“You shall keep My Sabbath and venerate My sanctuary: I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19.30).
Personally, my perspective on this Mitzvah is a direct message from God, acknowledging to the Jewish community that the Sabbath should be kept. In addition, God is notifying the Jewish community that he should be respected as he is our God. When God is speaking to the people of the Jewish community of the importance of Shabbath, he expressing how meaningful the Shabbath is to him. God wants the Jewish community to look at the Shabbath day as a day of rest from the previous 6 days of work. God does not specifically states what or how the Shabbath dinner should look like as that, we get from our ancestors and traditions that were passed on. However, I believe that the Jewish community should look at the Shabbath dinner as a time to reflect and overlook the previous week with the people that love and support you. In my daily life, it is important to fulfill this mitzvah because personally, it gives me the time to highlight the highs and lows of the previous week and share it with people who I care about. The Shabbath dinner at our house takes no longer than 45 minutes, but in that time, it has such an important impact and aspect on my life.
The picture above shows that even through tough times of toughness, we still manage to come together as a family and celebrate the Shabbath.
Given that my two brothers had graduated college and they currently work away from home, for Shabbath dinner, there are only three seats; me and my parents. My parents and I all have extremely busy lives throughout the week which prevents us from simply asking about each other's day. In our family, we look towards Shabbath dinner because it's a time that it is just us; catching up on each other’s lives. Personally, I believe Shabbath dinner had made my family stronger as it made my family become more together; simply by sitting at a table for less than 45 minutes. Even though we may have some uninteresting conversation, what matters is that each person in the family takes a little chunk out of their weekend and spends it together, as a family. Ever since I can remember, I would always see Shabbath dinner as colossal waste of time and would not see the meaning of why are we doing this? Before I left Israel, sometimes I would had thought that Shabbath dinner was a waste of time and would be taking time away from hanging out with friends. However, now that I am spending the next four months of my life in Israel, it gives me another perspective of the importance of Shabbath dinner and why it’s extremely significant to my family.
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