Kabbalat Shabbat The Grand Unification

Transcription

1 Introducing... Kabbalat Shabbat The Grand Unification Illuminations and Commentary by Debra Band Translations and Literary Commentary by Raymond P. Scheindlin Foreword by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Preface by Arthur Green

2 Kabbalat Shabbat: The Grand Unification As Sabbath arrives on Friday evening, Jewish tradition exults in the completion of Creation. Kabbalat Shabbat: The Grand Unification offers vivid new illuminated paintings, translations, and commentary on the full Friday evening liturgy and customs. With imagery drawn from kabbalah, midrash, and modern science, the book celebrates the spiritual glory of Creation and the wonder of its physical embodiment as we now see it through the lens of modern science. An inspirational source for prayer, study, and visual pleasure, this book is a glowing and unforgettable gift. Advance Praise for Kabbalat Shabbat: The Grand Unification Beautiful! It is the beauty of unity of bringing the heavens to our homes, of synthesizing cosmology and kabbalah together to open our souls to the Shabbat s inner beauty. Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, Congregation Kehillath Jeshurun, New York Kabbalah and modern cosmology share an amazing ability to open the heart and mind to the surprising wonders of the holy creation. Debra Band s meticulous and colorful illuminated paintings and calligraphy invoke nature and the cosmos, and bring both beauty and insight to the Shabbat prayers. Howard A. Smith, Senior Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts Band combines spirituality with her artwork and intellectualism with her writings that enhance what is already a highlight of Shabbat to the next level. Band sets a new bar for spirituality and engagement with this work. Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, Executive Director, Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance What an amazing work of scholarship and art! I imagine coming home from synagogue after Shabbat services, opening this masterpiece, and welcoming the angels and then turning the page and sanctifying the Shabbat with the kiddush! What better way to usher in the beauty of Shabbat? Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, Ohev Shalom, the National Synagogue, Washington, DC Available September 6, 2016 Author Talks available Retail Price $49.95 ISBN x 10, 264 pages flowing right to left, in Hebrew fashion, 90 full page illustrations, full color throughout To order please contact: INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS GROUP (IPG) PHONE (800) FAX (312) ORDERS ONLY: orders@ipgbook.com For further information, to discuss programming and bulk institutional purchases, please contact Debra Band, Honeybee in the Garden, LLC dband@honeybeeinthegarden.com dband@dbandart.com Phone/Fax (301) ALSO AVAILABLE... Accompanying bencher-style small paperback KABBALAT SHABBAT: THE GRAND UNIFICATION AT THE SABBATH TABLE 80 pages flowing right to left in Hebrew fashion, 6 x 7.5 Accompanies the full book with a small, lightweight bencher-style paperback presenting the illuminated pages of the full customs, blessings and songs for the Sabbath table without commentaries and synagogue liturgy for all dinner guests to enjoy! Shrinkwrapped in sets of 4 copies, $39.95 ISBN 13: Kabbalat Shabbat The Grand Unification At the Sabbath Table Illuminations and Introduction by Debra Band Translations by Raymond P. Scheindlin With the Birkat HaMazon Translation from the Koren Sacks Siddur To order please contact: INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS GROUP (IPG) PHONE:(800) FAX (312) ORDERS ONLY: orders@ipgbook.com F ollowing From the Introduction the lighting of Sabbath candles shortly before sundown on Friday evenings, Jews welcome the Sabbath bride with Kabbalat Shabbat, the Sabbath eve prayer service and subsequent festive home meal that infuse the beginning of the sacred day with celestial imagery and vivid human experiences of divine and human love and companionship among family and friends at the festive dinner table. The liturgy, whether chanted in synagogue or at home, brings us into intimate connection with the Creator, whose seventh-day rest we reexperience, immersing us in dramatic imagery of the glories of the flow of divine energy through the universe, of the longing of the masculine and feminine aspects of divinity for each other. Preparing the home offers many families, particularly the homemakers, not only a routine of cooking, cleaning, and table-setting chores but a time to connect subliminally to family memories and traditions stretching back for generations. In these pages, I offer you an illuminated manuscript of the Kabbalat Shabbat liturgy and rituals, a fusion of words and artwork, to interpret and enlighten these beloved customs. Let me introduce you to the wide spectrum of thought and experience that inspires these painted words. The Shabbat table in my case, a beloved heirloom that has brought together five generations of us on three continents becomes a focus not only of weekly habit or divine service alone but also of cherished lifetime memories bonding individuals, families, and communities, tracing the course of weeks, years, and lifetimes. Abraham Joshua Heschel characterizes Judaism as a religion of time attached to sacred events, consecrating sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year, among which the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals. 1 Our synagogues and our homes have perforce replaced the Temple, yet the twenty-five sacred hours inaugurated by Kabbalat Shabbat afford us a weekly audience with the Eternal. As we sit down to Shabbat dinner with song and blessings, these traditions invite the angels as well as the humans to join us the loved ones newly added to our lives, the friends with whom we share our families lives, and, always at the back of our minds, those departed loved ones once at our tables who now live in the memories of those gathered around. Not only do the Friday night festivities bond us to the divine, our families, and communities. The ideas expressed in the prayers, songs, and rituals and in the ecstatic words and melodies were inspired and compiled by the Jewish mystics of sixteenth-century Safed (Tsfat), who themselves drew upon a continual thread of mystical studies winding back through Castile, Catalonia, Italy, and Provence, to Byzantine-period Israel and beyond. We embrace these traditions while also carrying the portfolio of a different intellectual world from that of the medievals who composed them. Whether or not we are fully...

