Erev Shabbos 3/20/20 - Lecha Dodi Likrat Kalah (Come my Beloved to Greet the Bride)

It's early Friday morning. It is still dark out. For now, the house is quiet. Coffee is brewing and I have a quiet moment to spiritually breathe. It has been a long time since I have looked forward to Shabbat as much as I have this week.  It has been a trying, difficult week for the world. For me, I have conducted 9 funerals over the past 11 days. 9 different lives, 9 different narratives, 9 families grieving for the loss of a loved one. My wife, sensing that I needed to see or experience something happy, hopeful and life-affirming showed me a very unique wedding that happened "down south" on the Lawrence& Bathurst section of Toronto. A wedding, in this environment? Yet there it was. With neighbors standing on their porches, and cars lined up in the streets, there were perhaps 15 people outside, practicing social distancing  and parents walked their daughter down the sidewalk on to their driveway, there was a chuppa and there was a Chata. They stood there and a wedding ceremony took place. There it was a Kala (a bride)  walking towards her Chatan re-affirming a covenant.

Tonight, when I am davening Kabbalat Shabbat, and I begin singing  Lecha Dodi and welcome the Shabbat Kalah, the Shabbos Bride, I look forward to a wave of relief having arrived at a sacred moment. Certainly, it is a moment, a Shabbat that will be very different than what we are accustomed to. Nonetheless, the Shabbos bride will be with us for 25 hours and for that time, we have it within us to take a step back, to recharge ourselves: our souls, and our minds for one day as we prepare for this very different world. Everyone should have a Shabbat Shalom U'Mevorach - a Peaceful and Blessed Shabbat.
Peace,
Rav Yitz

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

4/5/20 Sunday: Normal? What Normal?

          Under normal circumstances, at the conclusion of Shabbat, I turn on my phone to check the scores of my favorite teams.  These are not normal times. Our family finished Havdalah and there were no sports, no favorite teams, no scores to check. In fact, I dreaded turning on my phone and the television. I knew that the first thing I was going to check, was the increasing number of infected, and the increased number of deaths from this plague. I looked in Toronto, and then New York and California. The number only seems to go up and go up faster.  After spending 15 minutes catching up on the news, not much of it too good,  I turned to my evening project. With Pesach beginning on Wednesday, my first task was Family Shlepper. It is my job to bring all the Pesach boxes from the basement up to the kitchen so my wife can begin the monumental task of making our kitchen kosher for Pesach as well as begin cooking. However, my task is the first task of this intricate chain of Pesach Kitchen
Read more

4/12/20 Sunday: Trying to Remember Afraid To Forget

          I am always amazed at how three days can be so exhausting: the first two days of Pesach and then Shabbat, three days of praying, eating and taking walks.  Now we have a couple of days until the last days of the Pesach which are also a Yom Tov. No, there are no more seders to prepare for, rather just Pesach food. One of the additions we make to the liturgy is the same addition we make when it is Rosh Chodesh and when we say Birkat HaMazon. We add the prayer Ya'Aleh v' Yavo . Throughout the prayer, the word V'Zichron appears throughout. Other forms of ZaChaR also appear including Zichroneinu and Zacharnu. Throughout the prayer, ask God to remember us. A few nights ago, when we sat at the Seder table, the Hagaddah reminded us to see ourselves as if we were slaves and we were the ones leaving Egypt. Well, in the narrative of Yetziat Mitzrayim,  we are told that God heard the cries of Bnei Yisroel and remembered his covenant with the patriarchs. In a sense, the proce
Read more

Rosh Chodesh: "Or ask for the moon and heaven too" (Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia - If I Had The World To Give)

          Well, today isn't just Thursday.  Today isn't only that we are heading towards our second Shabbat in this "new normal". Today (and tomorrow) is also Rosh Chodesh, it's the end of one month and the beginning of the new month, the month of Nissan. In case anyone had looked outside into the night sky, the moon and its light have been noticeably absent. Tonight and over the next several days we should begin to notice the moonlight. Normally I don't get too excited about Rosh Chodesh, but everything seems to have taken on the heightened meaning given the circumstances of our lives. Maybe a bit of boredom has set in. Maybe we are just looking for anything to reassure us that no matter how bad things are, Rosh Chodesh reminds us that the moon waxes and wanes. seasons change, and Pesach is in two weeks. Of course, when I finished davening and I joyfully wished her a Chodesh Tov. It's Nisan, It's two weeks until Pesach. It is the Zman Cheiruteinu, the
Read more