Category: Shabbat Shalom

Shabbat and a Hamilton Hanukkah

This Shabbat, Shabbat Mevarchim, we celebrate and bless the start of the new month of Tevet, which starts next week. And at the end of Shabbat, the Havdalah candle will make way for the Hanukkah candles. The days are now getting longer. Light is entering from everywhere.

Leonard Cohen, z”l, wrote in his poem song, Anthem, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Although each of us has cracks, that gives each of us the chance to let the light in.

This Shabbat and this Hanukkah, embrace both joy and hope.

Enjoy this wonderful Hanukah music as Six13 and the Maccabeats go head to head.

Shabbat Shalom

 

A Hanukkah throwdown!

 

Shabbat Shalom

 

Ana Becoach, or Ana Becoaj, is a Kabbalistic prayer invoking the power of the Divine Name.  The prayer is seven lines of six words each, the first letter of each word spelling the 42 letter name of the Almighty.  Written in the  second century by the Kabbalist Rabbi Nehonia.  It is traditionally sung before Lecha Dodi during Kabbalat Shabbat.

The phrase “untie the knot” may refer to exile in both its physical and spiritual sense.  As we enter Shabbat we hope to begin experiencing its expansiveness.  The plea reflects the mystical view that the forces of judgment, constriction, and negativity should not have power or authority on Shabbat. ( Siddur Lev Shalem, p. 22)

Shabbat Shalom

Shabbat Shalom

 

We start Kabbalat Shabbat with the song Yedid Nefesh, a piyut (poem) dating to the 16th Century, attributed to Eleazar Azkiri as a love song to God.   “You who loves my soul”.  I share the first and Fifth verses of the translation by Reb Zalman Schacter Shlomi z”l  (Shared by the Open Siddur Project):

You who love my soul
Compassion’s gentle source,
Take my disposition and shape it to Your will.
Like a darting deer, I will flee to You.
Before Your glorious Presence Humbly, I do bow.
Let Your sweet love
Delight me with its thrill
Because no other dainty
Will my hunger still.

Help, my Lover, spread
Your canopy of peace.
Enfold all human beings
Give all pain surcease.
Your presence on this earth plane
Do make known to us
And we shall respond then
With song and with dance.
Rush, my love, be quick,
The time for love is now,
Let Your gentle favor
Grace us as of old…

Shabbat Shalom

Shabbat Shalom on a special Shabbat

 Shabbat gefilte

This Shabbat is a specially designated Shabbat. On the Jewish calendar it is Shabbat Mevorach, the Shabbat preceding Rosh Chodesh. For American Jews this is also Shabbat Gefilte (stuffed), the Shabbat after Thanksgiving.

Last night Naomi and I had the great joy of being with my sister’s family and friends. The company was wonderful; I do not get to see her or her great family nearly enough and her friends were lovely. We gathered around a festive table and feasted on all kinds of delicious food. Great conversation great food. It was a Thanksgiving filled with blessings.

Today I am hitting the exercise room hard. And tonight I will welcome Shabbat. I hope that each of you were able to have a meaningful Thanksgiving.  Wishing everyone Shabbat Shalom.

Shabbat Shalom-

This past week we lost an extraordinary poet and musician, Leonard Cohen.  Let us welcome this Shabbat with his incomparable “Hallelujah” The beautiful melody is joined with Lecha Dodi and performed by the Maccabeats.

Zichrono Livracha- thank you for your gifts to us, may your memory be a blessing and an inspiration.

Canadian singer and poet Leonard Cohen is pictured on January 16, 2012 in Paris. Leonard Cohen's new album "Old Ideas" will be released in France on January 30. AFP PHOTO / JOEL SAGET (Photo credit should read JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images)
Leonard Cohen (JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images)

Shabbat Shalom

Daylight Savings Shabbat

Persistence of Memory-Dali
Persistence of Memory-Dali

We turn back the clock this weekend. The extra one hour of sleep isn’t such a big deal, I thought I would be much more excited if we were turning it back by about 20 years. But that is not the case. In fact, trading the past twenty years for the experiences during that time is not something I would do. I like who I have been becoming (I am still a work in progress) and the past twenty years have been an integral part of getting here.

Without those twenty, I likely would not be a rabbi nor would I be married to my wife Naomi, to name just two wonderful things that help define me now. The period was not without struggle and real challenges in all aspects of life, but these challenges also helped to shape me into the person that I am today. Today, I wish perhaps that the ground was not so far away when I drop things, or my arms did not have to be so much longer to read things, or that there was more hair to comb. But the blessings I enjoy I wouldn’t trade for any of those (although the hair makes me briefly pause).

So I come to this Shabbat with a sense of gratitude for what I have and I will use that extra hour to catch up on some sleep after a long workweek and a Saturday night spent with my wife.

Shabbat Shalom!