I look forward to Kabbalat Shabbat. I like to be right here, at sundown, as day evens out to the mysterious and usually comforting dark of night.

Because for me, it is in these quiet, evening moments that our congregation shines. We're not a neon shul, all flash and dash. In the intimate moments of teaching, of reaching out to each other, of prayer, B'nei Yisrael shines with the luster of pearls.

The seeds for my comments tonight were planted last spring in the Shavuot Tikkun conducted by our rabbi and cantor. As you remember, we studied various commentary dealing with the mitzvot of communal prayer and Shabbat observance.

Rabbi Hoffman presented this lesson from Mechilta Yitro. "'Six days you will labor and do all your work'" (Exodus 20:9). But is it possible for a person to do all his work in six days? Rather one should rest, as though all his work were finished."

Does the phrase "as though all work were finished" resonate for you as it does for me?

I don't know if it's possible for a person to do all of his work by Shabbat, but I do know for sure a person doesn't finish all of her work in six days.

Gender semantics aside for the moment, let's rest as though all of our work has been finished.

All week, but especially on Friday as Sabbath approaches, I run around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off, trying to finish up the work, hurrying, hurrying. But on Friday afternoon, I put that ole chicken in a pot, add an onion, and a carrot. While it simmers I attack last-minute tasks, set the table, and just before I light the candles, I take off my watch and step out of time as though my work were done. Enough, it is time to stop. And the blessing of it is, for me, it's not my decision. It's a mitzvah, a commandment, and that makes it easier for women, and other compulsives, whose work has no clear-cut beginning, middle, and end.

Candles, wine—blessings over both—the food, the children. And tomorrow morning when I wake up, I will leave my bed unmade. Notice the language is positive, the tone triumphant, rather than the guilt-tinged "I didn't make my bed." If anyone shakes his or her finger at my unmade bed, I can just say—"speak to HaShem." I leave my bed unmade, and later that Shabbat morning, when I put on my tallis, I kiss each end of the blessing on the atarah, and wrap the tallis around me. Mine is soft gray wool. I hold it over my head like a tent or a chupa, and it falls around my shoulders and down my back and I stand there. It's one of the few times the entire week when I'm really alone, for although my children are old enough that they no longer follow me into the bathroom, our poodle often does.

So I cherish that time enveloped in my tallis. There, in that pristine privacy, I can say those words that my heart desires and my soul requires. The air inside that tallis changes. First of all it's no longer air, it's breath. It warms with the energy of healing and the presence of the Shekinah. Wrapped in layers of warm breath and soft gray wool and when you emerge, who knows who you will have become.

Stop.

As though your work is done. Shabbat Shalom.

Making my bed is a subject for consideration that predates my observance of Shabbat and my wearing a tallis. If the seeds of my remarks about Shabbat rest were planted in Rabbi Hoffman's Shavuot tikkun, then the choice of leaving my bed unmade—of all the work I could choose to mention specifically—the choice of leaving my bed unmade has its roots in childhood, mine, and in my relationship with my mother, who taught me the domestic art of making one's bed (and lying in it). As part of our morning routine, before breakfast on school days, my sisters and I dressed and made our beds. When we grew a bit older, my older sister made my father's bed while he showered and dressed and I made my mother's bed, while she cooked our breakfast. I had a hard time getting up in the morning; I was always the last one up and dressed, the last one at the breakfast table, the last one out the door for school. You will not be surprised when I say I had a hard time making my bed, let alone my mother's, and I had a hard time with her because of it.

She was particular about domestic chores, that they be done well, and was clear that our doing them had nothing to do with getting allowance. My sisters and I learned to set the table and wash dishes, to make the beds, to dig weeds in the yard, because we would need to manage our own households one day and because each member of our family should help with the work of maintaining the family. We got an allowance to teach us how to manage money. Now, as a parent, these make sense to me, good sense. As a child and a middle daughter, the distinction mattered not at all and was, in fact, a lesson lost in my resentment of her expectations. If the beds were not made to her satisfaction, she pulled the blankets and sheets down and we had to do it again. And again. And sometimes again. My older sister learned quickly to make her assigned beds right and was done with it. On to scrambled eggs or oatmeal. I learned it was nigh on to impossible for me to give in to what seemed, to me, unreasonable and arbitrary rules. There were mornings I made that bed three and even four times—until she gave up because we would all be late for school. I was stubborn and a master of the art of leaving just enough wrinkles to satisfy us both.

At college I managed to find roommates who tolerated my side of the room. When I was on my own, I gloried in not making my bed at all, for days and even weeks at a time. So there! Until I had a very small studio apartment in Manhattan, where the bedroom, living room, study, and kitchen were one. I did make my bed then, out of necessity, choosing luxurious sheets as a palliative. I chose for the spread a shimmering ivory quilt. Once when I baby-sat for the daughter of a friend, she gazed admiringly at that quilt and asked, "Are you a movie star?" I confessed that I was.

