in the, you know, late 1800s, I think someone might have to check, but who like, who got us a two day weekend and a five day workweek? You know, were they inspired by Shabbat? Which even I think, right, the Greeks or the Romans were like, they're nuts! Like, why are they resting for a day, don't they know, they would like, make more money, if they, if they worked another day, right? It's actually a very countercultural idea to stop.
It's this, there's a story in which I may tell poorly now, because I'm just remembering it, of a person who end with a fishing pole by the river and someone comes along and says, gee, you know, if you bought a boat, and you went out to the middle, or if you had five people with you, you could catch more fish, you could make more money you could...And what do I do with all the money will they do to buy a fleet? And you know, the industry gets bigger and bigger? And the person says, and what would be the point of all this? Well, because then you could, you could relax, you could enjoy your time you could sit by, and the person says, but that's precisely what I was doing. I was sitting with my one fishing pole, but side of the river is that, why are we doing all of this work? You know, it really is in order that we might get to that point of, oh, I don't, it's not needed anymore. Or I don't I don't have to be that is our own, perhaps personal Olam Haba. But we also reminded that it's the rest of the Shalom of it that I'm working toward, that just jumped out at me right off the bat. And the, in the being chosen. I think it highlights for me again, this idea of intentionality. If I'm the one saying, this prayer that I have accepted, it's kind of like choosing to be chosen. I've accepted this idea that Shabbat is a gift. And I'm grateful that I am choosing to be one who considers Shabbat as a sacred time. And G?d didn't make me any better. But I am feeling more, shalem-nity to make up a word, because I'm intending this time to be this way. I'm choosing. So I really appreciate that very much and and to go back to this connection, but what's the connection between creation and the Exodus? Why is Shabbat both of these things?
Why is Shabbat both of these things? I, a small anecdote. Many, many years ago, one of my first Jewish education jobs was doing like a Hebrew school class on holidays. Half the time they would be cooking and then half the time they'd be with me, like. researching and writing a guide. And my supervisor got an angry email that their kid came home claiming that Shabbat was about the Exodus. When of course it's not, don't - doesn't your teacher know that the exodus is Passover? It's not Shabbat. Huh, I don't know. What do you want me to say? It's right there.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, so what is, you know, and I have heard and learned the story that the creation was the creation of the world, of humanity, and that the Exodus was communal, a national, people creation, not of the individual human being, but of the communal Jewish people. That was our foundation story, the Exodus from Egypt, and each week we would remember both and I think it's lovely.
It brings us to the two versions of of Shabbat in the Decalogue, the 10 commandments, or as others might say, the 10 T's because they're not really commandments. This one is though, in the version Shmot says, Zachor et HaShabbat, remember Shabbat, and the reason given is creation. And that's V'shamru b'nai yisrael that we use as part of kiddish on Shabbat morning. And then in Dvarim, in Deuteronomy, it says, Shamor et HaShabbat, keep or guard Shabbat, and the reason given in that version is because you were slaves in Egypt and were freed. So we have this kind of duality. Something about remembering connects us to creation and something about guarding connects us to the Exodus.
But lets, again, Lecha Dodi, thank you Lecha Dodi, first verse, shamor v'zachor v'dibur echad, shamor and zachor, the keeping and remembering, are really one word. And hishmiyanu hameyuchad, G?d that, hameyuchad, the special one, cause us to hear that. That these are intertwined and it's connected, Ramban, Nachmanides, connects us to Shamor and Zachor in terms of our mitzovt. And those that are positive and those that are negative, and it says that zachor, are all we remember to do on Shabbat, such as kiddish. While shamor refers to the obligation to refrain, the mitzvot lo ta'aseh, the things you're not supposed to do. So the the idea that the Torah links the two as being said in the same breath, of being the same thing, that this time of Shabbat, is both about what we do and what we don't do. And and what we, what we feel is being asked of us and, and also what we are yearning for and asking for. It really all is wrapped up in that el hameyuchad, that singular and special invitation from G?d, shall we say, from life, is not all one or the other. But this combination of doing and not doing with intention.
And making particular mention in the Kiddush that Shabbat was the first of the Holy Days to be given to the people Israel. Not even Pesach, Shabbat! In Dayenu, the verse about Shabbat comes before the verse about Torah, we got Shabbat before we got the Torah. We, this, this was it. And again, connecting it with Exodus, thinking about Olam Haba. That true Shabbat only comes with liberation, and the liberation of all, of all peoples. There's also something powerful there, I think, in the use of zachor for both. This past High Holidays, I don't remember exactly who reminded me, but there were a couple of servants about this about memory, and the idea that zachor, it's not just like, Oh, I'm remembering something that I forgot and moving on, but memory that is connected to action. So it's the same word in the story, G?d is played by G?d in the Torah, when G?d like remembers the people Israel, in their enslavement, and then goes to talk to Moses to do something about it. It's not just like, huh, remember those people, and then moving on. There's, there's something -
I have to write that down and come back to that later.
