Helpless or Hopeful: Sunday for The Blues or Blue Skies? (Shemini 5776)

We often are ambivalent about Sundays. Some Sundays leave us with dissonance and anxiety anticipating the week ahead. We feel helpless: those are Sunday blues. Other Sundays inspire us to carry optimism and hope into the coming week. We feel hopeful; those are blue sky Sundays. 

This Sunday every JCHS student will be adventuring far from home - to southern California, to Zion National Park, to New Orleans, and within Israel. These journeys empower our students by engaging them with others who think, live, and believe differently than they do. These journeys empower our students to see their own world from different points of view -- and to imagine shaping the world through their effort and labor. Still just as Sundays start each week, some journey encounters will generate dissonance or anxiety while others inspire optimism and hope.

The Torah portion this week hints at our potential to choose optimism over anxiety - seeing blue skies instead of feeling the blues. Just after the Torah
narrative describes dedicating the tabernacle in the wilderness, it opens this week with an unusual phrase, "On the eighth (shemini) day" (Lev. 9:1) But this particular day has never been referred to before. So why is it set-off with a definite article. As MeAm Loez (18th century, Constantinople) What's so important about the eighth day? 

MeAm Loez offers several answers. One seems particularly compelling in this context, that is the eighth day refers to Sundays. Sunday is the day on which light was created and all creation began. It follows that the eighth day comes immediately after the first Shabbat that closes the week of creation. In that sense Sunday echoes back to the start of creation and to the vast divine potential that filled the world.  

But the Sunday following the first week of creation also was the day Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden. Talk about a journey of dissonance and anxiety!?! It was on that eighth day that Eve and Adam were made responsible for bringing their own labor and effort into the world. As expressed by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: Creation is about the light that God brings to the world; the eighth day is about the light that humanity brings to the world. In Sacks words, "On Shabbat we remember G-d’s creation. On the eighth day we celebrate our creativity as the image and partner of G-d."

In other words, if Shabbat is a remembrance of the fullness of creation, then Sundays are the encouragement to realize the full potential of creation through our efforts and work. 

In the week ahead may each of us enjoy journeys that leave the blues behind and that involve remarkable encounters inspiring us to reach toward the the blue skies of boundless potential.