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From the Bimah
June-July 2006

Summer is a time to slow down; a time filled with long, leisurely evenings enjoyed with friends and family spent in the warm, sun-baked outdoors. Summer is to the year what Shabbat is to the week. Summer occurs once a year and lasts roughly 12-15 weeks; Shabbat occurs every Saturday -- 52 times a year -- and lasts roughly 25 hours.

The four seasons of the year influence our disposition and environment. We can control and influence our own disposition and environment every day of course. All the more so, can we do it weekly beginning at sundown on Friday evening concluding some 50 minutes after sunset on Saturday.

Summer is a season that quantifies time; Shabbat is a day that elevates time.

Summer is an opportunity to redirect our energies and gain a perspective that comes only from ceasing, pulling back; so too with Shabbat.

The very word Shabbat means: to cease, pull back -- it does not mean to rest! Summer is a time for liberated, open feelings. Shabbat, when observed lovingly and openly, is a day of supreme liberation -- mental, spiritual, and even physical.

Summer is upon us, and in the words of the late great George Gershwin: "the living is easy..." (Porgy and Bess)

And in the words of the late, and even greater, Rabbi Abraham Heschel: "There are few ideas in the world of thought which contain so much spiritual power as the idea of Shabbat." (The Sabbath, page 101)

I wish all of you a peaceful and yes, invigorating summer. Much in the same way, I wish all of you a peaceful and yes, invigorating Shabbat every week in synagogue when our community gathers to observe that divinely commanded phenomenon.

Rabbi Michael Gotlieb