“The Israelites should keep Shabbat, to make Shabbat…for in six days Adonai made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day (God) paused, and was refreshed.” (Ex 31)
What kind of a Shabbat “pause” could we do together that might leave us refreshed?
Here are several ideas 5th – 7th graders came up with:
- “You could make boxes and put everything in your regular life into a box and then put it aside.”
- “Let’s make a spa, with scented candles.”
- “Make cupcakes!”
- “Let’s make a tzedakah game, and everyone will start out with, say, $10 dollars, and there’ll be stores, like organizations, and they’ll have $10, and organizations can upgrade, and you can give your tzedakah…” (The game development went on and on!)
- “Scavenger hunt!”
- “Drink cold drinks.”
Somehow, we’ll design our own Shabbat “pause” to refresh ourselves. And just wait until the children start to think through the process they’re in right now: what does it take to “make” your own Shabbat? what genuinely refreshes our group? how might we balance traditional Shabbat practices with our own ideas of a Shabbat experience?
What a rich beginning to Shabbat exploration we’ve made together!
