Rabbi Reuven Kigel - Parashat Emor

okay hello everyone we are filming live from Baruch College Hillel room this is one of the doors I know looks like the cruise ship someone could walk into any moment we got some sperm and we got all the a pie uh paddles Which I'm on one of them also so I'm not just a Rabbi I'm also an honorary brother so what we want to talk about today first I want to thank Emmett for doing these uh weekly video shoots I think it's very good for everyone to hear from all you know our professional rabbis okay so today we're talking about how Carson toy Shabbos and parashas Amor let's see if we can roll all together so of course it's all gratitude that's probably one of the most important things when it comes to serving Hashem and I wonder if we realize how lucky we are to have Shabbos I'm going to tell you a story that happened to me 25 years ago when I was like a mere youth this was let's say 1998 something like that before cell phones a really really long time ago I used to work on the floor of the American Stock Exchange as a is an options Trader and in a previous deal Google obviously and be at that point if you had to go home early like for Shabbat or for any other reason so you couldn't there's no cell phones you couldn't check your stock quotes if you want to know how your positions were doing you have to call in your stock clerk and just ask them a bunch of questions so it was a cold Friday winter afternoon I went home early because Shabbat starts at like 4 10 p.m as we know and at around 2 30 3 o'clock I called my stock clerk to see how my positions were doing and he says to me you know what where are you why do you work what are you taking a half day he said no no I'm not taking half day you understand what I have going on here is tonight we have something called Shabbat the Sabbath he wasn't Jewish he literally never heard of Shabbat before so he said oh what's the Sabbath what's Shabbat so I said well we have a lot of people over and we have like really good food and we relax and we have uh you know probably a couple of drinks here and there and we just spent some quality time together and we thank God for everything that we have he said wow that sounds like one of our holidays dude what do you do that like once a year and I said no no we don't do it once a year and he said twice a year I said no Andy so how often do you do this so I said every week he said another on the phone every week I also want to be Jewish and tell him about Shabbat lunch so this is how lucky we are to have Shabbos every week we have a major celebration we have about 104 thanksgivings a year if you include shovel's lunch as well and we are so fortunate and this is how Hashem has blessed us it's really amazing it's really unbelievable now if we open up harsha's Emma this week in the middle of the Parsha talks about all the game all the young tobium all the holidays what does it start off with Shabbos we have a holiday every week and it's called Shabbos and it's time to connect and time to have great food be with family and friends and really experience and give over the meaning and beauty of being a Jew have an awesome Shabbos and be grateful for what we have