It\’s not that I have Christmas envy — I don\’t celebrate Christmas,and I love, honor and embrace Jewish holiday traditions — but there\’s just something about those Christmas carols that gets to me.
In a way, Jewish prayer is like another pillar of observant Jewish life: Shabbat. Just as tefilah involves letting one\’s creativity conquer one\’s boredom, Shabbat is about finding creative enjoyment on a day when cell-phones, iPods and DVD players are treated as hardly more useful than paperweights.
This Shabbat is called Shabbat Shirah and is named for the \”Song of the Sea\” sung by Moses and the Israelites after they experienced the redemption at the splitting of the Red Sea. What was it, the rabbis asked, that evoked shirah, song, at this point and not earlier when they actually left Egypt? What propels the song to burst forth from their lips? When are we motivated to truly sing the song in our hearts?
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