Resting and Reimagining
When Passover begins on Saturday night, the seventh day of Passover coincides with Shabbat. This concurrence means that we celebrate the occasion of the Seventh Day of creation, the Day of Rest at the same time as we remember the splitting of the sea which occurred at this time. These two seemingly unrelated moments have something in common and something to teach us.
A midrash states that on the twilight of the sixth day, that is the moment when the light of the last day of Creation was giving way to the beginning of the first Day of Rest, G*d brought into being that which would be necessary for the great miracles which would come. On this day was created the staff Moses would use, the mouth of the donkey that would chastise Bilaam and the capacity of the Sea of Reeds to split. So it is fitting that in a few hours that twilight will repeat itself.
Twilight, Bein HaShmashot in Hebrew, is a period of time that will for eternity be in doubt as to whether it is day or night and so we begin Shabbat earlier to make sure we don’t begin too late and end shabbat later to make sure the daytime has run it’s course. So, miracles are, in this telling, that space that is both something new that is created and something always waiting to occur. In the case of the Splitting of the Sea, the miracle transformed what seemed hopeless - the Pharaoh’s army bearing down - into a possibility unimaginable to the Israelites and yet there all along.
Every week when Shabbat comes we have the opportunity to rest and to reimagine. We rest from the work that occupies each of us for the six days of labor and reimagine so we can turn ourselves toward a new week in which anything is possible.
So may it be for all of us this Shabbat and everyday on which we rest and reimagine.
Shabbat Shalom, Chag Sameach
(Artwork by Gisele Rivas
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