Given the two weeks that have traumatized America and the world with the extreme fluctuations in the stock market, the devaluing of American credit and the loss of pensions and so much more, the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel are worth contemplating this Shabbat:

“A thought has blown the market place away: there is a song in the wind and joy in the trees. The Sabbath arrives in the world, scattering a song in the silence of the night. Eternity utters a day. Where are the words that could compete with such might? Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to the holiness in time. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of Eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but the soul belongs to Someone else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world; on the seventh day we try to dominate the self – to set apart a day a week, a day on which we could not use the instruments so easily turned into weapons of destruction, a day for being with ourselves, a day on which we stop worshipping the idols of technical civilization, a day of armistice in the economic struggle with one another and with the forces of nature.”

Shabbat Shalom!