Shira Schwartz
I sat with my therapist recently and spoke about going to synagogue.
“I’ve started saying a prayer on Saturday before going to Shul,” I began, “for God to help me be with myself.
“This feels especially important on Shabbat,” I tell him, “which is supposed to be a day of stillness. Shabbat is about being.”
“Perhaps this is how you can lead,” he responded. “To bring yourself in your community. To lead in being.”
In my first session with Shawn, a secular Jew, he surprised me with a Jewish reference when explaining his therapeutic practice. He asked if I was familiar with the phrase, “Yashar koach.” I was; it is a Hebrew colloquialism that means “good work.” Translated literally, he contended, the words mean yashar, straight, and koach, strength. Focussed energy. What would happen, he asked, if all the energy I exerted in holding myself back was actually channelled – into strength?
I started thinking about the connections between time and work, Sabbath and strength. A.J. Heschel’s iconic text The Sabbath has a lot to offer when making these connections.
Heschel sets up his book by stating what Shabbat is not: finite. “Reality to us is thinghood, consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a thing.”[1] But the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, when God “rested,”[2] is not about conquering things in space, as we do on the first six days. It is about surrendering to time, which is infinite, divine. Time is transient, every hour individual, every minute irreplicable, as different as one human being from another. Ethan Dor Shav calls this transience “hevel,” fleeting, like vapor[3]; Peggy Phelan calls it performance, live, irreproducible and disappearing[4]; Victor Turner calls it liminality[5]; and Heidegger calls it dasein, being there.[6]
Dor Shav expresses how, on the seventh day, God “rested the world”:
After six days of executing a master design, on the seventh day He left the created universe to its own devices. Like kneading dough and then “resting” it on the table to conclude its creation, or “resting” a cake hot out of the oven.[7]
The Sabbath, he posits, is about letting go; we can make a choice to be, to see ourselves as we are, as “very good.”[8] Heschel makes the same assertion, characterizing Shabbat as “a day in which we… reclaim our authentic state… in which we are what we are, regardless of whether we are learned or not, of whether our career is a success or a failure; it is a day of independence.”[9]
The goal of spirituality is not to amass a wealth of information, according to Heschel, but to “face sacred moments.”[10] “The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays,” he articulates, in the way that one might rest to become more productive. “The weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but a climax of living.”[11] Productivity is integral to our human experience, but we must not forget it is the means and not the end. Creation serves the Godly purpose of being and there-ness that we humans experience one seventh of: the fraction of other-worldliness we merit to receive in this lifetime. And, for Heschel, it is poesis, world making – an essential ‘bringing forth.’ It is the difference between living fully and not, being asleep and being awake.
I learned what it means to “face sacred moments” during two intensive three-day workshops I participated in last summer, appropriately over Shabbat, which followed a twelve-week process group I completed earlier that year, run by a somatic therapy institute that involves individual and group therapy. In one workshop, someone disclosed their darkest secret. “I’m a pervert,” they revealed, and claimed that if we really knew them we could never love them. I learned it again when a woman in her seventies broke down and said she was afraid to die having never lived. And when a man in his thirties admitted that he slept in the same bed as his mother late into adulthood and hasn’t been able to relinquish that shame.
On the eve of the seventh day, God saw “it was good.”[12] Profoundly, in that workshop, it was. To witness in real time the excruciating vulnerability of facing the darkest place inside, the full force of God’s creation – our humanity – and its capacity to move me, was sacred.
There are striking ontological connections between Shabbat, “a dimension in which the human is at home with the divine,”[13] and the radical, painfully vulnerable expressions of somatic ‘group work,’ two seemingly opposing forces. Even their language appears contradictory; Sabbath suggests respite, and somatic connotes exertion. My experience of this work has been wild, vigorous, even violent – but at its core it seems to be about being with oneself and seeing that ‘it is good,’ not from judgment but from deep understanding.
Somatic group work is also about surrender – to how we have been hurt, how we have hurt others, what we feel, where and how we are willing or unwilling to change, and that to change or not change is a choice. It is about surrendering to the truth of what we want and how willing we are to get it. By switching off the noise in the mind and the stories we tell (recognizing them as stories), we can exist in the quiet reality of the body and feeling. Heschel describes Shabbat as silence: “How else to express glory in the presence of eternity, if not by the silence of abstaining from nois[e].”[14] In some ways I have learned more about what Shabbat represents in Judaism by doing this work than I have at any synagogue or Shabbat table.
As an autoethnographer and performance researcher, I am also struck by the performativity and theatricality of somatic practice. My workshop experience began with an orientation of the equipment in the space: a large foam cube, a bat (used to hit the cube), mattresses, rollers, punching pads and gloves, and pillows. I learned that these are tools to help participants move the energy in the body. As one facilitator puts it, the “trauma, abuse… the thing that someone said last week that hurt our feelings – it’s in our bodies.” The physical act of hitting a block, punching a pillow, thrusting a mattress, wrestling, grappling, holding, being held – it’s so primal. Through skillful facilitation, words and voice are incorporated into these highly theatrical improvisations, so powerful and energetically charged that they feel scripted at times. In such moments of supreme vulnerability, the participant experiences themselves in all their feeling, and in that place, may choose to change.
