United Synagogue Convention Delegates Learn to Celebrate Shabbat's End with Joy

If, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel told us, Shabbat is our cathedral in time, then its last hour is like the Holy Ark at the cathedral’s core, the most sacred time of all. (Remember, this is a Jewish cathedral.)

It is the time after the day’s light has faded and the shadows have turned to night’s black, when we try to hold on to the transformative magic of Shabbat before we flip all the switches that connect us to the hurrying world around us. It is a liminal time, full of possibility, full of sadness at ending Shabbat and full of excitement at the new week, beckoning unmarked ahead of us. It is a time when we call on the prophet Elijah, who, tradition tells us, never died, to guide and protect us.

At the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s recent international biennial convention, the 25th hour was recreated as the convention ended. Rabbi Edward Feinstein of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California, and the Jewish musician Craig Taubman, demonstrated the program they call the 25th Hour, which has been entrancing Rabbi Feinstein’s congregants for years now.

At the convention as at Valley Beth Shalom, the hour – and it is always exactly an hour, generally timed with a large hourglass – is filled with stories ,song, and celebration, and if the timing is right – as it was not on Sunday – it ends with havdalah, the ceremony that marks the sharp division between the Shabbat and the week.

“There always is a theme,” Rabbi Feinstein said. “At the convention, I talked about tefillah,” prayer. “I said that there are two principal motivations in Judaism – yirah, fear, and ahavah, love. For too long we’ve been ruled by yirah, worrying about membership, about intermarriage, about all sorts of things, but now it’s time to put that aside and start to talk the language of ahavah.”

About 300 people packed the room for the 25th Hour, and they loved it.

“It was incredibly moving,” Dr. Raymond Goldstein of Rochester, Minnesota, United Synagogue’s international president, said. It was also extremely upbeat. “We all moved to the front, and people were standing up, with their hands above their heads.” They felt the magic of Shabbat and kept it for themselves just a little longer before they had to let it go.

“It was fabulous,” added Dr. Marilyn Lishnoff Wind of Bethesda, Maryland, a member of United Synagogue’s executive committee. “The ruach that was generated was amazing. The energy in the room was tangible. I want to bring it back to my shul; I wanted to be able to bottle it and release it next Shabbat.”