Stalled on Carmageddon? Maybe it's the name. Since the freeway closure begins on Shabbat, and the event could give us some downtime to contemplate our intentions (kavanah) and relationship with the automobile, couldn't we just pencil it in on our Jewish calendars as, Shabbat Carvanah?
 
Here in the City of Angels, Carmageddon refers to a 53 hour period, beginning Friday evening July 15, when a ten mile stretch of the 405 Freeway, the main artery connecting the San Fernando Valley and the city's Westside, will be closed down as part of a widening project.
 
The affected stretch of freeway is thought to be the busiest in the country, with about 330,000 vehicles traveling along it daily. If you have ever been caught on it during rush hour, it seems like those hundreds of thousands of cars are right there with you inching along.
 
But calling the closure, "Carmageddon," is a big caramba.

"Carmageddon," plays off the Greek word, "Armageddon," the Christian concept of a final battle between good and evil (that is supposed to take place in Israel on Har Meggido, by the way). So when I hear "Carmageddon," my imagination goes into overdrive, and all I see zipping by are Carmelite nuns and an auto-da-fe.
 
Since Carmageddon, like Shabbat, is a kind of a slow-down, Jews need to find a way to ease into it on our own terms.
 
For a lot of us, one way to keep cars off the freeways, at least on Friday evening, is to simply have a Shabbat dinner at home. That's my family's intention (fortified perhaps by some kasha carnishkas).  
 
Leo Baeck Temple, located in the Sepulveda pass, the area adjacent to the Freeway closure, is thinking Carvanah too. They are canceling their popular Friday night "Shabbat under the Stars," hoping their congregants will be observing Shabbat under the very same stars at home.
 
As noted in an op-ed in the LA Times, one of the few times LA's Freeways "empty out" is "for all Jewish holidays." Well, Shabbat is a kind of holiday, and we could observe it righteously this weekend by not going with the flow.
 
So on Shabbat morning, what do you think of giving your car rest too? Maybe even walk to shul for some Shlomo Carlebach.
 
For Shabbat Carvanah, the Torah portion is Pinchas, which in part speaks to revved up personal actions against false worship. What an appropriate Shabbat to contemplate our almost worshipful relationship with the car.
 
Not that you ever pray your car starts, or are stirred by the sound of the horn.
 
The day of the "Jew Canoe," the really long, wide, Cadillacs and Lincolns of the 60's, is long gone. But don't some us still like our cars really big? I mean so-wide-you-can't enter-the-temple-parking-lot-while-they-are-exiting-big?
 
Not that I am suggesting anyone should go "Pinchas" and thrust a spear through a radiator. That's not the right Carvanah.  
 
Instead, what about being inspired to take public transportation now and then? Or, not raising such a stink when some city agency suggests a bus lane, or light rail line close to your neighborhood?
 
Carpools to the shul, anyone? And how can you score a weekly decrease in your MPJ, miles per Jew. It's Shabbat, take a hike.

Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate. In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association.