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Shabbat, Gratitude, and Dinosaurs

11/18/2022 01:59:42 PM

Nov18

Shabbat Shalom! As you know, this is our first Family Shabbat of the school year, and since many of our religious school families were not sure they could attend, I wanted to collect some thoughts from our students and their parents to still imbue this service with their presence. This Shabbat is also the reading of Parashat Chayei Sarah, and unknowingly our students and their parents reflected some of the same values of the parasha in their general thoughts about Shabbat and Gratitude.

Two Sundays ago, we held our first Family Breakfast and parent learning opportunity of the school year. I try to do these two or three times a year to keep parents engaged in their children’s religious school progress, and to give myself a chance to get to know them better. While the whole school and families had breakfast, we discussed ways to show gratitude, in keeping with our monthly Religious School theme. November is, unsurprisingly, Gratitude Month (December will be Light Month). We read a book called Hakarat HaTov, or Recognizing the Good, the Jewish concept of gratitude, and discuss how this shows up in our own lives. This coming Sunday, students will also put this value into action and write letters to military service people deployed far from home, thanking them for their service.

The thoughts on Hakarat HaTov and on Shabbat dovetailed into one another well. Students said that their favorite things about Shabbat was taking a break from the hectic week, relaxing with family, singing, having oneg, and especially eating challah. They shared that gratitude helped them keep perspective on their lives, remember that there is good and bad every day, and that sharing gratitude reminds others that kindness is worthwhile. We noticed that Shabbat offers a special opportunity to cultivate this attitude of gratitude. When we take that break from the hectic week, it is a time to reflect on what was good and bad in the past week, and turn toward further happiness and pride for our week to come. Also, we are grateful for our toy dinosaurs, and Shabbat is a good time to play with them, because we’re home from school and don’t even have religious school on Saturdays.

This week’s Torah portion does not mention either Shabbat or gratitude specifically (or toy dinosaurs), but it does show Rebecca’s kindness and patience being rewarded by a grateful servant of Abraham. The messenger knows that Rebecca is the right bride for Isaac because she not only gives him water to drink, but also all his camels. While he is waiting for his camels to finish drinking, he seems to be still unsure she is the one. Medieval Italian Rabbi Sforno says it’s because he needs to wait and see if she expects payment or whether she truly did it out of the kindness of her heart. Only when it becomes clear that she doesn’t expect any reward, then Abraham’s servant deems her truly worthy of the reward. Perhaps Rebecca finds the strength to keep drawing all that water from the well because she knows that she also has much in her life to be grateful for, and is happy to share with others. This scene certainly corroborates our students’ idea that gratitude inspires happiness and encourages others to respond in kind.

Back to our religious school breakfast: after everyone was done eating, students went to their regular classrooms, and parents stayed behind with me to do some trivia on Shabbat (where we learned that oneg does not in fact mean “cookies” but rather “delight” or “pleasure”), Thanksgiving (where we argued about where and when the first Thanksgiving was – me the New Englander against all you Virginians), and Jewish foods around the world (where we learned that cholent is a beef stew common for Ashkenazi Shabbat tables, and the inspiration for the invention of the crockpot). Then the conversation drifted to questions about Jewish thoughts on death and the afterlife, which was not a part of my plan for the morning, but just sort of happened. This too ended up fitting in with this week’s parasha as I organize the various thoughts that arose from that morning, because while “Chayei Sarah” means “The Life of Sarah” the opening verses are actually about the Death of Sarah. However, the Torah portion here does not elaborate in any way on what Abraham or chazal thinks happened to Sarah’s soul after her death. Only that it was important for her body to be buried on land Abraham paid for – so that his ownership was secure and her final resting place would remain safe – and that the land become the family plot for the generations that followed. Then Abraham quickly moves on to finding his son a wife to replace the role of Matriarch in their family.

This Shabbat, let us take the time to reflect on all that is good in our lives, and make a plan to share that gratitude with others in the week to come. May we express our thanks and share our bounty, and may we hug close our toy dinosaurs tonight. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

Fri, March 29 2024 19 Adar II 5784