Hey there, it's Leo. And so, what a week's been.

Hey there, it's Leo.

And so, what a week it's been.

Another week of social distancing, another week of uncertainty.

Another week of being cooped up in small apartments or houses trying to do work while the kids are going crazy

occupying every desktop laptop iPad smartphone that you have another week of

going slightly mad, but thankfully we have Shabbat coming right up.

And even though we can't leave the house, go to Shul or to Shabbat dinners with each other, we can take a moment to decompress, to shift from one state of mind to another, much calmer one.

How? Maybe by taking a note from this week's partial,

Vaikahal-pekudae.

It begins with Moses, again stressing the importance of Shabbat.

Here's how it starts. Six days work may be done, Moses says, but on the seventh

day you shall have sanctity. It's an odd way of putting it, really.

After all, did our third grade teacher teach us never to use the passive voice?

Why, work may be done instead of you may do work.

The Lubavacher Rebbe had a brilliant take on the meaning of this strange little phrase.

The tone is passive, he says, because people, whether they like it or not, are passive.

They're not true creators.

You could be as busy as you want during the week.

You could run from meeting to meeting from one Zoom call to another.

And you still won't achieve your true calling which is simply to be human

another one of God's creations capable not only of labor but also and much more importantly of something

...