Facing the Sunset with Hands Over Heart: The Origins of the Kabbalat Shabbat Service

This is an original prescription and description of a new Kabbalat Shabbat (Welcoming the Sabbath) ritual. It stems from the Lurianic circle in sixteenth-century Safed and is one of the founding sources for a prayer practice that became one of the most well known and beloved liturgical services. One begins the ritual outdoors, gazing at the sunset, hands over the heart, reciting certain psalms which eventually formed the core of the nascent Kabbalat Shabbat. The distinctive meditative quality is grounded in a spirituality in which nature is the setting and stimulus for the act of contemplation and prayer. The devotional placement of the right hand over the left mirrors the kabbalistic idea that the severe left side of God is absorbed and calmed by the compassionate and loving right side. The ritual upon arriving home involves other spoken and gestural features, wrapping in the tallit (prayer shawl) and circling the Sabbath table prepared with the ritual bread loaves. Based on parallel lurianic sources, the latter was likely enacted while singing the hymn “Shalom Aleikhem” which has become a standard feature of Friday night Sabbath table practice.