Reclaiming our profound identity on Shabbat
November 21, 2008
Shabbat
(6 comments)
by Dr. Carol Ochs, Adjunct Professor of Jewish Religious Thought
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion - New York
Excerpted from Dr. Ochs' keynote address at the Union's Shabbat Symposium, January 2007
Why keep the Sabbath? Because it is commanded? That really doesn't sit well with Reform Jews. Because it is traditional? Well, then, are we talking about a museum or a living faith? Because it gives us community? That's good, but not good enough.
 I think Shabbat is about our relationship to God. We don't know who we are, we don't know who God is, and we are invited to be still and know that I am God. One of the things that has kept the Jewish people from falling into the bitterness of other groups that have been exiled or enslaved or treated badly over 2,000 years is that once a week they say, "I am not what they are calling me. I am a person in relationship to God." They bathe themselves in this identity and it inoculates them against less glorious names.
We still don't know who we are. We are still enslaved. We think we are our job, so that when we are unemployed, we want to disappear. We think we are the tasks we have to perform for other people. Once a week, we are given a chance to take on, whole, a different identity.
I used to teach comparative religion at Simmons College in Boston, which is a militantly secular school. They said if the calendar worked that way they would be open on Christmas. And the students loved Comparative Religion, except when they got to their own faith. Then they didn't want to hear anything because they had learned their faith as a child and it was a childish faith. With each faith that we studied, I made them keep a practice. So that when we studied Hinduism we learned how to meditate. So when we got to Judaism I said, "I want you to keep Shabbat." And the Jewish students started screaming and the others said, "What does that mean?" I said, "For twenty-five hours, you belong to yourself and God. You don't do your homework anyway, but at least you won't feel guilty about it."
They came in the following Monday and the non-Jewish students could not get over the experience, that they could actually choose to spend the time with themselves or with those people who valued them. They could take a walk, they could look at the world and not feel a sense of obligation to other people. Now that is not the whole of Shabbat. We want to talk about community, too. But the idea that we have a profound identity that we have to reclaim once a week I think is terribly important.
Dr. Carol Ochs
Adjunct Professor of Jewish Religious Thought
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion - New York
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"The Jewish students started screaming."
Your story about your students really rings true to me. So many Jews have a false sense of familiarity with Jewish piety, and assume that everything alien must somehow be deeper and more spiritual.
What is the best way for liberal Jewish to reclaim the Sabbath day? I do think Rabbi Yoffie was right in focusing on that as a key challenge.
I think the key thing is that we are not doing things for the sake of other days or other goals, but for their own sake on Shabbat. But what activities, and particularly activities we can do communally, I don't think is a solved problem. They need to be activities that are spiritually meaningful, and for most, as Steven Cohen has documented, that is not the prayer service.