"IT'S EREV SHABBAT!!!!!"

30 Nisan 5780

Rosh Chodesh Alef

Day 15 of the Omer

Erev Shabbat Kodesh

Parashat Tazria-Metzora

As originally shared in a letter dated Sun, 16 Jan 2005:

For over a year I have been having a recurring dream.

It is always Erev Shabbat and I am always rushing too late to prepare for Shabbat.  In the first dream, it is late morning and I realize I have no food to cook for Shabbat so I have to rush to get somewhere to buy food and then I am cut very, very short for time to prepare it.  I barely make it.  (This is not my experience in reality.  I usually begin preparing two days ahead.)

In each dream, the circumstances are the same except that it gets later in the day each time.  Each time, I note the time on the clock, 11 am, 1 pm, 3 pm, 5 pm.  In the first few dreams, while I have to rush, at least the stores are still open and I am able to get things, but it gets harder and harder.  Maybe I get home with food, but it's too late to cook.  Or the store is closing as I arrive and I can't begin to explain the feeling of desperation I experience in the dream.

The last dream I had like this happened maybe a month ago (Dec 2004).  In the dream, it seemed like any day of the week, there was no indication that it was getting close to Shabbat, I was talking to someone without any care or worry and suddenly I hear this alarm (like the Shabbat warning) and I asked what it could be and the person I was talking to said, "It's Shabbat."  I was in shock and devastated because I had no idea whatever that it was coming to Shabbat and I was not prepared.  I had nothing ready.  It shocked me that this time, I did not even realize what day of the week it was beforehand.

I have never had a dream that recurred so many times in almost exactly the same way just with differing details.

From a letter dated Tue, 22 Mar 2005:

I dreamed again.  Or rather more like a nightmare.  Same dream and it was like it took up where the last one left off.  In the dream, my kids and I were waking up like from a nap (though none of us sleeps in the daytime) and discovered that it was ten minutes after five pm on Friday and nothing was yet prepared for Shabbat.  I tried to make spaghetti in the forty minutes til sundown so we would have something, but it became a huge mess and it just couldn't be done.  When the time was up, not only was there no Shabbat for us, but I felt that in trying to get ready so late, I might have actually broken Shabbat and was worse off than ever.

The dream was so distressing that I felt like I was fighting to regain consciousness just to bring it to an end and when I woke up I felt so hopeless like the message of the dream is that we're not ready and it's now too late.  So if it's already too late, why have the dream, if it is supposed to be a warning or something? Then I realized that it's not Shabbat yet, we still have three days to get ready. It's not too late.

The last dream I thought was telling me that it was going to be sooner than I thought it was and don't get caught unprepared. And here it is again....

From a letter dated Thu, 23 Feb 2006:

I was just re-reading the last email I sent about this recurring dream I had been having and chills literally went up my spine. I had forgotten that the time on the clock in that dream was 5:10 and now, nearly a year later, a year during which I had no such dreams, I had it again last night and the time on the clock was again 5:10 with an expectation of Shabbat entering about 6 pm.

I'm waking up on a Friday, thinking I have overslept late into the morning and I discover that it is already 5:10 pm with less than an hour before candlelighting.  In this dream, I'm telling everyone that the recurring dream I've been having about not being ready for Shabbat has now come true.  (In the dream, I don't think I'm dreaming, but I remember the other dreams.)

There is no food to cook and nothing has been prepared.  I'm overwrought that it is so late and nothing prepared and all the stores surely closed and no time to cook even if I could buy something....

My clear sense upon awakening from the dreams has always been that Shabbat represents the impending Geula coming closer and closer and closer.  Even though I am aware of it, when it comes, it will still be totally unexpected and at this present time, I am still not ready for it.

It was just about this same time last year that the dreams stopped and now here it is again and picking up exactly where it left off...at 5:10 pm late on "Erev Shabbat" with less than an hour to go before "Shabbat" comes in.

The clock stopped a year ago and the tragic events of last summer [Expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif] proceeded.  Now, coming again into the season full of the promise of Redemption (Adar/Nissan), it has started up again and still I am not ready....

Fourteen years on, can I yet say that I am ready for this?  No.  Are you?