Right? Right memory that's not just nostalgia. That's not just oh, that's a nice memory. But that actually leads us to action, that leads us to acting in our world.
Share and we'll put this in the show notes and what I'm about to share from a commentary on the Siddur by Rabbi Aim, called Well of Living, I'm showing Eliana the picture, it's called the Well of Living Insight: Comments on the Siddur. And Rabbi Art Green says you know about this connection between the creation of the world and the Exodus from Egypt, says that the end of the chapter on traditional Shabbat striving for freedom makes us aware of Tzelem Elohim, of all people being created in the Divine image. And he says that gives voice to our need to keep others from being enslaved. Right? That's the big message of the Exodus is anytime you look back and you see other people in your situation, your job, you have now been chosen to get them out that, you know, part of the chosenness, but that says, that gives voice to our need to keep others from being enslaved. And he says, We need to come out of Egypt in order to celebrate creation. And celebrating creation brings us out of Egypt again.
Wow.
I think that that is a little bit of genius right there. We need to come out of Egypt in order to celebrate creation, and celebrating creation brings us out of Egypt again.
Amen.
Amen to that.
And with that, we'll be right back.
Welcome back, everyone. You might have noticed that we haven't actually talked about the brachot, the blessings of Kiddush. There are a few. We start with and this is the part that like all of the preschoolers know by heart and sang, Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, borei p’ri hagafen, which is the blessing over wine. Which, before we even go any further begs the question, why are we using wine for this blessing, doesn't say anything about wine. There are no grapes in this blessing. Why wine here? Or grape juice?
Hmm, I wish I had a smart answer to that. I really wish I had a smart answer to that. I only know one Jewish folk saying and it may even go back to Talmudic days, I have no idea. But there's a saying that says that when the wine goes in, the truth comes out.
Yes.
And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I know it's honest. And there's a completion of a cycle in there. But there's a relaxation in the wine, there is a celebratory nature, you know, we say Oneg Shabbat and, and add joy, to, to be vibing, perhaps, from time to time. For many people, that's not the case.
Right.
But in a general sense of, of celebration and joy and sweetness.
Yeah, that's why it's important. Make sure if you're doing Shabbat or you're planning a kiddish for your synagogue, always have a non alcoholic option.
Amen.
Very important.
It is!
Yeah, I grew up learning that wine was connected to joy. And that one of the reasons there's a tradition in the actual doing of Kiddush, which we still haven't talked about either, of letting the wine overflow of using a special cup, a Kiddush cup, and letting the wine overflow like we want the joy to overflow on the Shabbat. I also remember learning in a liturgy class at JTS with the amazing Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, and maybe I should have just reached out to her, that there is a category of in Jewish ritual life that are said over a cup of wine. It's what, what are the other ones? Birkat Hamazon, actually, is often said over a cup of wine, Sheva Brachot for a wedding are said over a cup of wine. So that's why kiddish is a part of that. And they have a special name these blessings that you say over wine, and I don't remember what it is. So, listeners. Write to us at podcast@lightlab.co. And remind me because I would like to write, because as we'll see in the in the bracha that ends it, right. We're using the wind really as a conduit. This is the other thing that I love. The line is like a conductor in a cycle of hours. It allows time to move, it allows time to open, but it's not actually the thing itself that we are blessing, right? Jim Croach, if I could save time in a bottle, and we can't put time in a bottle and we can't put it in a Kiddush cup. So we use wine instead. But what we're actually blessing is time, right? We say borei pri hagafen and then we say another blessing that is very, very long. Right? Baruch atah, there are actually three blessings in kiddush, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav, that part goes on a very, very, very, very long time. It reminds me of Ma’ariv actually, where we say asher bidvaro ma'ariv aravim, like that is a very long run on sentence. But it uses the poetic structure of inclusive to which I learned from friend of the pod, Rabbi Reuven Kimmelman, where the beginning and the end, our book ends around the same theme and we've talked about this before that there's a full six word blessing formula at the beinning, then there's the three word version at the end, Baruch Atah. And what are we doing? Mekadesh HaShabbat.
