The sages wondered why the phase “With all your heart” is misspelled on the Torah. The normal spelling would be לבך, lavcha – your heart. But in the Torah it is spelled לבבך, lavavcha, with an extra V sound.
“Why the extra letter?”, asked Rashi? To teach that you should love God with all the parts of your personality – with your good instinct and your evil instinct. But the Hebrew terms for the good instinct and the evil instinct are hard to define. Perhaps, a better translation is your instinct to be thankful for what you have and your instinct to make change.
“You shall love Adonai your God,” the Torah tells us “with all your love, with all of your moral outrage, and with all your ability to make change.” Those words have never been important as they are today. Two days of disastrous decisions by the Supreme Court have put our country at risk. Thousands will die because of the Court’s extremism.
I had expected the decision to come down today. After all, what could be crueler? The Supreme Court not only made a horrible decision. They announced it on a Friday – as Jews around the world are preparing for Shabbat. The reversal of Roe v. Wade is not only a denial of women’s rights. It is a denial of religious freedom for ever Jew.
In light of the decision, how can we find oneg shabbat, Sabbath joy? How can we find the hope and the strength to keep going?
Thirty years ago, there were a series of fire bombings of synagogues in the Sacramento – the area where I live. The fire bombings took place on a Friday morning. By the afternoon, the FBI issued a warning to the rabbis and congregational presidents in the Sacramento region: your lives may be in danger.
I was president of my synagogue at the time, and the words were chilling. As I walked out of the FBI briefing, I asked my rabbi a rhetorical question. “In a few hours, it will be Shabbas,” I said. “How are we going to find oneg?”
Somehow, we managed to find joy. We clung to our families, we clung to our loved ones, we clung to what we still had. And through our determination to find the joy of Shabbat, we were able to help our congregation.
“Six days you shall work”, says the Torah, “and the seventh day shall be a Shabbat to Adonai.” The verse from the Torah is not just about taking time off from our day jobs. Rest on Shabbat, the Torah is telling us. Take time to refuel. And then get back out there create a better world.
Cling to your loved ones tonight. Do you best to find joy. And then renew the fight for justice. Renew the fight for women’s rights.. This, too, is the pattern of Jewish time.
Shabbat Shalom.