Chaveai (My friends):
Anyone who has visited Adat Shalom on Shabbat knows that Shabbat morning services are the central gathering time for our community. We have structured ourselves so that our community members participate in large numbers each week. We have come to experience Shabbat morning as a time of study, contemplation, and musical worship. In the recent past, since we have come into our building, we have begun to create a Shabbat evening culture as well. Through our monthly family-friendly Friday night services, and our more adult-oriented monthly Shabbat Slam, we are beginning to find our way to our own Adat Shalom version of Shabbat eve.
Jewish tradition teaches that the 24-hour period of Shabbat has three main moods, based on the three temporal shifts from sundown to sundown. Friday night, the welcoming of the Sabbath, has a mood of graceful anticipation. We roll out the red carpet for the Shabbat bride by laying a beautiful table, filled with good food, surrounded by blessings. We light candles and make a blessing over wine and bread. We take stock of the gifts of children and close family in our lives. We enjoy the “first meal”, Shabbat dinner. In the Shabbat evening service, much of the music is in 3/4 or waltz time, as if we were dancing with the Shabbat queen herself.
The second mood is Shabbat morning, a time of lively gratitude. The morning liturgy follows the same basic structure as that of the weekdays, but with words which focus on appreciating what we do have, rather than petitioning for what we want. We take out the Torah and read and study, luxuriating in a more expansive sense of time. The liturgy in the morning service is the fullest of all three Shabbat services, giving full due to the themes of Divine Nature (Yotzer), Great Love (Ahavah Rabbah), Eternal Truth (Sh’ma and V’ahavta) and Freedom (Mi Chamocha). Musically speaking, the service is more energized, rhythmic and hearty. This too culminates in a feast, the “second meal”, the midday meal. (For Shabbat, breakfast doesn’t count.)
Finally, we come to the third mood, or face of Shabbat, Shabbat afternoon, or liturgically speaking, Shabbat Mincha. The word mincha itself means rest and in this third segment of Shabbat, the mood shifts to be more mellow, more quiet and even a little pensive, acknowledging that the Shabbat is coming to an end. Some of the melodies for mincha and the “third meal” are even a little mournful. The 23rd psalm is often recited on Shabbat afternoon, its placement here conscious of the famous line, “even though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I will not fear, because You are with me.” Even as we begin to turn our attention back to the workweek, we take a bit of Shabbat with us.
This month, on April 17th at 3:30pm, we will hold our first ever Shabbat Mincha service. This begins something of a new phase for our community as we gather on a Shabbat afternoon to worship and to celebrate a young boy becoming Bar Mitzvah. Because our Shabbat morning worship is so full, we recognize that there are some B’nai Mitzvah students in our community for whom Shabbat morning is not a comfortable or appropriate setting in which to mark a life passage. Some years ago, we made the decision to offer the option of a Shabbat afternoon service for those parents who needed a quieter, more mellow environment for their children. On April 17th this year, we will call Owen Suskind to the bimah and recognize him as an adult in our community. While the intention is for this to be a somewhat smaller and much shorter service than our Shabbat morning worship, I know that Owen and his family join me in announcing this to the community and welcoming all those who wish to participate in this and all our future Shabbat mincha services.
In Jewish tradition, we recognize a person as Bar or Bat Mitzvah, as an adult in the Jewish community, by calling him or her to the Torah for an aliyah (literally, a going-up.) For this reason, B’nai Mitzvah celebrations are limited to times when the community reads from the Torah: Shabbat morning, Shabbat mincha, Monday morning, Thursday morning, Rosh Chodesh (the first day of a new Hebrew month). We refrain from holding B’nai Mitzvah celebrations on large-scale holidays and festivals, making an exception on days when the festival services are generally smaller. Sometimes people say they are having a havdallah Bar Mitzvah. In fact, the mincha, or afternoon, service is when we read from the Torah. It is customary to recite mincha and then havdallah in some communities, but the Bar or Bat Mitzvah always takes place within the context of the afternoon service, not the havdallah. In many American synagogues, mincha-havdallah-ma’ariv celebrations are chosen by families who wish to celebrate with a large evening party. Because we are reserving mincha services for those families who need a smaller, more low-key setting, we have consciously chosen to hold the mincha services in the afternoon, not adjacent to sundown when havdallah would be recited. In this way we keep the focus more on the service and the quiet of a Shabbat afternoon, rather than on a large evening event.
While the Shabbat morning service is usually about 2 1/2 hours long, includes a full Shacharit, Torah study and Torah service, the mincha service is much more brief, lasting only about 1 1/2 hours. Shabbat mincha includes some opening prayers (beginning with Ashrei), a short Torah reading with only three aliyot, followed by a recitation of the Amidah and the closing prayers. It is Jewish custom to conclude the weekly Torah reading on Shabbat morning, and begin the new week’s Torah reading at the mincha service, so that there is a “changing of the guard” as far as the parashat hashavuah (weekly portion) is concerned. At our Shabbat mincha, we will have the opportunity to participate in the mitzvah, “v’shinantam l’vanecha”, “and you shall teach [the mitzvot] to your children,” as we hear Owen read from the Torah and share his unique view of what the Torah has to say.
A word about who’s on first. When our ad hoc B’nai Mitzvah committees first made the decision to open our religious program to include Shabbat mincha, Rabbi Fred and I agreed that whoever would lead services in the morning, that person would not usually preside in the afternoon as well. For the time being, until Rabbi Fred returns from his sabbatical, I will be leading the mincha services, and therefore will not be on the bimah in the mornings on Shabbatot when we have mincha (after this April date, we will have another in June). We will continue our long-held custom of inviting one of our many lay-leaders to chant parts of the morning service on these days.
Shabbat morning will continue to be the “main meal” for us — a time when the community will gather in large numbers to celebrate the miracles of creation and to give thanks for all that is right in the world. We will continue to develop our Friday night observances, including services and dinners in members’ homes. For those who are so inclined, we will now add the third face of Shabbat afternoon to our communal experience of what the great rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called, “a palace in time”. May we all come to understand the importance of Shabbat observance, seeing in this practice endless possibility for rest and renewal, celebration of our peoplehood and the strengthening of our core Jewish values.
B’vracha,
Hazzan Rachel