And at that the beginning of that paragraph is not just Baruch atah Adonai borei pri hagafen. Often it has that praise, asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav. This is an active blessing, as opposed to one that is purely gratitude, which is borei pri hagafen. But now the fact that it says, we'll give you the first one. And we'll give you the first one because you can say borei pri hagafen anytime, which we'll get to in a second. But please, folks, listen to the second paragraph because you have a role in this. And I like that very much, the reminder of, you're the one who needs to be doing the remembering and setting it apart. And being intentional about what you're going to take from it when Havdallah comes, and understanding that it's a gift and anything you add add to the list of you we have a role in this. That doesn't necessarily just happen by itself.
Right. You asked the question at the beginning, which I think is really important to consider. Is it Shabbat whether you do anything or not? Right? Yes, in one way, it's going to be Shabbat an hour before sunset on Friday night, till three stars in the sky on Saturday night. It's Yom Shabbat no matter what you do. And yet, it doesn't actually become Shabbat until we say, by saying your blessing Holy One is making Shabbat holy, we are mirroring that blessing by choosing to make Shabbat holy ourselves through the saying of Kiddish.
Yes, by mekadesh-ing it. Yes, as it were. I think it's important. And it is I am I'm noticing and remembering now, every single day is just a number. Right?
Yeah.
You know, yom hashlishi, yom revi'i, yom chamishi, yom shishi, Shabbat has a name. I mean, it is yom hashvi'i. But that's not the name of the day.
Right.
So, so we give Yom Hashvi'i the name Shabbat, but that doesn't make it mekadesh.
Right.
Just the name. The mekadesh is our job.
Yeah, we have to actively choose to do it. And that looks different for everybody in, to separate Shabbat, What is something you do on Shabbat that you don't do any other week? Going out of your way to make Shabbat holy, I think sometimes we get caught up in well, you know, doing all of the zachor all of the shamor remembering all of the positive commandments and not doing the negative commandments. But maybe even just starting smaller than that. What can you do to set aside to make Shabbat feel different?
I couldn't, when I was in high school I was in the marching band, the flute player. And all of our football games were on Friday nights. And I am the youngest of three and all three of us went through that marching band Friday night football game. And my parents said, go for it. But everybody has to be on Friday Night Dinner. And this idea of just be it in all week long. We eat bread all the time, we drink wine, we can drink wine anytime we like we can light candles every night if we want to. But the blessings that we stay and the preparation that we do, makes this wine and this bread and these candles different than me. And not different in the outside world but different in our hearts.
Different in our hearts. And you know I grew up you know, rabbis kid, we usually had people over for Shabbat dinner for out of hours, it was just full of joy. And I also remember with joy, the nights where we ordered pizza and watched a movie. Like that is also Shabbat, we are setting it aside. Interestingly, this idea you know, setting it aside do something special. It's kind of the flip side is something that I saw in this piece from Brachot which we'll link to it, is another classic argument between Beit Shamai and Beit Hillel, you know, l'shem shamayim, for the sake of heaven, they're arguing to figure out what makes the most sense. So, the question is which blessing should go first? Over the yayin over the wine or mekadesh haShabbat? Shammai says we do the sanctifying before wine because we're drinking the wine in honor of the day being sanctified. Also it's already technically Shabbat by the time you get to kiddish right? It's usually much later than an hour before sunset, another plate, you know, Lecha Dodi is also one of the touch points, like the candles bring in Shabbat and Lecha Dodi brings in Shabbat. So by the time you get to Kiddish, it's already Shabbat. Hillel says the opposite. Hillel says that the wine should go first., and he gives a couple of reasons as well. The first is because the wine causes the mekadesh blessing, which is interesting, like it is the thing we are saying the blessing over. But the other reason is that, and this isn't necessarily true in our day, right? He says the blessing over wine is said more often than mekadesh haShabbat. Now, when I drink a glass of wine, I usually don't say borei pri hagafen because I think my brain has associated so much with Shabbat but like I could, I could say that is the blessing to be sent over a glass of wine. In this in this piece from the Talmud, when something frequent and something infrequent clash, the frequent practice takes precedence, right? The thing that happens more consistently goes first. Like what does this teach us about holiness and time, right? The same reason that when Shabbat and a holiday overlap, Shabbat takes precedence. There are things that we don't do. We don't shake the lulav on Shabbat. We don't say you know, if Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah fall at the same time, we don't blow shofar, we don't say Avinu Malkeinu, like the thing that happens with more consistency and more frequency actually takes precedence.
