~ What is the importance of gratitude in the cycle of Yaakov? How grateful is Yaakov, and how grateful are other matriarchs and patriarchs?
And Rabbi Yoḥanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai: From the day the Holy One, Blessed be He, created the world, no one thanked the Holy One, Blessed be He, until Leah came and thanked Him, as it is stated: “And she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and she said, ‘This time I will give thanks to God,’ and thus he was called Judah” (Genesis 29:35).
(8) Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. (9) Six days you shall labor and do all your work, (10) but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God: you shall not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. (11) For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
(12) Guard the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. (13) Six days you shall labor and do all your work, (14) but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your ox or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the stranger in your settlements, so that your male and female slave may rest as you do. (15) Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the LORD your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to guard the sabbath day.
There is a balance that the discipline of Shabbat asks us: the balance between expanded consciousness and constricted consciousness, between the attention to detail - how, what, when - and the larger messages - why. The discipline of Shabbat cannot be just about one or the other: observance has to be tempered by remembrance, remembrance has to be tempered by observance.
Those to modes remind us of the two angels that are said to be with us as Shabbat comes in.
Source: Rabbi Ethan Tucker
Rabbi Shai Held, Parashat Behar
By entering a different reality once a week, we are reminded that a different world is possible; we are enabled to catch a faint glimmer of a world in which human dignity is real and the presence of God is manifest. Indeed, Jewish theology affirms, that is the world as it will one day be.
Imagine resting in the fullness of what is rather than being consumed by the pain of what is not yet, and by the anxiety that it may never be. The challenge and the opportunity of Shabbat is to do just that once each week.
Jewish liturgy subtly facilitates our entry into that other, already perfect reality. During the week, the heart of the Amidah prayer is a series of thirteen requests. We implore God for wisdom and forgiveness, for spiritual renewal and physical health, for agricultural blessing and an answer to all our prayers, and for much more. On Shabbat, stunningly, all the petitions simply fall away. The reason is clear: On Shabbat we don’t ask for anything because we already have everything we could possibly need.
Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness
The Hebrew term for gratitude is Hakarat Hatov, which means, literally, "recognizing the good." The good is already there. Practicing gratitude means being fully aware of the good that is already yours.
If you've lost your job but you still have your family and health, you have something to be grateful for...
If your house burns down but you still have your memories, you have something to be grateful for.
If you've broken a string on your violin and you still have three more, you have something to be grateful for...
There is no limit to what we don't have, and if that is where we focus, then our lives are inevitably filled with endless dissatisfaction. It is also true that even if we are aware of our gifts, we tend to grow callous to those fine things that pepper our lives, so that after a while we no longer even see that they are there. We come to take the good for granted. When gratitude is a living reality well established in our hearts, however, we constantly refresh our vision so that we make accurate note of the good that surrounds us.
In Crown Heights, there was a Jew, Yankel, who owned a bakery. He survived the camps. He once said, “You know why it is that I’m alive today? I was a kid, just a teenager at the time. We were on the train, in a boxcar, being taken to Auschwitz. Night came and it was freezing, deathly cold, in that boxcar. The Germans would leave the cars on the side of the tracks overnight, sometimes for days on end without any food, and of course, no blankets to keep us warm,” he said. “Sitting next to me was an older Jew – this beloved elderly Jew – from my hometown I recognized, but I had never seen him like this. He was shivering from head to toe, and looked terrible. So I wrapped my arms around him and began rubbing him, to warm him up. I rubbed his arms, his legs, his face, his neck. I begged him to hang on. All night long; I kept the man warm this way. I was tired, I was freezing cold myself, my fingers were numb, but I didn’t stop rubbing the heat on to this man’s body. Hours and hours went by this way. Finally, night passed, morning came, and the sun began to shine. There was some warmth in the cabin, and then I looked around the car to see some of the other Jews in the car. To my horror, all I could see were frozen bodies, and all I could hear was a deathly silence.
Nobody else in that cabin made it through the night – they died from the frost. Only two people survived: the old man and me… The old man survived because somebody kept him warm; I survived because I was warming somebody else…”
Alan Morinis
A simple and effective way to practice gratitude is by making giving thanks part of your everyday life. For example, it is an established Jewish practice to recite 100 such blessings a day. The term for "blessing" in Hebrew is bracha, which comes from the same root as the Hebrew word for "knee." When you say a blessing, it is as if you have bent your knee in an act of gratitude. The habit of saying blessings can remind you to be thankful when you hit a green light, or the salad is fresh, or the garden is getting the rain it needs, or your child came home from school as usual.
~ As we look to this small text, a piece that seems added to affirm and remind the reader/listener of a specific kashrut law, we are asked to remember: there is a reason behind it. There is a vision: a gratitude impulse. Chanukah is coming around: we light the lights because of the miracles, because of a basic gratitude of still being here, after many enemies tried to destroy our people. The essence of Maoz Tzur is that, if you read the entire song.
May during this week we find, really, one hundred reasons every day to be grateful, even among the chaos and brokenness of this world - ad may our Shabbat be a connection to both observance and remembrance, enlarged horizons and small actions, so we can find the balance of a meaningful week.