Sabbath

"Sabbath time can be a revolutionary challenge to the violence of overwork, mindless accumulation, and the endless multiplication of desires, responsibilities, and accomplishments. Sabbath is a way of being in time where we remember who we are, remember what we know, and taste the gift of Spirit and eternity." — Wayne Muller

"Sabbath practice tills the compacted soil of our lives so that something new can grow. Without the Sabbath, there will be no future that we or our children would want to live in." — Bob Sabath

"We teach that even though we live in a society that wants to produce more and more, we are willing to stop being producers for 26 hours every week. This is a revolutionary stand in the face of a dominant culture that is runaway with the madness of over consumption and over production. When I turn off my computer on Sabbath evening, and put down my camera, and stop my business, and don't go to the stores, I make of my life a passionate statement that I am more than an addict to material productivity, however valuable." — Rabbi Marcia Prager

Marcia Prager serves as Rabbi of P'nai Or, an innovative Jewish renewal community in Philadelphia, as Director of Professional Development for Aleph, the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, designing programs of study leading to rabbinic ordination, and as faculty for the Jewish Renewal Life Center in Philadelphia, a year long leadership program in Jewish spirituality, community, and social change. Her recent book, The Path of Blessing, explores the roots of Jewish spirituality and practice.

Marcia and Jack are both involved with Jewish Renewal, a movement of people engaged in creating contemporary models of Jewish expression that speak to both intellect and heart, in forms which embrace the full inclusion of women and the divine feminine, and which facilitate the deep healing of our relationships with each other and the earth. Their newest project involves creating innovative tools for exploring Jewish prayer and spiritual practice.

Rabbi Prager graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, received her rabbinic ordination from the visionary founder of the Jewish Renewal Movement, holds a BA in cultural anthropology, and an MFA in photography and drawing from Pratt Institute, New York. She taught for five years as a member of the faculty of The International Center of Photography in New York City.

ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal: http://www.aleph.org
Rabbi Marcia Prager: http://www.rabbimarciaprager.homestead.com
Network of Jewish Renewal Communities: http://www.jewishrenewal.org
Jewish Renewal Life Center: http://www.jewishrenewallifecenter.org
P'nai Or Religious Fellowship: http://www.jewishrenewal.org/pnaior.htm
Rabbi Arthur Waskow's Shalom Center: http://www.shalomctr.org
Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community: http://www.rollingridge.net

Tonight is a time to catch our breath
Whatever we have been
doing,
making,
working,
creating,
Tonight is a time to catch our breath.

No matter how necessary our work,
how important to the world,
how urgent that we continue it —

No matter how joyful our work,
how fully and profoundly human —

No matter how flawed our work,
how urgent that we set it right —

No matter how hard we have worked to gather
our modest fame,
our honorable livelihood,
our reasonable power —

Tonight we pause to catch our breath.
Tonight we pause to share whatever we have gathered.

We need this.
Our planet needs Sabbath!
We need to make Sabbath as individuals,
as a people,
and as a human species gone mad with despoiling our world.

I do my most important work on Sabbath,
and that work is making Sabbath!