I'm thinking about all the people who either, because of the ritual practice, every time they drink wine, they're going to say borei pri hagafen, because that's like you say, that's what you do. And that addition of, you know, that's habit, that's routine. To me, it feels like, and I need to, I need the mekadesh to come next, so I remember that while I always say borei pri hagafen, every single afternoon when I have a tea time whatever class or either whatever. I always say borei pri hagafen. This borei pri hagafen is different. And now I'm going to tell you why. And then we go into the full paragraph of Kiddish. I just think that it it helps me when you were saying, well, we've already lit candles we've already sung the Lecha Dodi perhaps, just going deeper and deeper into this sea, this immersion into Shabbat really, and you can do all the things that like you saying that you normally do, perhaps, but you're doing it differently. There's just a little bit of a perspective change here.
I love first of all, the image of like wading into Shabbat, like walking slowly into the ocean. Oh my gosh, I like have chills. That's so beautiful. I think the other reason we make it different from like drinking a glass of wine at the end of a busy workday is the ritual around it. Just to say a couple of things about that. There are traditions that everybody stands during kiddish, there are tradition to sit during kiddush, there are traditions to stand for the sake of Kiddush, and then sit and then drink. I don't know what what your different customs are, Ellen, anything?
Well, my earliest memories, and certainly all my growing up melodies were sitting around the dinner table. And then when I lead, communal worship, quite often on a Friday evening, the congregation stands. Sometimes it's right connected to candles at the beginning in a communal setting. And sometimes it's the very end of the evening, right before everybody goes home. And again, you know, then some people are home, some people can be driving home and some people are going to be cooking dinner and some people are, you know, eating whatever they put in the hot pot before Shabbat. And it's you know, and to each their own at that moment. But we have the, the change the option, I'm looking at our notes and I would love because this is something I learned as an adult, to talk about, when do you say l'chaim?
When do we say L'chaim? I do want to say one more thing, I know we're going backwards. But we did it, the kiddush is included in the Friday night liturgy, and like, what that means and where to do it and bringing a home ritual into the synagogue when so many of them have gone the other way. But anyway, after paragraph one, so, asher bara elohim la'asot, savri, which is it's also changing back into major, when the, when the beginning might not be and some means, because I didn't really know what it meant, it said in A Day Apart, Do I have permission to do this on your behalf? Which, it's also said sometimes before, before challah, right? Whenever, you know one person is usually leaving the kiddush, often people will join in, maybe like a third or two thirds of the way. But in some traditions is really just one person saying the whole thing. And savri is like, can I say this on your behalf and the way we respond often, and again, I don't know when this developed as a custom, but that everyone says, l'chaim! To life! To say, Yeah, sure, go ahead. You can do it on my account. But it's really kind of nice. Instead of saying amen, we say l'chaim, which is a cheers. Like, what does it mean to look at kiddush as a toast, which I hadn't even really thought of. Why are we toasting in this moment and how that l'chaim kind of brings us all together.
Beautiful, and I learned the phrase, and this was really fairly recently in my life that I learned this at all, I learned the phrase savri maranan v'chaverai, with the permission of my teachers, of all the teachers, the rabbis the in the room, v'chaveri, and my friends. With your permission are going to, and they say exactly like you said, it's a toast, raise your cups, and the tradition also at the end of the kiddish, I know many people and I'm one of them who for that last baruch atah adonai raises the cup up in the air at that point, and a whole other episode about where your hands are on the kiddish cup when you do that. That is like New Year's Eve come in every Friday night, you know now, l'chaim. And in the morning, too, we you know, we're talking about Friday night kiddish at the moment, but in the morning, the preamble is of the v'shamru, and then into the just the Borei pri hagafen. And that's same savri occurs after the end of v'shamru before you start the Borei pri hagafen, you agian ask permission of the folks assembled to say this on their behalf.
Yeah, just how powerful that is that you're not just saying it for yourself. You really are actually shaliach tzibur in this moment and a representative of the community and everyone who's there. Yeah, a toast to time.
A toast to time. There you go. And it's not so far after January 1 that we're recording this.
That's true!
It is, we're recording this in the first week of January. And so maybe perhaps that's why we're into the whole idea of toasting and lifting a glass to time.
To time!
To time! And it's nice when it happens more than once a year that we remember what a gift it is altogether and how intentional we can be about it.
Amen. And with that, we'll be right back.
Welcome back everybody. What you just heard was a snippet of traditional kiddish, it's certainly the melody that I grew up with. My my little bit of research has attributed that to Samuel Adler. Do you know when about that was written?
I did not but we're gonna look that one up and put it in the show notes and everything. It's a it's a quick Google search which I have not done yet.
