Dear Readers

The favorite children’s book in our house these days doesn’t have much of a storyline. It definitely

doesn’t have the crucial elements of conflict climax and resolution that we learned about back in

elementary school. It’s a comforting description of a little girl preparing for Shabbos. The

practiced lines describe the food the clothing the tablecloths. I can read it with half a mind

simultaneously planning menus or to­do lists. But no matter how distracted I am the last line

always gets to me: “Aren’t we lucky? There’s never a week without Shabbos.”

*

My grandfather’s levayah took place on a summer Friday back when I was in seventh grade.

Bewildered at the suddenness of his passing I stared at the velvet­draped box and wondered how a

wooden coffin could hold the entirety of a human spirit. Then I went home and helped pack up my

siblings to spend a Shabbos in Boro Park with all our cousins. “It’s what he would have wanted ”

we told ourselves. Shabbos was strained with the empty place at the head of the table and the

punctuated shivah hovering in the corners waiting to overtake the house again after Havdalah. But

it was Shabbos still.

There’s never a week without Shabbos.

*

A vicious bout of pneumonia landed my son in the hospital. At first not much seemed to

distinguish Shabbos morning from any other morning in the pediatric ward. Nurses chatted

doctors made rounds monitors beeped. In the afternoon after I’d turned down an orange tray

holding a bean­dominated cholent a group of gawky teenage boys knocked on the door and asked

which zemiros we’d like them to sing. Pushing aside an IV pole and smiling at the little patients

they stood against the purplish­gray walls and sang “Yom Zeh Mechubad.”

There’s never a week without Shabbos.

*

It’s been a rocky year with terror and tragedy tightening a noose around our nation. Too many

Fridays have been ruptured by dismal news. But always as sunset approached we turned a mental

switch and allowed the ethereal serenity of the Seventh Day to flood our hearts with peace. The

weekday world could wait loss and mourning and fear could hang suspended; for now we’d savor

our taste of paradise our whiff of eternity.

In honor of this shemittah year — a year of rest for the Holy Land — we present you with a

supplement rejoicing in Shabbos the weekly day of rest for the Holy Nation. It’s a vibrant visit to

memorable Shabbos tables an exploration of our varied minhagim and tastes a lighthearted romp

through the unexpected. But most of all it’s a celebration of the single day that come what may

always awaits us with its promise of peace its undertone of eternity and its flavor of a World

wholly at rest.

Because there’s never a week without Shabbos.

Wishing you a joyful Yom Tov

P.S. Look out for the seven­word essays that appear throughout the supplement encapsulating the

essence of Shabbos through the prisms and pens of our staff. Our families enjoyed the challenge of

concocting these essays at the Shabbos table and yours may too.