May It Be Like This Every Day

A well-known story in the Talmud tells of two angels—one “good” and one “bad”—that accompany us home from Shabbat evening services. If we arrive home to calm, to a gleaming Shabbat table, to an atmosphere of holiness, the good angel offers a blessing: May it be like this every week. And the bad angel must respond: Amen. But if we arrive home to chaos and fighting, and nothing is ready for Shabbat, the bad angle offers a curse: May it be like this every week. And the good angel must respond: Amen.

This story is often told to emphasize the beauty of bringing the Shabbat spirit into the home, and to inspire us to prepare physically and spiritually so that we enter into Shabbat with a sense of distinction: we’ve moved from hol (the secular and mundane) to kodesh (the sacred). 

But I have always thought of this story as a lesson on cultivating habits. When the good angel or the bad angel says “may it be like this every week,” it is less a blessing or a curse, and more a statement reflecting the natural consequences of our choices. If we endeavor to live in holiness each week, we will cultivate holiness as a habit; over time, it will become all the more natural for us to greet Shabbat on Friday evening fully prepared to receive its gifts. Soon, it will “be like this every week.” If we do not make that effort, it will become harder and harder to make a different choice, to extract ourselves from the frenetic energy and stress of our day-to-day life in order to make time sacred. Soon, it will “be like this every week.”

This lesson can be applied to any spiritual practice—a phrase we often treat as a list of nouns: prayer, yoga, meditation, Shabbat. These are all “spiritual practices.” But through the lens of this rabbinic teaching, we are reminded that spiritual practice is really a verb: We are practicing prayer, yoga, meditation, Shabbat—engaging in a process that transforms activity into habit. Only through ongoing practice do we make these activities an ingrained part of our lives and reap their full benefits. 

What do we need to be practicing right now, as we sit in the heartbreaking fracture and divisiveness that plagues our communities, and that has been so greatly inflamed by the mayoral race?

On Wednesday evening, we held a post-election conversation for our community. Nearly 200 BJ members registered to join this gathering, not to debate or convince or judge, but to listen and be heard. In pairs and small groups, people shared their hopes, concerns, fears, and learnings from the mayoral election. Opening the evening, Roly asked us to see these conversations as an opportunity to practice curiosity, humility, listening—all skills that I believe are core to a spiritual life, and that will be necessary if we want to heal even the smallest fractures we are experiencing.

Curiosity, humility, listening—these do not come at the snap of a finger. We have to practice. Every day, not just this past Wednesday. There will be more opportunities to do so together as the BJ community, but meaningful opportunities also arise in our everyday encounters.. Any time we hear something we disagree with is an opportunity to practice self-reflection: Why does that bother me so much? And curiosity: Why do you think that? And humility: Why do I assume I know what this person thinks, or what they care about?

Practice makes perfect, the saying goes. But another, lesser known, saying asserts that practice makes progress. If we can respond to this moment with a commitment to practice that which can bring healing and reconnection, we might not make it all the way to perfect, but we will take huge steps forward. And then someday we may find that we have brought upon ourselves a most precious blessing: May it be like this—not just every week, but every day.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Shuli Passow