I walked through the woods near my home yesterday, so busy that I did not even notice the trees around me. The birds were singing at full throttle and nature was wearing its greenest robes but I was too busy thinking about emails that had to be written, discussions to be had. I had deliberately chosen the route in order to enjoy the walk, to get some fresh air and to let my brain unwind. To just stop and stare. But we are so conditioned to always be planning, anticipating the next event, checking that we are not missing out on anything that we don’t always look around us. But what is life if we do not notice it, if we do not take time to stop?

The biblical writers and the Rabbis knew that it is too easy to just work and take no notice of our surroundings, so they gave us different kinds of markers, some which only happens once a year to mark the seasons, others which happen regularly to mark the week like Shabbat. Our lives are punctuated by different time measures as well; evening and morning, the 8th day of brit milah, the 12 and 13th year of a teenager becoming responsible, the days of a wedding celebration, the year of mourning.

Parashat Emor is all about time, about measuring it, marking it, setting down firm signs in order to carve out some space in the eternal flow of life.

We are told when to keep the different festivals, when to eat matzah and when to blow the shofar, to work six days but then mark the sevenths by resting and making it sacred (Leviticus 23:3).  The sacredness of time, however, is an elusive concept. Kadosh means to set something aside, to make it special for a single purpose. As Liberal Jews we have rejected the traditional ways of defining sacred time and how to observe it, and instead each one of us decides for ourselves what it means. But in between family visits, lunch with friends, birthday parties and gym sessions it can be difficult to make Shabbat different from the rest of the week, or for those who are retired or lead a less hectic lifestyle Shabbat can also disappear if there is not a clear sense of separation from the rest of the week.

I did not grow up with Shabbat as a day of rest. I grew up with it as a family day, a day with no work but where you could get done all the other things you did not have time for during the school week. I thought that my first taste of shabbat as a day off was in Israel, but having moved to England where everything is open on Sundays I realised that actually most Sundays in Denmark are a bit shabbes like. Some cafes are open, but all shops and supermarkets are closed. There are fewer cars on the roads, and you see many more people biking or walking. Sundays are family days or spent with friends. Moving to London was therefore a bit of a shock, but a delightful one, at least in the beginning. When I return home I usually forget about the Sunday closing hours and find it infuriating that I cannot just go shopping when I feel like it. But that feeling only lasts a short while as then I marvel at how less stressed Danes are than Brits. I marvel at the ease with which many Danes balance their work and private lives.

So when I spoke to a friend on the phone in Jerusalem yesterday who was about to get ready for Shabbat I envied her. Not just the reliably good weather or the food but the calm that falls over Jerusalem on Friday afternoons and Saturdays. On the other hand, this feeling was immediately followed by a sense of dismay at the way this is produced and pushed on people living there. So how do we balance the importance of creating communal rest vs the personal freedom of making Shabbat in whatever way we choose? How do we create space in time without forcing it on people? As Liberal Jews we do not require Shabbat observance, we encourage it and we desire it. We try to develop a sense of the holiness of time but do not set rules on how to structure it.  So how do we create time out of time, to know that in these 25 hours we do not have to be productive, sort out the house, or do the shopping?  How do we, for ourselves, make Shabbat special? How do we make it a communal rest, or a sacred time for everyone?

I do not propose that we move Shabbat to Sundays nor create special Saturday opening hours. What is important is to recognise the constant challenge that we are faced with as Liberal Jews. Wanting both Shabbat as a day of rest but also lazy Sundays means that for most of us neither of these days are really restful because of all the jobs we need to do over the weekend. In the end the choice seems to be that we either struggle each weekend with all the things that we do or we have to make a very clear and difficult decision to choose which is the day of rest and which is the day of doing. In the end each weekend most of us end up making compromises. This can leave us feeling guilty or that we never have a ‘proper’ Shabbat. But changing cheder from Sunday to Shabbat is one small step that this community made to prioritise Shabbat as a day of communal and family space. Could we decide to put off some of the weekend jobs until tomorrow and instead spend the luxurious Shabbat afternoon hours doing what we really enjoy doing and not worry about what is next on the list? I know this is a challenge especially when there are other people involved but yourself. When the needs of partners, parents or children quadruple the tasks, the importance of those precious hours seems to shrink exponentially. But realising the need for space and time together could Shabbat afternoon become a time for us to reverse Davies poem and declare that we indeed have been given a sacred time ‘to stop and stare’?