In one somatic workshop, I learned that we enter the world as infants completely at one with our need and essence; we are pure life force. We then come into contact with environmental limitations: family, culture, religion, society. At this point, there is a kind of protest – the energy wants to come out, but our parents or primary caregivers can’t/won’t receive it, for a multitude of reasons (fatigue, financial constraints, emotional limitations, or their own trauma), and we feel pain, terror, and rage. We begin to register that our energy is not welcome, and, since we rely on our parents for our basic needs, we adapt to stay in connection with them. This takes on the form of a mask, a distorted version of ourselves, which we come to identify with; we think we are the mask. The ‘life-force energy’ we had when we were children is locked up and stored in the body. We learn to keep it that way to shield ourselves from the pain of rejection, but this ‘protection’ keeps us separate from the world.
In somatic group work, through role play, physical movement, and what is called ‘process work,’ the goal is to gain consciousness around our defense, our separateness, and how we actually derive pleasure from it, because it is familiar and because on some level we believe we still need it to survive. When we’re not invited to a party, we delude ourselves into thinking that we didn’t want to go in the first place. Or, when the party host invites us over another time, we take immense pleasure in saying no. “I’ll never be his friend again,” I say. “I’ll make him pay for what he’s done.” What we don’t realize is the massive price in making the choice to separate out and not bring our true selves into connection. The revenge often costs us our lives.
The word kiddush refers to the blessing recited over wine on Shabbat. It means separation, derived from the Hebrew word kadesh, to make holy or set apart. This appears to contradict what was just said; to set oneself apart detracts from the soul, it does not make it holy. But it’s a paradox: to separate is disconnection but to know my separateness is the ultimate connection: it is to reveal myself to others. In somatic workshops, the goal is to ask: how do I separate myself out of my marriage, my friendships, my career, my dreams, through judgment, blame, or fear; how do I play a role in my disconnection? It is the difference between saying, “I really want to hurt you right now” and actually hurting someone; the former actually brings me into connection because I’ve chosen to let someone in. I once had a facilitator say to me, “You’re so afraid of being rejected, but you also want it so badly. Because it means that someone has actually seen you.” According to Dor Shav, Shabbat is about letting go: to ‘let go and let God,’[15] to trust someone enough to know you, and more, to trust yourself enough to know you. And to accept yourself wholly.
On my very first day of group therapy, I learned about trust. There was an initial ‘check-in,’ where everyone shared what brought them to the workshop, and then we moved on. But a participant interrupted and turned to face me. He was ‘holding back,’ he revealed, and had something to say. In my earnestness, I assumed it would be complimentary. I didn’t yet know that this work encourages participants to ‘come clean’ about their feelings, even (and especially) their judgments. “I don’t feel you,” he stated, looking into my eyes. “And I don’t trust you.” His honesty knocked the wind out of me; it snapped me in half. To my surprise, I burst into tears. I was a leaking wound. At the end of the session I approached the instructor and told her I would not be returning. She asked me why.
“Because of what happened,” I answered, dumbly. “It shattered me.”
“When someone rejects you, do you want it to shatter you?” she challenged.
No, I answered, to which she responded, “Then you need to come back. I can help you.”
This was my crash course in somatic group work, a truly fascinating world. Imagine walking into a room and telling your unfiltered truth about everyone in it. “I like you, I don’t like you. I’m afraid of you, I’m attracted to you. You disgust me, you intrigue me.” The ethos is radical honesty: no masks. I noticed early on that group members would ‘interrupt’ each other with their personal feelings and triggers. This interrupting really threw me at first – I judged people for it. Then I realized it was leadership. They were owning their feeling. I want touch; I want attention. I’m jealous; I’m disgusted. I need. When in truth, the energy in the room explodes like popcorn and something very dynamic happens: it becomes alive.
An integral part of somatic group work is calling people out (and being called out) on what you see and feel in the room. One person will admit they’re feeling something (bored, frustrated, exhausted, envious), and this will ignite more honesty; often others are feeling the same thing. We are taught to reject our intuitive reactions and to override our judgments because they aren’t ‘nice’; but it turns out, when followed, they reveal a powerful truth that is rarely offered up in the real world. The point is not to determine what is ‘correct,’ but rather, to use the energetic field to better understand oneself and others. It could be group-think, but what I experienced was an energetic power of the collective: a frighteningly accurate barometer of the pulse in the room.