I have, I couldn't find it. So we'll either find it or listeners you can tell us.
We'll find it. As long as you don't come and take away my cantorial ordination, because I can't tell when Sam Adler wrote the kiddish.
Never! It's it's just you know, it's again one of those melodies that I've heard so many times that I can forget how beautiful it is.
Can you go yom techila, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there you go.
Zecher litziyat, it's actually like very complex. There's, there's a lot of moving pieces to this melody.
Yeah. A lot of majesty in it, those major sounds.
Yeah, yeah, very much we're heralding the arrival of Shabbat. Really the only other melody for Kiddush that I could think of was by the Broadway songwriter Kurt Weill, which was commissioned in the 1940s by my, was going to say, Alma Mater, my former place of employment, Park Avenue Synagogue. And it said, we'll put a link to the YouTube video, it says that it was like really the first liturgical piece to be set to American style music like Porgy and Bess musical theater.
Specifically jazz.
Yeah.
It's it's jazz, and we need to, you know, give credit to that.
Yeah, let's play a little bit of that right now.
Ellen, you brought us some some melodies that I've never heard.
Well, oddly enough, two of my favorite melodies associated with kiddish are in the first half of the kiddish, inm the Vayechulu passage from Torah. I Have To Sing has a beautiful version of Vayechulu, and you can find it on his CD, Wasting Time with Harry Davidowitz. And there is a recording that we can share a link in the in the show notes. And it's very, I think, gives a lot of time for contemplation, really settling into the day. And then most people don't know that Craig Taubman has a melody for Vayechulu, it's way old. And it's precisely the opposite of what Danny Maseng's done, it's very joyous and, and we really dig into it, and we'll again put a link in the show notes, but it's vayechulu vayechulu hashamyim veha'aretz v'chol tzeva'am, and there's a buoyancy to it, and I've always really appreciated both of those. I mentioned to you Eliana, before we started recording this morning that I didn't grow up with that whole first half, we did borei pri hagafen. And there's so much beauty in what I keep calling the preamble. And I'm always reminded in Judaism, the preparation for something for me, is where I find a lot of the richness leading up to the act itself. I love that about Judaism, we prepare for everything.
Amen, Amen. And with that, we'll be right back.
Welcome back everyone. Just as our cup overflows our time overflows over the hour mark but I could stay swimming in this beautiful river of Shabbat, in the, with you, Ellen. I, the time machine, the toast, all of the things that Kiddush has the power to do. So let's end with a little practice as we like to do. So. I'd love to share what I'll often say as a kavannah before our Kiddush, but we can start. If we are in a place where we are able by finding a position that is comfortable yet engaged, bringing our awareness to where we are connected to the earth through our feet or through our seat. Maybe you want to roll your shoulders back, relax your shoulders away from your ears, unclench your jaw, soften your face. And perhaps you'd like to start noticing your breath in, and out. Breathing in to lift and breathing out to ground. Taking a moment to mark whatever time you're listening to this as sacred time. We isolate to integrate. We set something aside so that we can be in it fully and bring that fullness into the rest of our lives. Cosi revaaya, as we say in the Psalms, myy cup overflows, that wine's spilling over the side of the kiddish cup, out cannot be contained. What do you hope overflows from this moment into the rest of your life? What would you like to overflow from your Shabbat into the rest of the week? You can say to yourself or out loud what is something that you need more of that we need more of? That can overflow from this cup of blessing, maybe active Kiddush. Connect us to creation, to Exodu, to the World to Come, that we know can be. Amen,
Amen.
Amen. I'll say, wine tastes better with a bunch of blessings in it. Really when you lead Kiddush beforehand, you can have people call out what they're hoping for. It's a great way to bring people into the moment and I'm so grateful to have spent this many series of moments with you, Ellen, what an absolute honor and joy.
Oh man, I've been waiting because all for months now you've been saying just wait till we get to kiddish I love kiddish, and now I love kiddish even more than I did before because of all the gifts that you bring to it, Eliana.
Same! I don't know how I could but I do. We always learn so much. This is the best.
Amen. Well till next time. Thanks so much for having me again today.
My gosh. Thank you so much. Ellen, thank you so much for listening. Thank you to our producer Rachel Kaplan and our editor Christy Dodge, and our show noter extraordinaire, podcast developer Yaffa Englander. You can find very, very detailed show notes, a reminder again, friend, all of the texts and the people and the melodies, and the everything, they're in the show notes, they are for you go and study as they say. Go and learn at light lab.co. Follow us on socials at the light.lab, and may you have a blessed time whenever you are, and we'll see you again soon.
