The awesomeness that is Israeli Shabbat

For American Jews, Shabbat can be a tricky thing, particularly in the rural South where I grew up. Sure, a day of rest is a brilliant idea. The mind and body need the peace of pausing, and the soul will benefit from the inevitable reflection that comes with a full 24 hours of rest and davening. But in the US the weekend is Saturday and Sunday. And where I live, nothing is open on Sunday. This is less true now than when I was going up, but it is still a huge issue. Therefore, if you want to do anything specific that involves the outside world on your weekend (buy groceries, shop for clothing, handle errands) you really need to do it on Saturday. Combine that with the fact that every Sunday we went into Atlanta (an hour drive there and an hour drive back) for religious school, and you've got a weekend without much of a Sabbath rest.

My father makes Shabbat dinner every Friday night, complete with a fabulous homemade (and lately partly-whole wheat) challah and some sort of fabulous gourmet meal. We light Shabbat candles and bless the wine and the challah and share a meal together. It's an amazing cap to the week. But then Saturday becomes a day full of things that need to be done. Periodically there is some sort of pause or plan that is meant to honor Shabbat, but it doesn't really happen so much.

In Israel, this doesn't happen. The weekend is Friday and Saturday (not Saturday and Sunday). Shops start closing Friday afternoon. Saturday nothing is open except for a few convenience stores. Now admittedly, Friday night plenty is open in Tel-Aviv, and as my last post might suggest, we go out quite a bit. But Shabbat is for rest. I still handle money, but its the monit sherut (shared taxi) fare to go to the beach. I love this. It's enforced Shabbat--you have no business you can complete, so you might as well rest and relax. A quieted mind and a unstressed body, the stresses of everyday life removed--it's wonderful!

The opportunity for a genuine Shabbat is embraced here, even by secular Jews. While I am sure some people do work on Saturday (the convenience store men and monitim drivers obvious), it is not generally done. I like that in Israel one can observe the sabbath without having it be inherently observant from a religious imperative, its simply an aspect of Jewish culture in Israel.

Obviously, the Muslims don't work on Friday, and the Arab quarters are generally the area to go for places that are still open on Saturday. And this is my only hesitance about Shabbat and Israel, and it is not very strong. By having a nation-wide general observance that the sabbath is different day that should not be treated like the others, we limit the minority religions. This is the case in the US for us, and it is frustrating in many ways. But Israel is a Jewish country, and the US is technically not a Christian country, so it is less offensive to me here.

I'm going to go make a sandwich of chicken schnitzel leftovers (I make excellent schnitzel, which is a pleasant surprise) and then spend my day observing Shabbat with rest, if not strict religous observance.