BRINGING JOY & INTENTION TO YOUR FRIDAY NIGHT
For many of us, hosting a Shabbat dinner can be stressful. We have to prepare food, contact guests, clean our homes, decorate and set our tables. We might feel anxious and rushed. We know that the payoff is just around the corner with the onset of Shabbat, when we are done doing and we can savor time with friends and family, eat delicious food and relax. But how can we bring more oneg, joy, and kavanah, intention, into the experience of preparing for Shabbat so that we look forward to hosting? How can we create an atmosphere in our homes that makes our guests feel completely at ease, because we ourselves feel grounded and present? Take innovation in one hand and tradition in the other to help shift expectations about what Shabbat "has to" look like, and great creative with what it "can" look like. Here are four Jewishly-inspired tools to help you enthusiastically and mindfully prepare for, and usher in, Shabbat: Cook with Awe Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, writes that “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement.” So often, when we prepare a meal, we do not marvel at the beauty of the food we are preparing to eat. Bring some radical amazement to your cooking process. Choose one item of food and spend a minute admiring it: How does that food smell, feel, look? What do you see in this food that you never noticed before? Eat Dessert First Instead of a more traditional Oneg (celebrating and eating treats after services), welcome Shabbat with a pre-neg! Serve something sweet before your dinner as your guests arrive. Talk about sparking joy... Bathe + Breathe For many Chassidic Jews, there is a custom to go to the mikvah (ritual bath) on Friday afternoon in preparation for Shabbat. Immersion can, quite literally, help wash away the workweek, allowing you to become spiritually open to the possibilities of Shabbat. For most of us, going to a mikvah is not an option. In the spirit of a visit to the mikvah, take a step outdoors and “bathe” in fresh air. Close your eyes, immerse yourself in the way the air feels on your skin, in your hair. Is it humid, cold, dry, crisp? Then open your eyes, and witness the daylight. When evening comes you can cherish that transition from light to dark more acutely. Dance! As you clean, and set up, pick one of your favorite pump up songs and dance! Get silly, let loose, and feel your body come alive. Imagine Miriam after the Israelites left Egypt. They danced their hearts out in the celebration of freedom. When we lose our inhibitions, we set the stage for the joyous Shabbat spirit to enter our body and home.
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