On the Difficulty of Rest

Dear friends,

I’ve been exhausted all week. No amount of sleep seems to be enough. Nor caffeine. Until Monday morning I was full of energy, the house felt alive and filled with hope. As the news of the leaked draft began to sink in, so did my energy sap. The atmosphere seemed to cloud. A great feminist I know was reported to have admitted to feeling like her life was a waste. I ask a friend “how are you” and the description of the state of the world that comes in response cuts through me. And I can’t seem to find any rest. 

Maybe this just isn’t the time to rest. Maybe this is the time to get down to DC, or further south where women’s rights over their bodies are already under serious attack or go out into the streets to make some noise.  

Or maybe it’s a good moment to imagine how difficult it is for people with real threats to their freedom, those who live with ongoing oppression, disenfranchisement and fear to rest. I, after all am a New York City, white-presenting, straight middle-class man. Though the issue is personal to me and my family, as I’ve expressed to you before, the threat to me is theoretical, philosophical, improbable to impact me and my body. And yet I can’t seem to rest this week. I can imagine being a woman, this week and always, and the impact that fact might have on my ability to rest. I can imagine being Trans or gay or gender non-conforming and how that might impact my ability to rest. I can imagine being black, or Muslim or Ukranian or Palestinian or carrying multiple categories of oppression, and how that might impact my ability to rest. The anger, despair, sadness, confusion and fear that oppression creates must impact a person’s relationship with rest.  

I can relate to the black feminist icon Florynce Kennedy’s words: “dying is really the only chance we'll get to rest.” 

And yet, we are commanded to rest. Over and over by penalty of death. Don’t work on Shabbat. Rest. Relax. Enjoy. How might we do that today? 

We might do well to take in Audre Lorde’s words:  

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” 

Shabbat is the gift of obligatory rest. It wrests us from our minds, our frustrations, our madness and rage and commands us to rest. Shabbat, Lorde teaches us, is political warfare. 

That’s what we will be doing this evening, in the painfully timely and deeply exciting Kumah event organized and led by women in the community and dealing in large part with bodily autonomy and the notion of rest. There will be many inspiring women playing a part, including poet Erica Wright, community organizer and chaplain Liz Aeschlimann, midwife Sylvie Blaustein and singer Judi Williams. And we be honored by the presence of the women who lead Black Women’s Blueprint, the organization that inspired the event. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha