Week III - Rest

Rabbi Mahler writes:

I began my Yom Kippur morning sermon with the following….

“At various points in my childhood, I dreamed of being a private detective, a West Point cadet, a cowboy, a frogman, a designer of jet planes, rocket ships and cars, an astronaut, an ace pitcher throwing no-hitters and winning World Series game sevens for the New York Yankees, and in what will come as no surprise to many of you, a Rock ‘n’ Roll guitar star. The closest I came to realizing any of these dreams was when I was ten and pitched a no-hitter in summer day camp. I never dreamed of becoming a rabbi, but when I was five or six, I would thumb through my picture book of Bible stories and sometimes dream of becoming an angel.”

Toward the end of my Yom Kippur sermon, I said….

“I pray because it sustains my one and only childhood dream that has withstood the test of time, that has not vanished with the years but only grown more mature: to serve God and sing God’s praises like an angel: Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh. Judaism teaches us that the only difference between angels and humans is that we have free will. I pray because we have the free will to love God, which makes our love of God and God’s love of us more precious to God than the
angels’.”

Dr. Ron Wolfson’s marvelous little book, God’s To-Do List is subtitled 103 Ways to Be an Angel and Do God’s Work on Earth. Chapter 3 is entitled “Rest.” In it, Dr. Wolfson describes how we, like God, can and should rest. Angels always must do God’s bidding. When we rest as God rests, we become higher than the angels, such is the power of our day of rest, Shabbat. Dr. Wolfson concludes this chapter with items twenty-one through thirty on God’s To-Do List, all of them acts of blessings. Here I highlight three that seem so especially important today:

22. Put aside your unfinished business and leave the world as it is on the Sabbath.
26. Join your spiritual community at your place of worship on your day of rest.
28. Invite family and friends to share a Sabbath meal

In these times of economic uncertainty, the need to rest is all the more essential. We are human beings; we must stop being humans doing all the time. As the National Election approaches and the sense of American community is fractured by political factionalism, the need grows to identify with our Temple Emanuel community. This applies even more so to our homes, when we share Shabbat with our loved ones. On Shabbat, feeding the body with loved ones also feeds the soul.