(Delivered February 13, 2026)

All week long we are in a flurry of action. There are appointments to keep and tasks to complete. As we strive and strive and strive to meet all our obligations, or even just to keep up, it can start to feel like the treadmill runs us. We spend the week in the world of doing.

Shabbat takes us elsewhere.

As we read in this week’s parsha, Mishpatim, even as the Israelites are coming to perceive the enormity of what God is asking of them, they say, famously, נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע—(na’aseh v’nishmah) translated interpretively, we will do it; it was heard. 

What, I wonder, was heard? 

Perhaps the inner music of our tradition, the melody that says, there is something more than just doing. The ancient Israelites, like us, were unafraid of meaningful labor, ready and willing to take on the mitzvot with full hearts. But they somehow knew that their obligation was to something larger, something that comes into focus when we stop doing.

I can’t help thinking that in saying נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע (na’aseh v’nishmah), our ancestors sensed that the doing and the discernment need each other. They give each other shape. Rest is meaningless without work, and work is impossible without rest. 

It’s in the pause from doing that we can most clearly hear the divine voice, a voice that was there all along, calling us home to ourselves.