Ch ch ch ch changes

This experiment with Judaism is starting to change me. What began as a simple (deceptively so) attempt to keep the Sabbath – to clear away work, shopping, or errand-running of any kind from one day a week in favor of family, recreation, and renewal – has led to little changes in priority everywhere in my life. 

I no longer lead a life of quiet desperation, looking for little bits of time most evenings to escape the clamoring kids and finish off that last little bit of work from the day. Instead, I find myself lingering over family dinner, playing with the little guys in the bath or reading them an extra story, of course singing them to bed with the shema, and then running not to the computer but to read a bit of Torah or something from my growing Judaica library, to write a blog, to learn some Hebrew, to be wistful over rabbinical school. 

That isn't to say it has been easy. The work still has to get done, after all, and I have spent a fair number of evenings and mornings beating myself up because I hadn't gotten it all done during the work day that just ended, or because I was starting yet another work day behind. But I no longer let, Puritan-fashion, that self-criticism drive me to put work above all else. 

Rather, once that Protestant work ethic got tossed out the window, I have started to see things the way they truly are: my job is not my life, not what gives my life worth and meaning, not what I am living for. My job is one thing I do to contribute to society, certainly, but it is not the only thing. What I am living for is the people God has put in my life: my wife, my kids, my family, my friends, my synagogue family, those rare but wonderful students who I get to know as whole people.

Looking back, I begin to see why Shabbat is the central feature of Judaism: it takes the idolization of work, of commerce, of the ever-growing "to-do list" out of the center. Change that one thing, and you change everything.