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Shabbat Shalom

Translation by Yehoshua Siskin

Last Friday the Israeli educator Miriam Peretz published a photo of her Shabbat table: a plate, grape juice, challahs and a kiddush cup. That was it. She complied with the safety measures in this way. After Shabbat, she was interviewed and said:

• "I had a wonderful Shabbat. I never cook for myself. I always think about what the grandchildren love to eat. So I prepared kasha for myself. That is something my grandchildren don't eat. We are a Moroccan family and they ask, 'What is this?'. So I made kasha for myself just for fun."

• "Moments of crisis are not meant to break us. It's not just an expression that a woman giving birth 'dwells upon crisis.' She feels pain but from within the pain a child is born. Moments of pain are moments you can take inside of you and meditate upon, ask questions that there is no time to ask during the craziness of daily life. When I read the kiddush to myself, I was suddenly enlightened by these words: 'Although I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil since You are with me'. 'I will fear no evil' I said to myself and was strengthened. Life throws you into all kinds of situations. A person chooses how to interpret them. You can gloomily look upon your situation and think you are alone and isolated or you can say ' I am giving this moment to myself as a gift.'"

• "And in any case, what will a person not do to stay alive? If they tell us to take a certain medicine in order to live, we take it. But now all they are saying is: 'Sit at home and you will live'. So this will last for one or two Shabbats or one or two months – the main thing is to look forward for an answer to the question: 'Why am I here alone?' And the answer is: in order that I will be able to open my Shabbat table to thirty people, as always, in order that I will once again hear a big kiddush being sung with all my children and grandchildren".

Shabbat shalom.

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