thought exercise on Shalom

Being saved always involves being both saved from something and saved for something. We are saved for shalom—a flourishing life with God. What are we saved from? Salvation as described in the Bible is...

The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a...

Shalom, “peace,” is one of the richest words in the Bible. You can no more define it by looking in the dictionary than you can define a person by his or her social security number. It gathers all aspe...

This concept [the parish system] has helped Christians understand how interconnected all the pieces within a community are and the importance of pursuing the common good there. Jesus’ call to be peace...

Greg and some of his friends from church were zealous to pursue the common good of their community, Ventura, California. Instead of coming up with their own ideas of how to do this, they started by li...

In the book of Lamentations, Jeremiah responds to the tragedy and suffering of the fallen city of Jerusalem. The proper response to a tragedy of this proportion is to offer up a lament. The book begin...

We are not beasts of burden. We should not live to work. We should not be chained to routine. Shabbat unchains us. Shabbat is meant to be a day of peace. It offers us a chance for peace with nature, ...

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks tells a true story in one of his books about peacemaking in what is arguably one of the world's most difficult places to achieve it: the Middle East. One evening in the early ...

Sabbath begins in rest. The Jewish people practice Shabbat sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. It begins and ends in the dark, where rest (not hustle) is the first word.

Judaism has a prayer called the Asher Yatzar that is often recited after using the bathroom, a prayer grounded in the very real needs of our bodies. At first, some of us might blush over the idea of G...

For millennia Jews have celebrated Passover to commemorate God’s rescue of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. Passover begins with the Seder, a ritual feast. In its liturgy is the Dayenu, which me...

Two Hebrew words deeply inform and enrich our understanding of meditative prayer: haga and siach . Our English Bibles most often translate both of these words with the simple word “meditate...

We must begin by remembering. If you journey into a contemporary Jewish home prepared for Sabbath, you will likely encounter two candles lit by (more often than not) the woman of the home. On Friday e...

The Sabbath day is a holy day. Interestingly, the only thing God deems as qadosh, or “holy,” in the creation story is the Sabbath day. The earth, space, land, stars, animals — even people — are not de...

There is a story told about a Jewish farmer, who ended up stuck in his field for the Sabbath. As the sun went down, the farmer realized he would have to remain in the field until sunset the next day, ...

The land of Israel is a small country. You can walk its length, north to south, in a few days, and from its central mountains you can see its lateral boundaries, the sea to the west and the river to t...

There were three annual festivals in Israel—Passover along with the Feast of Unleavened Bread, The Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), and the Feast of Tabernacles. You can read about them in Leviticus 23 and...

Holy silence is spacious and inviting. You can drink it down…During congregational silences, in meditation rooms or halls, in prison cells and meeting rooms, in silent confession at church, all these ...

There is a word that is seldom said, a word for an emotion almost too deep to be expressed: the love of the Sabbath. The word is rarely found in our literature, yet for more than two thousand years th...

Israeli artist Shahak Shapira crafted a creative and confrontational response to inappropriate selfies posted at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. He photoshopped the most insensitive photo...

In 1933, as Hitler’s Nazi party rose to power in Germany, the Jewish artist Marc Chagall painted Solitude. In the foreground, a seated man sits wrapped in a tallit, or prayer shawl. His right hand sup...

The words: "On the seventh day God finished His work" (Genesis 2:2), seem to be a puzzle. Is it not said: "He rested on the seventh day"? "In six days the Lord made heaven and...

Ronald Rohlheiser tells a true story of a Jewish boy named Mordechai who could not be coaxed into going to school. When he turned six years old, his mother forced him to go, but the process was misera...

The ancient Greek word for intimate fellowship is koinonia. In the church, we can suffer from what might be called koinonitus: fellowship turned in on itself; cliques and enclaves and tight-knit group...

Each one of us is called to live the truth of our unrepeatable uniqueness. We are not meant to model ourselves after others, however wonderful they may be. A delightful Jewish parable makes this point...

In the world of the rabbis, a scholar was expected to earn his keep by engaging in a secular profession. The Mishnah tractate Avot reads: Make them [the words of the Law] not a crown wherewith to mag...

Practice is to Judaism what belief is to Christianity. That is not to say that Judaism doesn’t have dogma or doctrine. It is rather to say that for Jews, the essence of the thing is a doing, an action...

In his helpful book Peace Catalysts , Rick Love shares a poignant example of how sharing a meal can break down the familiar walls of status, power, and economics: In 2011, my wife, Fran, and I we...

While many world religions worship gods in temples, Israel’s claim was unique. Theirs wasn’t simply a consecrated center for worship; it was a meeting place where the Lord of the creation actually met...

Interpretation series editor Patrick Miller has shrewdly observed that the fourth commandment on Sabbath is the “crucial bridge” that connects the Ten Commandments together. The fourth commandment loo...