Community Shabbat Welcome V

 

A Rejoicing in the Joy of the Shabbat

 

Song:                        Ma ya-feh hayom, Shabbat shalom (2x)

 

All:       We gather together to welcome in the shabbat eve.

 

Leader:                        Shma Yisroel, Ha-olarn avo-tenu, ha-olarn e-chad.

Hear, oh Israel, the World of our Ancestors, the World is One.

 

All:                        Shma, Yisroel, Ha-olarn avo-tenu, Ha-olarn echad.

 

All:      Let us gather together to welcome in the peace of the Sabbath.

May it be a time of complete harmony between ourselves and nature, for the sabbath symbolizes a state of union between human and nature and between ourselves and all others.

 

Reader:                        We halt in our work, "free from the chains of time. Rest in the sense of the traditional

Sabbath concept is quite different from 'rest' being defined as not working, or not making an effort,  just as 'peace'- shalom - in the prophetic tradition is more than merely the absence of war; it expresses harmony. wholeness. On Sabbath, [a person] ceases completely to be an animal whose main occupation is to fight for survival and to sustain biological life. On Sabbath, [we] are fully [human], with no task other than to be human."

Erich Fromm

 

Leader:                        We call in the Shabbat for a world of peace; Shabbat comes to bring us a time of

peacefulness ... to connect us to our earth.

 

Candlelighting

 

All:     We welcome the Shabbat spirit...

Come unto us, so that we may be at rest with ourselves...

Help us to slow down, to touch the world within.

 

Reader: The images of Shabbat are those of the family at home: food and drink, candles, singing,

rest from work and the week. In the words of Isaiah: "the whole earth is at rest, and is

quiet." The home is our refuge, our security, a boundary between us and the world, and yet the world pulse beats just beyond our door.

 

All:            Shabbat is a break, and a boundary, between us and the rest of the week. It celebrates our freedom to step out of space and time into a special heightened awareness of what we periodically need: inner peace, a feeling of being "at home" with ourselves, and a sense of belonging within a family or community. We need a feeling of community - in the book of Exodus the punishment for violating Shabbat is "that the soul shall be cut off from among its people." - to be thrown out of the nest.

 

Leader:                   How goodly and pleasant it is to be wrapped in the light of Shabbat

Hine ma tov u'ma nayim Phit-atef baor shel shabbat.

In this time apart from the week, from the headlong tumult of the days before

Let us take strength in ourselves and our friends in the midst of our fellowship.