Friday Night z'l

The synagogue to which I belong is about to embark on a daring experiment. It’s called “Shabbat.” It appears that there are two related components to the experiment. The first is the shrinking in importance of Friday night services, until now the primary congregational worship event each week. The second is the revitalization of Saturday morning as, well, the primary weekly worship experience.

While I’m ambivalent about the change affecting Friday night, I believe that our rabbinic leadership should be given the scope to try this experiment. Depending on what happens to Saturday mornings, I could see myself becoming a semi-regular. In the short term, I’ll certainly miss the convenience and familiarity of Friday night as I’ve known it, but who knows? I don’t want to make my mind up before this all gets started.

There is one part of this changeover that concerns me and that has to do with the more general concept of Shabbat itself. The implicit assumption in the change seems to be that Reform Jews should observe the sabbath in a more traditional Jewish way. If this means giving up the routines I’ve established on Saturdays throughout my adult life, I’m not sure that I see the point. I understand that according to tradition shabbat is supposed to be a day of rest, withdrawal from the hubbub of daily life and reflection. But what if these values don’t appeal to me? What if my best way of relaxing is to do errands, coach little league, spend money in the neighborhood and enjoy my time away from the daily grind in my own way?I don’t want to be made to feel guilty that my own routines don’t fit the strict definition of the Jewish sabbath. Indeed, to feel that way would defeat the purpose of the weekend for me and cause me to feel resentment, not the kind of contentment that shabbat is supposed to engender.

We all find our Buberian moments in our own ways, and some of my favorite ones would have conflicted with Saturday morning services, whether it was teaching my son to throw a fastball in the park or getting a haircut at the Park Slope Barber Shop. These activities may seem mundane to some, but that’s the thing about a Buberian moment. You don’t know where you’re going to find it. It’s a very personal thing.

I don’t expect anyone to tell me that I’m doing the wrong thing by enjoying Saturday as I see fit. Nobody is going to be that heavy handed. Yet, a judgment about the worth of my kind of weekend activities also seems to be implicit in our remodeling of shabbat. The obvious implication is that one is supposed to be in Temple Saturday morning and involved in only certain kind of activities the rest of the day. There is an additional implication that we reformers have been shamming all these years by trying to cram our sabbath obligations into Friday night. I don’t feel I’ve been shamming.