Henry Swieca to Rabbi Heschel & Shabbat quotes

This week before Shabbat entered, I attended a special event in the office of Henry Swieca in New York where the Israel Football League was discussed, and that gathering which ended after an inspiring presentation on the power of team sports in Israel ended with the greeting “Shabbat Shalom.”

And indeed, worldwide Jews celebrate Shabbat in so many different ways and wanted to share some awesome quotes on the meaning of Shabbat:

• “The holy Shabbos, the most longed for day, is the day which gives us the strength to begin again.” Simple To Remember
• “The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.” Rabbi Joshua Heschel
• “God, help us now to make this new Shabbat. After noise, we seek quiet; after crowds of indifferent strangers, we seek to touch those we love … We break open the gates of the reservoirs of goodness and kindness in ourselves and others; we reach toward one holy perfect moment of Shabbat.” Ruth Brin, in the poem “Sabbath Prayer”
• “I believe the Sabbath; I keep the Sabbath.” John Harvey Kellogg
• “If you don’t take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You’re doing too much, you’re being too much in charge. You’ve got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you’re not doing anything.” Eugene H. Peterson
• “I don’t work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.” Chaim Potok
• “So in a way, Shabbat means retreating back to that state of existence on a weekly basis, dropping the world for a dose of something different. If Shabbat sounds like a vacation to you, you’re on the right track: it is—for the soul.”
• “Six days work is done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest a set-apart gathering. You do no work, it is a Sabbathto in all of your dwellings.” Leviticus 23:3″
• “On Shabbos you don’t have to believe in holiness because you can see it.” Unknown
• “Shabbos is a day when everything we do is holy.” Unknown
• “Synagogue, family and custom – The essences of Shabbat.” Michael Lichtenstein
• “Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

“I commodity we get up, eat work, exercise, spend time with our loved ones, go to sleep – are dictated not so much by our physical needs, far less our emotional or spiritual ones, as by the demands of running an efficient marketplace… Sabbaths are like periods inserted into an otherwise endless run-on sentence.” Rabbi Zalman Shacter

Indeed, all over the world: Shabbat Shalom.