In one instance, I was at the centre of a process when a participant shot up like a popcorn kernel and slammed his notebook against the wall. “You’re so angry!” he exploded. “Why won’t you express it?” The group was unanimous in their agreement; apparently everyone could feel my anger but me. “I don’t feel that,” I upheld, and believed I was telling the truth. Then I deflected: “I feel sadness, pain, grief….” This further enraged the group. A facilitator asked me, “Do you see how, by withholding your anger, you’re holding everybody here hostage?”
“I don’t want to do that,” I said.
“But you are,” she countered. “You’re denying your anger and in doing so keeping everyone stuck. You have a lot of power here. It’s why you’ve been alone for so long and it’s why you’re so sad.”
I started to crack. “Can you help me?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she answered, and handed me the bat.
I hit the block.
“Say, ‘I won’t let you see me,’” she said.
“I won’t let you see me.” I hit.
“I won’t ever let you see me,” she prompted. “I won’t ever show myself to you.”
“I won’t ever,” I repeated, and started to cry. “I won’t ever show myself to you.”
“I hate,” she fed me.
“I hate.” Hit.
“I hate you for protecting everyone but me. You said you would but you forgot about me. You forgot me and I’ll never let you see me. You forgot me and I’ll make you pay for it forever. FOREVER.” I screamed.
There is a moment in a somatic workshop when something happens – a divine spark. What Heschel might call “the wisdom of the body,”[16] a place where the “soul sense[s] the spirit,”[17] a piece of the infinite. When God revealed himself to Elijah in Prophets, when he was alone in a cave and thought he was going to die, it was not by mighty wind or earthquake, but in a “still, small voice.”[18] Many of us live our lives without knowing how to truly feel, without judgment. “Where can the likeness of God be found?”[19] Heschel asks. The seventh day is a day of feeling, of experience, of letting go, of loving ourselves. Just for one day, exactly as we are. Dor Shav says that, on Shabbat, we:
consciously decide to see it all as ‘very good’… in full knowledge that our perspective will soon revert [back]… [And] in exchange, God embraces us as well, just the way we are. That’s His side of the bargain. [F]or one day we are blessed with unconditional acceptance; God’s own ‘letting go’ of us, His seeing our being as very good.[20]
Shabbat, for many, involves restriction: 39 categories of creative prohibition. But what is it? No two people have the same answer. Lighting candles while praying for love. Walking without a destination. Nourishment, contemplation, showing up unannounced. In my house growing up, it was puppet shows and backgammon and baseball in the middle of the street. Imagination, openness. Oneness.
When the sun sets late into the evening, and the guests at my Shabbat table are deep in conversation, and the minutes ebb away slowly, imperceptibly, like a flower growing, time stops and souls suspend in a kind of ephemerality that can only be shaped by the human spirit. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do; there is only being.
Heidegger calls the paradox of existence Being, which involves but is not limited to dasein, being there. For Heidegger, Being is relation, not a thing that exists in space. It is the ‘thing’ (or no-thing) that renders possible all things or being there(s). It is the container and yet it defies all containment. Being is not subject to dasein in any way, and yet it is disclosed through a definite situation of there-ness. It is the occurrence of no-thing and the occurrence of all things, of all there-ness.
It is not God, it is not Sabbath, and yet it is both.
It is the Godly consciousness of there-ness within and above and between all things, including ourselves and our thinking. It is to ask questions we don’t already have the answers to. To fathom the unfathomable, to push questioning to the very end. To understand things we can barely grasp because we have forgotten how to ask about them.
That humanity was created b’tzelem Elokim, in God’s image, means that we have a shard of Him, of Being, in us. We can connect to Being through Shabbat and our feeling; we can lead in Being.
The seventh day is the final day, the ‘extra’ day, for us and for God. It is a day outside of (and paradoxically within) finite space. It is a day of choice, of risk, of making new choices, of doubt, of recognizing that all beliefs are doubtable, and of opening our beliefs to ongoing doubt. Of using our tradition and our history to understand that we have a lot of choices, that we are finite and also changeable. Of progress, which is only possible when we become conscious of our humanness, our Godliness, our changeability. And of surrender: of letting go of who we think we should be in order to be who we are.
[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 5.
[2] Exodus 20:11
[3] Ethan Dor Shav, “Ecclesiastes, Fleeting and Timeless,” Jewish Bible Quarterly 46, no. 2 (2018): 217.
[4] Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993), 146.
[5] D. Soyini Madison, Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012), 158.
[6] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 59.
[7] Ethan Dor Shav, personal correspondence, July 2026.
[8] Exodus 31:17
[9] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, 30.
[10] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, 6.
[11] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, 14.
[13] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, 16.
[14] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, 15.
[15] Alcoholics Anonymous (1964) notes the utility of the phrase “let go and let God” in navigating third-step surrenders. It has become an informal recovery slogan.
[16] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, 21.
[17] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, 17.
[19] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, 16.
[20] Ethan Dor Shav, personal correspondence, July 2026.
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