Shabbat is the weekly Jewish holiday that extends from sundown Friday to dusk Saturday.

Shabbat is where the word Sabbath come from: it means praying, family time, staying close to home, and not working.

Not working includes not lighting a flame, which extends to not turning on electricity.

But modern life is full of conveniences like elevators and stoves and refrigerators that light when you open them, and since people still need to get up to their floors and would really like to eat hot (or any) food, there is a thing called Shabbat mode.

Shabbat mode means that on Shabbat elevators in some buildings in the world will stop at every floor, going both up and down, so no one person has to worry about pressing a button and thus changing which circuits are fired. It’s set in advance. All you do is get in when doors open and wait to arrive at your destination. Shabbat mode means you can set your refrigerator to not turn on the light when you open the door… or you can do the mechanical version which is to tape over the door sensor. Shabbat mode means people invented hot plates a lot time ago that stay plugged in all day, and that today ovens and pressure cookers can be preset before Shabbat to work at certain times during Shabbat.

Open your fridge, turn the display on, then press and hold the Freezer and Wifi buttons for three seconds till ‘Sb’ appears on the screen to enjoy traditions codified in medieval times in your own home.

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But how far can you take Shabbat mode?

How about personal hygiene?

I ask you to imagine a modern electric bidet attachment with Shabbat mode.

Perhaps you know you tend to use the bathroom either at 6am or 4pm. So you set up your bidet in advance to go off at 6:30am and 4:30pm, to give yourself a margin of error.

Worst case, you sit there and think about life, or perhaps about your deity, for a few minutes. Isn’t that what Shabbat’s about anyway? And then: automatic water sprinkling cleaning your bum.

But imagine the downsides.

You forget to close the lid. When you finally go to the bathroom, water is dripping from the ceiling.

Do I need to call the plumber? Oh no, that’s just Shabbat mode. (Goodbye, lease.)

You have a friend over for Shabbat. You forget to specify when they should or shouldn’t go to the bathroom.

Must I spell it out for you? (Goodbye, friend.)

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Maybe not everything should have a Shabbat mode.

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For a Q&A on automatic toilet (not bidet) and sink use on Shabbat, check out this discussion from Stack Exchange.

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• Beeeeep (The thermometer registers another morning’s temperature.)
• Kshh (Another rapid test open. Sure, it’s not technically necessary to keep testing once you know you have COVID, but would you miss the opportunity to find out if it’s magically gone?)
• Zzzzp zzzzp (Open the screen door, head outside, and lower the mask for a minute.)
• Clink clink [and talking sounds. I don’t know how to spell those] (The neighbors eat and speak.)
• Pfff pfff pfff (The soap dispenser is nearly empty. Again.)
• Splat (A wet towel hits the ground on its way to the laundry pile, making way for a dry, clean replacement)
• Chirp chirp (Birds. Audible because nothing else is going on.)
• Whoosh whoosh (The washing machine whirs.)
• …. (Quiet)
• Hhhrnnk shshshsh (Sleep well. Or just sleep.)

Grateful that my experience seems to have been on the lighter side.

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Just because we paid for a movie and started watching it doesn’t mean we also need to stay all the way through if it’s not that great. We’ve already paid. We’ve already lost some time. We can choose to keep what we have left—and do something more enjoyable and rewarding with it—or we can lose even more.

Just because we have seven books in progress, each one picked for its own reason, in the hopes of helping us reach a particular aim (laughter, understanding, self-improvement, relaxation), doesn’t mean we need to read even a single word more if we’ve already gotten what we think we can out of them, or if we’re simply ready for something else.

Just because we got here by doing X and then Y and then Z, Z, Z, and more Z doesn’t mean we can’t wake up tomorrow and try out Q, just to see how it goes. Doesn’t mean we can’t deliberately choose not-Z, and still reasonably expect our little nooks to keep revolving on the surface of the earth.

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Every day, we wake up in our particular homes, in our particular beds, with our particular dimmable alarm clocks and half-empty tissue boxes and toothpaste-stained sinks… in part because of our past decisions.

We’re surrounded by our particular selection of baby carrots and nut butters and olive oils and dates, our particular selection of literature and psychology books, and our particular piles of reminders to do the laundry and renew that membership but cancel the other one, and our particular partners or relatives or roommates or neighbors… in part because of our past decisions.

