Harris Chorney, interim President and CEO, is away and he asked Natalie Lyalin, Chief Experience Officer, to prepare this week’s Shabbat message.

Shabbat Shalom, 
I've been carrying a tote bag all week and not until yesterday did I look down at its printed message: Life is A Gift. Carry It Joyfully.

The bag is a gift from the Brown University Chabad, one of the many in my collection of totes. The bag has been mostly stuffed with Tupperware and coffee tumblers, full of coffee and food that I haul to my desk at the Alliance. Each day it goes home, messier and lighter than the morning.

Googling "carry it joyfully" and "Chabad" led me to find the concept of geulah, or "redemption." According to Google, it is "the ultimate spiritual and physical liberation of the Jewish people and the world from exile (galut), ushering in an era of universal peace, prosperity, and divine awareness under the leadership of Moshiach (the Messiah)." Whoa, that's quite a jump for someone who spends her day puzzling together the pieces that will make a more useful, enjoyable, and meaningful experience for Bonnie & Donald Dwares JCC members. But isn't that one of the universally true aspects of being Jewish? One minute you're deep in AquaFit research, and the next minute Moshiach shows up knocking on your mind's door.

The JCC is often seen as the "joy lifter" part of the Jewish Alliance. I wish all our interactions were steeped in the knowledge that we are fulfilling the joy distribution part of the Alliance's mission. But people bring all sorts of things with them to work and to work out. Staff and members are often setting down their worries in the same moment they set down their gym bag. Members come to the J to stay fit, to recover, and some come to maintain their fading health.

"Carry it joyfully" is a great reminder, now more than ever. Joy is a choice for some, not easily accessible to all, but it is always a possibility.

This Shabbat, I invite you to notice what you're carrying and to practice, even for a moment, carrying it joyfully. Not because everything is easy, but because joy, like Shabbat itself, is something we choose to make.

Shabbat Shalom, 
Natalie Lyalin 
Chief Experience Officer