Lighting Candles

So our experiment has come to an end and I was surprised to see not many people wrote about there last experience... Soooo, I guess I'll say something. I have really enjoyed it and I think it was nice that the last week was something so simplistic and one of the first things I think about when I think of Shabbat. Lighting Candles... My group assignment was to light candles with friends or with students, it was such a great assignment because I have really been taking this entire experiment as an opportunity to share shabbat with my students. Every Monday I get together with some of my students for bagels on the lawn and we talk about our weekend and I always talk about the shabbat experiment assignment of the week. So this past weekend when we were assigned to include them, it seemed almost too easy, we had a program filled weekend and I was excited to share Shabbat with my students all weekend long.

Our Hillel has shabbat in house every other week and on the off weeks students host potluck shabbatot in their homes, and this week was the off week that my student interns decided to host. All week long we talked about what they were going to cook and all of the details for their shabbat meal without staff. On Friday morning one of my interns came by the building to cook chicken from scratch with a special Moroccan recipe his mother gave him, and I sent him on his way in the afternoon with a paper bag filled with shabbat candles, matches, grape juice and challah.

Saturday night we hosted an area wide Havdalah Beach bonfire for all 8 San Diego campuses to attend which was a huge success! We had a fabulous turn out from all the campuses and students from all types of observance backgrounds from the students who walked the hour walk from UCSD to the students from North County who drove an hour to attend. Being able to offer such a great weekend to the students was something my coworkers and I were really proud of.

Sunday was our Annual Mitzvah Day and again had a fabulous turnout. At each event we had, I was more and more impressed and touched by this Shabbat Experiment. I thought about it all week long and this weekend when I didn't have a Shabbat Experiment assignment, I assigned myself something. This Shabbat was a great time and I know that after the 10 weeks of committing to keep a piece of Shabbat I can easily keep celebrating Shabbat on my own and with the people in my life.