We have the roles we play in our own lives and in those of others, the routines we follow, the exercises we do (or ignore, leaving the equipment cozily in the closet)… in part because of our past decisions.

And when we feel like it really would be lovely for some things to look different, all those past choices and circumstances and the expectations we have, the expectations of our people, and frankly even of those of our groceries and clothes and beds (waving at us from across the room) can make it feel like change is not available to us.

So maybe tomorrow isn’t a totally clean slate. Maybe we’ve already covered most of it with plans. But if there’s even just a corner open, maybe we can start with a new sort of doodle. With a first or second or twenty-seventh step toward something that suits us better.

With a little not-Z.

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Now to remember this in the morning.

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Early on Friday, the supermarket is bustling. I get some greens, some onions. I’m just about to reach over for the bell peppers.

The man next to me knocks down two yellow bell peppers.

They drop.

He scrambles.

He adjusts the open produce bag, hands tight on either side.

A moment passes.

He checks the floor.

Huh. No bell peppers.

He checks the produce bag.

They’re both in it.

He looks at me, eyes wide, fists in the air (still holding the produce bag):

“I caught them!”

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Here’s to a day full of wins.

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Energized: “We haven’t touched this in years—trash or donation?”

Bewildered: “Is that where that went?”

Confused: “Why did we get that in the first place?”

Wistful: “Hey, remember this?”

Disgusted: “What is that?”

Sentimental: “Oh, but that was what…”

Hopeful: “I’ll finally be able to think about what I need to do instead of constantly picking up.”

Exasperated: “Do we really need any of this?”

Connected: “Someone else could do so much more with this.”

Despairing: “How will we ever get through this?”

Ironic: “What a great opportunity to practice mindfulness.”

Relieved: “We’re done!”

Optimistic: “It’ll be so easy to stay organized now.”

Disappointed: “I really thought it would last this time.”

I’m a child, in bed, lights out, lying awake and worrying about my family members or myself dying. I have no particular reason to be concerned, no concept of death beyond that of geographically distant elderly relatives, but I worry. And I figure there is one thing I can do about it, entirely on my own.

I can imagine these deaths taking place. Not in gruesome detail—I’m lucky I’ve never had that kind of imagination—but just the fact of them. And I can imagine how they might feel. And I can cry.

And I think: if I really get the feelings right, truly imagine these calamities, I can prevent them from happening.

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I grow up. I no longer have the inherent helplessness small children have, but I have acquired grown-up helplessness: the knowledge that there are events we cannot prevent. The awareness of nature’s slyness as it hands us surprises in exactly the form we did not think to consider.

I outgrow these preventative imaginings.

Or so I think.

Until the next check-up. Until the next suspected symptom of something not quite normal. Until.

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I don’t outgrow them after all.

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I once wrote about the nature of unvocalized pain.

A. pointed out that I missed out a critical dimension of the playground scream: When it’s due to pain (rather than, say, indignation), le scream tends to… appear… only after the subject confirms the presence of a suitable audience.

Friends have said that they, too, tend to respond to pain with silence.

I think about this sometimes. What is the line between silence and vocalizing in the face of pain? Maybe one dimension is the acuteness of the pain or of the anticipation of pain:

Since my partner loves planes and watching Air Crash Investigations, he knows that when pilots realize a crash is coming up, they often say no more than “Oh, shit.” Passengers, too. Unlike in movies, people don’t actually generally scream when the plane is on its way down.

Which reminds me of a moment half a lifetime ago, when I walked into an open dryer door on a stackable washer and dryer. Next thing I knew, I was sitting on the floor (in voiceless confusion).

Incidentally, this is also what happened one day when, as I washed dishes, A. came up to me and said, “I have cancer.”

Way to bring down the mood, Ophira.

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You’re among new people, or perhaps just one new person. (Can you be “among” a single person?) You kick off a conversation, or they do, with some ready comment on the weather, or whatever’s going on in the background, or a neutral enough bit of recent news. (Like about traffic. Or the weather. Or. Well. Neutral is in the eye of the beholder.)

You’re not invested yet.

Maybe you’re indifferent. Maybe you’re looking for a way out of the conversation. Maybe you’re hopeful because something about this person has already struck you as intriguing, or you’re on the lookout for a new person in your life.

