Sabbath Manifesto: Slowing Down Live Since 2009

Looking to donate money to help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti? Here are a couple of reliable organizations:

Partners in Health http://www.pih.org
American Jewish World Service http://www.ajws.org
Yéle Haiti http://www.yele.org

“Man’s rank is his power to uplift. ”
- George McDonald

It is SO commendable to donate money to charity organizations! Bless all who can do that! However, I would like to suggest that you get out and help your neighbor, or someone who needs a hand. Not always a hand-out, but maybe visit a friend with a fresh baked loaf of bread and a promise to help mow their lawn on Sunday or during the week, or visit a very lonely shut-in or an elderly person. Grab some friends and go sing to the folks in a nursing home, you will put a song in their heart….(yours too). It's not always about giving money..its about giving of yourself. Sometimes that's harder to do because our time is so precious!

How do those of us who abstain from commerce and the creation of permanent goods or structures accomplish this goal on the Sabbath? By sharing our table perhaps, but that is limiting. I would argue perhaps that six days a week we spend engaged in the act of tikkun olam, repairing the world; on the seventh, the world is elevated to a more perfect plane without our intervention. Keeping Shabbat readies us to meet whatever challenges the next week brings, recharging our batteries (for work and philanthropy) in a meaningful and intentional way.

I agree that certain kinds of Philanthropy are too active and involved to fall into the Sabbath spirit. However, as a High School student, my Synagogue youth group friends and I would visit nursing home residents every Shabbat afternoon. We sat with them and talked, heard stories about their lives, families, adventures etc. This was a very relaxed, relective and recharging experience whcih I felt was in tune with the Sabath spirit.

Besides Sabbath Philanthropy (monetary-focused charity), there are other, way better, acts to Give back. Sharon and Noam write of an excellent way here that also includes within it the principle Getting outside — namely, WALKING to a nursing home or hospital. Another incredibly simple way of Giving back is to extend your neighbor a friendly Sabbath greeting. Why is this Giving back? Because this simple gesture welcomes and INCLUDES others, and can easily provide the side benefit of fulfilling the principle of Connecting with loved ones. This last one seems to me something of a no-brainer, yet is so very simple that it invariably gets overlooked these days.

Can we apply the economic argument, that a decision not to buy is a decision to sell? If so, can we apply this to Shabbat thus: a decision not to take, not to consume, not to buy, is a decision to give back, to release?

Give back what others have poured into your life such as
Praying more for others.
Helping others.
Blessing with $$ where & when you are led
Giving to others needs – items
Gift surprises to spread joy.

While non-monetary giving is an excellent way to honor the giving Sabbath, monetary offerings are just as effective in achieving a correct flow of intention. The San Francisco AIDS Foundation uses every penny that you donate toward the AIDS Lifecycle fundraising, to life-saving programs everyday. just sayin’
http://www.tofighthiv.org/site/TR/AIDSLIFECYCLE10/AIDSLifeCycleCenter?px=1126973&pg=personal&fr_id=1320

You can’t always do everything, but we often invite someone over for Shabbat, and when my son was younger we usually had two or three kids, Jewish, Christian etc. share our table. On Saturdays we’d often feed the ducks in Queen E. Park. A special family Shabbat thing. And we always put money in the pushke.

Should do this every day….sabbath should raise the bar