When I married and had children, I found myself unconsciously adopting many of my mother's ways and consciously avoiding others, but by that time making the bed had ceased to be so fraught and burdensome. For that, I thank my friend's daughter. My own children have learned that a sure way to stir me up, ah my mother's sweet revenge, is to burrow under the covers of a freshly made bed. The nuances of bed making, you see, continue to accumulate.

It is easy to discern, without the help of an analyst, why my first decision about observing Shabbat would be to leave my bed unmade. I love it! Even as I write these words I feel intense pleasure. All week long as soon as I get up, good daughter that I am, I make the bed, now with kavanah, and on Shabbat, with kavanah, I rest.

One Sunday as we rushed to get out the door, the boys to Hebrew school, my husband and I to morning minyan, I realized that I had not made the bed. Oh well, I thought, just this once I won't. But habit and Lord knows what else were stronger, and I returned to the bedroom. As I folded the blanket under the mattress I had an insight so strong I stopped, the mattress lifted up, just stopped. The understanding was so powerful I couldn't move. Let me, if I may, share it with you. If I observe Shabbat, in part, by leaving my bed unmade, then making it all week is also part of that observance. All week long I make the bed so that leaving it unmade becomes significant, becomes holy, the fulfillment of a mitzvah. I leave my bed unmade and if anyone wags his or her finger at my unmade bed, I can just say—speak to HaShem.

There is a part of Kabbalat Shabbat service that talks about ennobling the workweek by resting on Shabbat. I had never understood it before, not really, I had never taken it into my consciousness by taking it into my body. Standing there with the mattress lifted and everyone shouting at me to hurry was a scene from my childhood with a twist. A saving twist of meaning, of reframing, a saving grace.

For at that moment when I fully comprehended the relationship between work and rest, between Shabbat rest and the other six days of the week, I felt a sensation throughout my body like standing in the shower with the water streaming all over. I experienced something rushing over me, and the hair on the back of my neck rose up on end.

I have felt that thoroughly shaken and joyous only a few times in my life, when I fell in love with my husband, when my sons were born, and when my husband surprised me by saying he wanted to convert to Judaism. (I fell in love all over again.) So I stood there with that uplifted—and uplifting—mattress. I understood, at a level of meaning below language, when I cease from my work on Shabbat, that "work" means more than earning a living and feeding the family. It means that all the days are lived in anticipation of Shabbat. My friend Ellen has since told me that in traditional Hebrew the days of the week are named by their distance from Shabbat. Sunday is Yom Reeshon l'Shabbat or one day after Shabbat, Monday is Yom Sheni l'Shabbat or two days after Shabbat, and Friday, oh Lordy, Friday is Yom Shishi l'Shabbat, only one day away.

Shabbat is the only day with her own name.

In the Sabbath morning service at the conclusion of the Amidah, the central prayer of the service, personal prayers may be added. The Siddur, or prayer book, offers an example and an alternative. On page 441, the alternative expresses the impact of Shabbat on the other days of the week. We read:

"Grant me the privilege of the liberating joy of Shabbat, the privilege of truly tasting the delight of Shabbat. May I be undisturbed by sadness, by sorrow, or by sighing during the holy hours of Shabbat. Fill Your servant's heart with joy, for to You, O Lord, I offer my entire being. Let me hear joy and jubilation. Help me to expand the dimensions of all Shabbat delights. Help me to extend the joy of Shabbat to the other days of the week, until I attain the goal of deep joy always. Show me the path of life, the full joy of Your Presence, the bliss of being close to You forever. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to You, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer."

B'nei Yisrael, Lord only knows, there are many other opportunities, in addition to leaving the bed unmade, that extend the joy of Shabbat to the other days of the week if we are alert to them. Lord only knows . . .

Since it is the place for personal prayer, I would add my thanks for finding myself in a community where I can express these personal thoughts and feelings in safety, for the opportunity of redeeming the task of making my bed from the morass of adolescent struggle and elevating it, transforming it in the mitzvah of Sabbath rest.

Dear God, give us strength that we may be generous, work that we may be strong, and may we, Your people Israel, always find our way to the path of life that You have shown us.

Shabbat shalom.

A poet by trade, Maxine Silverman has also written essays, fiction for children, and d'vrei Torah, commentary on the weekly Torah delivered during Shabbat morning services. "Leaving the Bed Unmade" was given during an evening Shabbat service. Her work has appeared as a chapbook of poetry (Survival Song) and in journals and anthologies. She teaches writing workshops, is a master gardener, sings in an interfaith community choir, and maintains long-distance friendships. Whatever the form or forum, she depends on the kavanah (prayerful intention) of tikkun olam (repairing the world). With her husband and two sons, she lives in the Hudson River Valley.




Copyright © 1999 by Maxine Silverman

From A Book of Women's Sermons, edited by the Rev. E. Lee Hancock (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999). Used by arrangement with Penguin Putnam, Inc.