You keep chatting.

At some point, you realize the conversation has taken wing. There’s potential here, worth exploring.

You feel something new.

Curiosity about this other person. Excitement that you’re on the verge of something that could be wonderful. Anticipation. Exhilaration.

The rush of new friendship.

And also gratitude, that this person you so want to be your friend also wants you to be theirs.

It takes time to find people who accept you as you are, and whom you are willing to accepting as they are. It takes searching and filtering and remaining open to possibility. It might take more than a conversation to get there. It might take exchanges that last weeks or months or years. It might take a cataclysmic event or simply repeated interactions.

Or you might feel it right away. When you walk a few blocks together off a commuter train. When you ask about the password at a coffeeshop. When in line together at a bakery. When surrounded by people with seemingly odd senses of humor, or reality, or decency, at a hostel south of the Mason-Dixon line.

However it happens, and however long it takes, that sense that you’re reading from the same script, that you’re noticing the same details, that you’re on the same trail, in some way that matters—it feels inexplicable and fantastic. Like a spark. Like magic.

It does not grow old.

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At least it hasn’t yet for me.

Don’t tell me if it does. I’d rather not know.

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Grateful for friends deeply embedded and casual; distant and close; old, new, and prospective.

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I’ve spent a grand total of two months of my life living by myself. Not just having a place to myself while someone else was away or until they moved in, but having possession of a place, from the front door through the kitchen and living area and bedroom, entirely on my own. Those two months were enlightening.

I learned that if I didn’t clean, no one else was going to, either. (Often true with roommates too, often, but somehow starkly true when you’re alone.)

I learned that if I didn’t figure out how to turn on the oven, I just wouldn’t have cooked food. (It required lighting a flame through a hole on the bottom of the stove, inside the door, which was good practice for relighting the three pilot lights that constantly went out on the 1954 Kenmore stove we lived with years later).

If I didn’t clean the dishes, sweep, vacuum, scrub the toilet—my place would be a mess.

And if I didn’t catch the cockroach in the bedroom, or the one behind the toilet, or the one under the sink, I’d have cockroach parties all over my place. No one else would know or care.

Most of all, I learned that taking good care of myself—and this I see anew each time I go to sleep early enough, each time I make sure to end the day in an organized, clean-enough home, each time I make a plan and then follow it—is a lot like being taken care of. It feels like being less alone. It feels safe, comforting. Like you’re okay, or at least like you can be. Like someone cares.

Because someone does.

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If memories can be inherently valuable even without being strictly accurate, what does that mean for accuracy in general?

Sure, in crimes, it’s important (and often difficult) to figure out exactly what happened—who did what to whom, when, where.

But maybe sometimes the ground-level truth simply doesn’t matter.

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The truth may not matter because it’s unattainable.

In college, I took part in an extracurricular class, not sponsored by the university. It was geared at secular Jewish students and led by religious instructors, aimed at connecting us more strongly to Judaism.

We don’t always achieve our aims.

I had always been taught that Judaism was about being willing to ask, and to entertain, questions. In this setting, though, the leadership focused—excessively—on answers. On whether God and Judaism are “real.” On trying to prove they exist, or at least to demonstrate that it’s impossible to disprove their existence.

And all I could think was, Why is this relevant?*

Once you’ve acknowledged that it’s either impossible to prove the existence (or disprove the nonexistence) of a thing, why expend effort trying to convince people that it’s real?

At that point, it no longer matters what’s objectively true. It only matters (to you) what’s true for you. What really matters beyond your internal universe is what you do with yourself. How you lead your life. How you treat yourself. How you treat others. What choices you make that can affect your life, your community, and the world around you.

Which are the same things that always matter.

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Or the truth may not matter because it’s not the most interesting part of the story.

Maybe sometimes we can acknowledge our fallibility and still tell a story how we remember it, still feel it how we remember it, and it can be okay. Maybe sometimes it can be a strength to choose to remember good moments as good moments, as meaningful to us and inherently valuable, regardless of whatever else was going on at the time and what we might not have noticed at the time or remembered. Maybe sometimes we can even consciously set aside things that stand in the way of a positive interpretation of an experience, a chance to learn and grow from it, or at least to bask in it.

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* They didn’t like this question.

Thanks to Tom for asking the question that led me down this path.

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