Friday, April 08, 2005

Shabbos stands for?

Last week I went to a Friday night shabbaton in my school's Hillel. It was nice and all, kinda small though. Anyway, the whole program seemed to be geared towards an outreach type of ideal. They gave these booklets out which had a summary of all the events of the evening and nice little explanations of things like "What does Kiddush represent?"

I looked around and all I saw were a bunch of yeshivah graduates. I thought that was pretty funny so I turn to a friend of mine and I say in jest, "What does Shabbos stand for?" He looks at me strangely for a second (clearly not getting my facetiousness) and answers "It means rest."

I say that I know what it means, what does it stand for? He thinks for a minute, it doesn't stand for anything! So I say, still in jest, how can you say such a thing? Shabbos doesn't stand for anything?!

So my recently married friend thinks for another minute, gets a sneaky grin on his face, glances at his wife and says, Shabbat stands for Shtooping Between Tefilot!

1 comment:

M-n said...

Shabbos does not mean rest. It means cease. And it's not orignially from Hebrew. It's from the Babylonian word sabbatu.