3 Sample Illuminated Pages

4 Sample Commentary Pages Candle-Lighting Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the world, Who set us apart with His commandments and commanded us to light the Sabbath lamp. Literary Commentary The practice of lighting lamps or candles at the beginning of the Sabbath has its origin in the nearly universal practice of marking festive occasions by illumination. At a time when people would go to bed at nightfall and when only the well-off could afford the expenditure of oil that would permit them to stay up later, the rabbis enjoined all Jews to light lamps at the onset of the Sabbath and festivals. This practice is not mentioned in the Bible; but the rabbis decreed that, on lighting the lamps, a benediction be recited declaring it a divine command, under the general principle that the ancient rabbis decisions and decrees were divinely authorized. (The same reasoning applies to the benediction of the Hanukka lamps.) When the Sabbath coincides with a festival, the benediction is expanded accordingly, and an additional benediction is recited, thanking God for enabling us to live to see this day. In most places, wax candles long ago replaced the oil lamps of antiquity. Note on chanting: The festival and the festive Shabbat variations on candle-lighting are included in the section Additions for Special Sabbaths. Commentary on the Illuminations W hile Shabbat candle-lighting began simply to illuminate the Shabbat table so that the family could enjoy their festive meal together, the light from the candles has come to express values far beyond simple pragmatism. In the illuminations, I express the exchange of prayer and light between the heavens above and the human world below, as we begin Shabbat by illuminating our tables. The author of the seventeenth-century mystical tract Hemdat yamim suggests that the light from the Shabbat candles adds to the neshama yetera, the additional soul that flowers within the soul of every Jew during Shabbat. Because the neshama yetera descends from the feminine Shekhinah, the woman of the house enjoys the privilege of lighting the candles. She thus reenacts the unification of the human and divine spheres, of the sefirot themselves. The pleasure of the candlelight extends to all who celebrate Shabbat within it; the author of Hemdat yamim compares the candlelight that reaches toward heaven to Jacob s Ladder (Gen. 28:12), suggesting that the light gladdens and blesses the hearts of those it illuminates. 23 Stay with us, Pure One. For a night and a day, grant us Your light, and then go Your way. We will honor You, wearing our best, with hymns and with prayers and with three solemn feasts, and perfect rest, delightful rest. Bless us with peace, angels of peace! The sun has again sunk below the trees. Let s go and bid the Sabbath farewell. Farewell, holy Sabbath, at the last rays. We will await your return in six days. May the next Sabbath be like the last! May the next Sabbath be like the last! Go in peace, angels of peace. Literary Commentary This poem, first published in 1903, was composed by Hayyim Nahman Bialik ( ), the outstanding Hebrew poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Intended for children, the poem was composed in the style of a folk song, as part of Bialik s project of creating folk poetry in Hebrew, which, until its revival as a spoken language toward the end of the nineteenth century, had only a learned literature. The poem s four stanzas offer four vignettes of the Sabbath, from sunset on Friday to nightfall on Saturday, as it is traditionally observed and as it might be experienced by a child. The four stanzas are modeled on the four lines of Shalom aleikhem, each one ending with the opening words of the latter s four stanzas in turn. The poem s lovely simplicity found a perfect complement in the melody composed by the great cantor Pinhas Minkovsky ( ), through which it has become so widely known that today it fits seamlessly into the more deeply rooted traditions of the Sabbath. Commentary on the Illuminations ayyim Nahman Bialik echoes the traditional Shalom aleikhem in this beloved ode to H the calm beauty of Shabbat. In the illuminations, I present Bialik s home in Tel Aviv, a Shabbat table laid on a terrace. Two trees flank the scene. The palm brings to mind the Psalmist s comparison of the righteous person to the tall palm; the olive, with new shoots rising from its roots, suggests the children clustered around parents at the family dinner table. 21 The fresh green leaves gently drifting from the trees reflect the health of the Shekhinah 22 as Israel begins its Shabbat rest

5 To order please contact: INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS GROUP (IPG) PHONE:(800) FAX (312) ORDERS ONLY: