One of my favorite memories from childhood is helping my mom set the table for holiday meals. Thanksgiving, Passover, and Rosh Hashanah particularly come to mind. I was the youngest child, and whether it was because my older brothers were teenagers off doing what teenagers do, or because I was just naturally more interested in setting the table, somehow I was always the one who wound up helping put out the plates, get the silverware just so (knives and spoons on the right, forks on the left, napkins underneath them), get the glasses and the kiddush cups and challah board in the right places. If my other professional aspirations didn’t work out, my mom made sure I could make it working in a restaurant.
But setting the table is not just about aesthetics. It’s really about preparation. Getting ready for something. And while holidays provide a particularly memorable opportunity for preparation, Judaism provides us with a weekly holiday—and a weekly opportunity to receive the gifts of preparing for it. That holiday, of course, is Shabbat, and in this fifth episode of our miniseries on Shabbat rituals, we’re going to talk about the ritual of preparing for it.
I already talked about the significance of preparation a little bit in our third episode, the one about challah and food. Because one of the main commandments of Shabbat is not to cook, traditional Shabbat observance kind of demands advance planning. As the Talmud says, one who prepares for Shabbat has food to eat on Shabbat.
But it’s not just a knock-on effect. With Shabbat as kind of the center or anchor of Jewish time, the rest of Jewish time is kind of forced to orient itself around it. For instance, I travel a lot for work. But I don’t travel on Shabbat. So when I’m planning a trip, I’m forced to be aware of when I’m flying—since I don’t really want to spend Shabbat at the airport. I thus really try to avoid traveling on Fridays, and especially in the winter, when Shabbat starts earlier.
Which leads to another aspect of Shabbat preparation—a reconnection with the natural rhythms of the world. Because I start Shabbat before sunset on Friday and end it after sunset on Saturday, I’ve become much more sensitive to the position of the sun in the sky. It’s easy for me to recognize the color of the clouds on a late afternoon, the feeling of a wintry Friday in January versus a sunny summery Friday in July. And in a world in which we spend so much time inside and on screens, that awareness and connection feels really healthy.
The Talmud says that the great ancient sage Shammai would spend his whole week being conscious of Shabbat. If he came across a particular delicacy, on Sunday, he would set it aside and say, “This is for Shabbat.” The Talmud doesn’t 100% advocate for this position, because it also quotes the other great ancient sage, Hillel, who said we should be grateful for every gift at every moment—and not only on Shabbat.
While I’m not one to knock Hillel the Elder (he’s probably my biggest rabbi crush, to be honest), for our purposes today I think we can lean into Shammai’s idea. We live in an age of nearly instant gratification. We can decide what we want to eat and it’s at our door via Uber in 20 minutes. We can order something from Amazon and it’s delivered quicker than a pizza. In a world like that, I think there’s something so important and valuable about the discipline we can cultivate through the practice of Shabbat—even during the workweek. By forcing ourselves to plan ahead, Shabbat helps us be less of a sack of urges and desires demanding to be fulfilled, and more mindful, intentional, thoughtful beings. In touch with our emotions, yes, but not serving at their whim.
There’s a basic, fundamental practice that I think can help us experience this regular awareness of Shabbat, even at lunchtime on a Wednesday. It’s actually a deep, deep part of Jewish tradition. And it’s so simple that it’s easy to overlook. It’s what we call the days of the week.
In Hebrew, the days of the week aren’t Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and so forth. They’re yom rishon, yom sheni, yom shlishi, yom rev’ii, yom chamishi, and yom shishi. Instead of Sunday, we say “the first day to Shabbat;” Instead of Monday we say “the second day to Shabbat,” and so on. The only day that has its own name is Day 7, Shabbat itself. All the other days lead to it. And when we say their Jewish names, we’re doing a small but powerful act of preparing for Shabbat.
So this week, I’d like to invite you to practice saying a kind of mantra. Find a moment during the day when you can be quiet, take a breath, and maybe close your eyes. Settle in for a moment, and then say out loud, Today is the first or second or whatever day to Shabbat. If you want to say it in Hebrew, go ahead: Hayom yom shlishi l’Shabbat, for instance, on Tuesday. (We’ll put the appropriate words for each day in the show notes.)
Say that mantra slowly, three times. Notice what happens as you do. Perhaps more awareness of Shabbat, even on a day that isn’t Shabbat yet. Maybe a taste of it. Maybe a little calming of your inner drives and desires, a little more attunement to something deeper and more sacred.
What you’re doing is spiritually preparing for Shabbat. And that is as much a gift of Shabbat practice as anything else.
Shabbat shalom.