For some reason, life never seems to work out this way.
Instead, the 10-minute countdown begins – and so do the frenzied questions. Is the lamp turned on? Is the bedroom light off? “Did I shut off the oven?” my mother asks. My stomach lets out a small grumble – and I realize that I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. This brother can’t find his coat. The other one wants to know where he left his right shoe. And has anyone seen his tie?
It’s a strange phenomenon, this erev Shabbos rush. Especially for me, since I’m not usually a last-minute sort of person. Quite the contrary. I’m one of those people who will pick out her clothes the night before; the uber-organized gal who runs her life according to neatly defined calendar squares. By Thursday evening, the chicken soup is cooled off, the roast beef cooked and a handful of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies are conspicuously missing. It’s Friday morning and the floors are scrubbed, the dry-cleaning picked up and the table is set.
Why, then, does Friday afternoon lag on – only to then rush by in a flash? It’s the paradox of all paradoxes, a conundrum that doesn’t seem to offer an easy answer.
This past semester, though, I may have stumbled on an insight to that very question. And in doing so, I just might have learned a strategy for coping with what I have dubbed “the shrinking day.”
It was the first time since high school that I’ve had classes on Friday. In seminary, Friday was a day off, a day to buy hostess gifts and travel to that week’s Shabbos destination. And in college, I rearranged my schedule to ensure that I never had classes on Friday. There’s less pressure that way, I’ve always felt.
But this past semester, I had no choice. And so, for a handful of months, from 9 a.m. through 2:45 p.m., I’ve spent every erev Shabbos mired not in the parshah or last-minute Shabbos baking, but rather in First Amendment law and journalistic ethics. At first, it was difficult. Though the days were long and I had plenty of time to get home, the pressure was on. What if the subway stalled (which it once did)? What if I missed the ferry; would I get home in time? While my classmates dawdled after class, I raced on, anxious to get home, to nestle in the calm cocoon that is Shabbos, especially after a long and eventful week. I hated feeling like I was flying head-on into Shabbos, still weighed down by mundane thoughts.
Slowly, though, I got used to the routine. During my break, I had a chance to do some work, read e-mails and print out divrei Torah to read during my commute home. The ferry ride home was a 23-minute gift, a brief hiatus from the long, hectic day. I had the opportunity to sit down, eat a yogurt and read the paper or a sefer. Time slowed down, if only because it had to.
As the semester drew to a close, I found myself rushing in 40, then 30, then 20 minutes before licht benching. Oddly enough, I felt less rushed. Everything that needed to be done for Shabbos had been arranged the night before. My expectations shifted; all was planned out. And that ferry ride gave me a few minutes to breathe. There was nothing I could do about it, and so I sat back and relaxed.
Now that the semester is over, I’m back to my old ways. Now that it’s my choice, I can’t say that I have scheduled Friday classes for the coming semester. But I wonder whether I should have, whether the classes would have anchored my day, acting as a rolling pin, spreading the precious Friday hours thin like dough, so they can be shaped into meaningful chunks.
But maybe it wasn’t the classes, per se. Maybe it was the conscious prioritizing (a shower is a must before Shabbos; checking e-mails is not), the lowering of expectations, which helped make those Friday afternoons just a bit less hectic.
Erev Shabbos, after all, is a microcosm for this entire earthly world – the precious years spent in preparation for the World to Come. Slowing down, taking a few moments to breathe, prioritizing – these are all useful skills both for erev Shabbos and life in general. The way you head into Shabbos’ embrace is, after all, practice for the real test, the true destination. Learning to stay calm and productive amidst chaos is life’s challenge. It was never meant to be easy. But its reward is that Shabbos – peace, calmness, life stripped to its spiritual core – is just around the bend.
Shabbos is a gift, one Tamar appreciates even more as life becomes more hectic. If you have time erev Shabbos, feel free to e-mail Tamar at
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