Kabbalat Shabbat Kavannah | Rabbi Becca Weintraub | May 29, 2026

Shabbat shalom.

Welcome to V-Day.

And I'll say also, it's very special to be back.

As I said, I've been on family leave for the past couple of months,

and so it feels very good to be back in my spiritual home.

And I welcome all of those

who are coming for the first time and those who have been here.

Many, many times.

It's just good to be back and to be together.

One of the things that I love the most, and that I think is

one of the things that drew me to this community,

is that there's a spiritual quest that we're on here to balance

both tradition and innovation, which is happening in many places.

But it's taken very seriously here, and it's not an easy task

to do authentically, to be authentic to the self, to be authentic, to tradition.

What does it even mean to be authentic?

We could have hours and hours of conversations about that.

Yeah, this

week's Parsha Persia, and so gives us insight

into how we might begin to navigate this spiritual paradox.

The one of trying to be traditional and innovative at the same time.

The parsha includes a very long list of offerings

that each tribe brought to God on different days.

Each of the 12 tribes,

they each brought a amount of offerings, each of them on different days,

but each of them brought the exact same offerings.

And so the question would be, why is it that they're listed out

each time again and again?

And the rabbis teach us that no word or

even a symbol in the Torah has lacks any meaning.

And so what can we learn from the fact

that we recount the tribe's gifts separately, repeating them?

And it's a list of 35 items, a list

3512 times in a row.

So it is one of the longest parties that we have in the Torah.

I think it is the longest one.

And this is one of the reasons that we have this super long list

and ends up being, I think, over 70 scheme that are listed out.

So it feels incredibly repetitive, and I might even say

it might feel unnecessary to do that.

But but made by a Rabbi, which is the Midrash teaches that

although each tribe brought identical offerings,

each of them experienced the act differently.

The Lubavitcher rabbi,

Menachem Mendel Niacin Zichron Ali Baraka,

known simply as the Rabbi in the Chabad movement.

He explains this, and he speaks about this idea

and teaches that while we strive to live our lives

through the same Torah, each of us has the same Torah.

Each of us gives it our own flavor, and that's what we get from this

repetitive list that even though it seems like

we're saying the same things over and over again, the experience

of each of the tribes and each individual who was doing it was different.

His major example that the rabbi gives is

he uses prayer, which all of us can relate to in this moment.

In particular, while we say the same words,

the words that our ancestors have said and have chanted for centuries.

He asks, how is the individual to be satisfied with a common formula?

Is monotony the price we must pay for perfection?

Does creativity

can compromise the truth that we're trying to reach?

And he says it's not so.

That's exactly what these 72 repetitive pursuit came in.

Our parsha come to teach us an entire nation,

including individuals of every conceivable character

and of every type of trait or calling or work that they would do.

They perform the exact same deed,

the exact same offering, down to the smallest detail,

and they still give it their unique personal meaning.

Each of us brings the richness of our own creative soul to our service,

whether it's through the prayer that we are going to sing and chant

the ritual or the tradition that we take on.

These practices bring us together.

But they do not. A race.

What makes each of us unique?

Shabbat itself becomes

the living expression of this very idea.

It gives us the opportunity to remember what each of us uniquely has to offer.

We do this simply by slowing down,

and we embody our tradition.

We have the chance to reexamine and noticed our own

very distinct way of being, because we're just being on Shabbat.

On Shabbat, we live within tradition

through the words of prayer, which we pray a lot on Shabbat

through rituals like lighting candles or gathering around a table with friends

and family at an own egg, which we'll have after services tonight.

Or we have many community members who are on a retreat,

so maybe through a retreat.

But each week we breathe something new into the traditions that we take on,

the rituals we take on, and even the words that we're saying together.

As we continue our TV this evening,

we're going to turn to Lucado, which you'll find on page 23,

and we can return to that same question with a deeper awareness.

Perhaps the question of this Shabbat and also is not only what traditions

we inherit, but also what we ourselves bring to them.

What is it that we want to bring?

The words may be ancient, the rituals, they're familiar, but no one else

can offer God, the community, or the world the exact gift that each of us can.

And so on this Shabbat.

And so we continue to ask ourselves the question, what is my offering?

What is it that I want to bring into my words?

What is it that we want to bring into our TV life

this evening, as we continue with the Shabbat Shalom?