Good news!  TBT will be holding a fabulous cabaret night with music and food this Saturday night.  More good news: I will be leading Havdallah to lead us into the festivities.  Even more good news: We don’t have enough spice boxes for every table to have one.  If we pass around a single spice box, it will never reach every table before we finish the ceremony.  So it occurs to me that this is yet another perfect opportunity for some creative spiritual crafting.

The tradition is that on the Sabbath we gain an extra soul.  As we say farewell to the Sabbath and our extra soul, we smell spices in order to give us a measure of comfort, to bring some of the spice of Shabbat into our week, and to wake us gently into our weekly responsibilities.

There are a lot of beautiful Havdallah sets that one can purchase to beautify the mitzvah of separating the Sabbath from the rest of the week, but I think that crafting this one piece of the Havdallah set and putting one on each table for our guests to use will help others think of ways to bring their own creativity into ritual.

May your Shabbat be filled with spice and may you carry that spice into a beautiful week to come!