Distinctions (Havdalah) for the end of Shabbat, by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

Shared on: 21 June 2013 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories: Motsei Shabbat

Tags: English vernacular prayer, paraliturgical havdalah, הבדלות havdalot, תחינות teḥinot, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., paraliturgical teḥinot, English poetry, Prayers as poems

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Contribute a translation	English
	In the end we’re like children: we thrive on distinctions between me and you, us and them. Made in Your image we separate light from darkness, family from stranger, weekday from that fleeting taste of Paradise.
	Wax drips from the braided candle. Cinnamon tingles the nose to keep us from fainting as the extra soul departs. Stop now. Notice this hinge between Shabbat and what’s next.
	Plunge the candle into the wine but don’t cry: even without a flame our light still shines. This is our inheritance, better than rubies. And now it’s Saturday night, the cusp of a new beginning, another day. This week, may our hearts be whole.

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“Distinctions (Havdalah) for the end of Shabbat, by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Rachel Barenblat

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (a/k/a the Velveteen Rabbi) serves Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is author of six volumes of poetry, among them 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia, 2011) and Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda, 2018). A founding builder at Bayit: Building Jewish, she resides in western Massachusetts. She has blogged as the Velveteen Rabbi since 2003.

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“The Alchymist, In Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers” (1771) by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1791)

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17