This weekend, November 7-8 (Torah portion Vayera), the "Shabbat Project" is expected to bring together a million Jews in Israel and millions more across 1,500 cities and 100 countries, in what organizers describe as "a spirit of joy and unity." Launched by South Africa's Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein and now in its twelfth year, the grassroots initiative encourages Jews worldwide to experience Shabbat together.
Here in Israel, coming together on Shabbat is more prevalent, powerful, and needed than ever. It is a core component of Israeli national healing after two years of searing war and several years of deep internal discord. Shabbat observance must be and increasingly is a source of renewed national and religious identity, and a unifying force in Israeli society, providing a sense of meaning and connection for a large majority of Israelis.
This reflects the multifaceted spiritual revolution underway in Israeli society especially among youth – a phenomenon that is finding expression in the arts and the army, and beyond. It is amazing to me that the words of all songs on the best-selling new album of Israel's most popular secular rock band, "HaDag HaNachash," are drawn from scripture or the siddur (prayer book)!
Most prominently, dozens of the Israeli hostages held barbarically by Hamas have returned to tradition. In their interviews and books, people like Adam Berger, Eitan Horn, Eli Sharabi, Matan Angrest, Omer Shem-Tov, Rom Braslavski, and Segev Kalfon relay how they found God in Gaza, or at least deep inspiration in Jewish heritage and religious rituals. Their stories seem to have inspired their families and friends to adopt Shabbat and other Jewish practices, too.
"In the chains of captivity, in the darkness of the Hamas dungeons, many hostages kept Shabbat – defiantly, tenderly, faithfully, while our heroic soldiers on the front lines marked Shabbat under fire, welcoming in Shabbat with full hearts," wrote Rabbi Goldstein in a press release this week in advance of "Shabbat Yisraelit" (the Israeli name for the Shabbat Project).
Ahad Ha'am indeed had it right when he quipped: "More than Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews."
Add that to the scenes this past Simchat Torah of survivors of the Nova Festival dancing in the Gaza envelope and in Tel Aviv with Torah scrolls – and you discover that the pintele Yid, the Jewish soul, still burns deep inside our individual and national consciousness.
There are fantastic organizations working in Israel to build on and reinforce this Jewish awakening such as Tzili Schneider's Kesher Yehudi, which over the past two years has added 3,000 pairs of chavrutot, religious-secular Torah study partners, to its people-building stable.
All this holds wonderful long-term potential for a broad Israeli identity upgrade, a move beyond a strict secular/religious binary towards widespread embrace of a continuum of Jewish identity and practice. It is an identity elevation that fuses age-old Jewish heritage with Zionist secularism to create a replenished and healthier Israeli nation; a nation with the roots and resilience to withstand all challenges.
THE REINVIGORATION of Jewish and Zionist identity underway in Israel must be embraced by Diaspora Jewry too since it is under assault by radical forces from without and self-annihilationist forces from within.
The election of the Islamist/Communist politician Zohran Mamdani in New York City – the world's largest Jewish city; and the discourse about "Israel-the-Genocide-Maker" of Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow – the city home to Canada's largest Jewish community, are only the latest stark reminders of a broad assault on Jews and Zionists.
Obviously, American and Canadian Jewish communal organizations (and their counterparts in Britain, France, Australia and elsewhere) need to fight back against antisemitism and anti-Zionism with all political tools available. So, yes to advocacy, yes to building political alliances, yes to interfaith and inter-communal relations work.
But Jews abroad must also dig deep. They must pour greater-than-ever effort into rediscovering and reinforcing their Jewish identities, into Jewish education and practice, into parochial schools and shuls, into Torah, tefilla, tallit and tefillin (Jewish law and prayer, with ritual talismans like prayer shawls and phylacteries).
Nothing short of a deep commitment to traditional Jewish ritual practice – with its personal strictures and many community boundary demands – is likely to lead to a revitalization of Jewish life abroad (and subsequently create a solid basis for recovery in Diaspora-Israel relations, too).
In my view, this requires not just occasional Temple attendance or once-yearly lighting of Chanukah candles, but true observance of Shabbat and dietary laws, daily devotion to prayer, holding fast to sacred family structures and to in-marriage, and most of all – a passion for studying Torah regularly.
This is the only historically proven formula for sustainable Jewish life, and this holds especially true today when Jewish identity is under frontal assault.
To successfully navigate the treacherous waters of today, we need Jews with no trembling knees, Jews who know who they are and what they stand for, Jews who are armed with the wisdom and the values handed down by our forefathers and refined throughout the Jewish ages.
SINCE WE'RE talking about Shabbat, it is crucial to digest a sophisticated understanding of Shabbat; to reflect on the deep meaning of Sabbath observance for modern man and the contemporary world.
Shabbat is not merely about the "joy of face-to-face conversation around the family Shabbat table," or the "spiritual nourishment of a shared meal," or the "glow of candlelight, heard laughter around the table, and fine food and wine," or the switching off of cellphones. (These are the sweet platitudes about Shabbat often mentioned in the media.)
Nor is Shabbat observance in our day and time primarily utilitarian. Despite what people think, Shabbat is not mainly about "resting" or "recharging" one's batteries so that one can go back "refreshed" to work on Sunday or Monday. Shabbat is not just a certain type of leisure time.
Rather, the Jewish concept of Shabbat is an attempt to teach man the proper balance between creative action (work) and contemplative restraint (passivity); between an obsessive drive to build, achieve and succeed that is the basis of Western civilization, and the ego-nullification and submissiveness of Eastern civilizations (as expressed, for example, in Zen Buddhism).
By observing the Sabbath, Jewish tradition teaches a careful oscillation between the two civilizational ideas; fashioning an idea of human creativity that integrates the salient features of each.
The Jerusalem scholar Rabbi Dr. Yitzhak Lifshitz has written that: "During the week, man creates worlds, as in the West; while on the Sabbath, his creative action gives way to contemplative restraint, as in the East." And both are necessary. "In the Jewish view, neither achievement nor passive unification with nature is seen as ideal. It is through the kind of creative activity that results from the combination of the two that man achieves great things, in imitation of the Creator. The Sabbath teaches about the rhythm of all true creativity, human and divine."
Thus, the prohibition on doing melacha (certain types of intentional workmanship) that is at the core of halacha (Jewish law) for Shabbat, is primarily spiritual. It is not meant just to institutionalize "downtime" or protect workers from the harsh demands of capitalism. It teaches us the basics of Jewish faith. It is theology about the share in Creation assigned to man by the Creator; and about the restraints on man's narcissism and compulsions that is critical to his well-being and that of the world.
Shabbat is also about dveikut or cleaving to G-d (and by extension also to family and to peoplehood). By imitating G-d's creation of the world over six days and then His "resting" on the seventh day, man can "adhere" or cling to a Divine message. That message – the centrality of creative drive circumscribed by moral and spiritual restraints – is what unifies us a Jewish civilization and a people.
In short, the Jewish People everywhere are sorely in need of much greater public and private Shabbat observance. Certainly, Israeli society is too aggressive, too arrogant and over-achieving, too materialistic, too fiercely ideological and even violent.
And so, we need to impose upon ourselves more humility and self-discipline. We need to create psychic vacuums that suspend our struggles and rivalries and allow for joint meditation on our commonalities and values. We need a void where Jews can come together and search for renewed shared meanings, to discuss and dream together.
We need the wide mental spaces and healing calm created by the Sabbath. We need the unifying potential embedded in G-d's great gift of Shabbat.
