Vayechi: Openings and Closings.

Welcome to Shabbat Moment, a text study series with Yael Shy, from our friends at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Every week we share Yael’s Torah text study, mindfulness practice tips, and discussion questions for you to reflect + share with others at your Shabbat table. Subscribe here to get the Shabbat Moment delivered straight to your inbox!

This week’s Torah portion is Vayechi: Openings and Closings.

In mindfulness practice, we often put a high premium on being open. We try and practice meditation and mindfulness practices in order to open our hearts, open to the wide range of our emotions, and open to the world as it is.  We know that being closed is painful and life-dulling, and so we keep trying to open up.

But if we believe the famous line in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), “everything has an appointed season, and there is a time for every matter under the heaven,” is there also a time and a place to be closed off?

Find Your Friday

About the Author

Special thanks to Yael Shy and our friends at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality for joining us in creating weekly Shabbat moments for your Friday nights.

Yael Shy is the CEO of Mindfulness Consulting, LLC, where she teaches and consults on mindfulness for universities, corporations, and private clients around the world. She is the author of the award-winning book, What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond (Parallax, 2017), and the founder of Mindful NYU, the largest campus-based mindfulness initiative in the US. Yael is a graduate of the IJS Jewish Mindfulness Teacher Training Certification.