Parshas Bereishit (5779)
Everyone knows that the Torah says that G-d created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day, Shabbos.
Well, not exactly.
You see, in Genesis 2:2, it says, "On the seventh day, G-d completed His work which He had done". This indicates that there was some work that G-d hadn't completed in the first Six Days of Creation that He finished on the seventh day.
Rashi, the preeminent Bible commentator, quotes a Midrash which explains that the only thing G-d didn't create until the seventh day was menuchah, rest. That was created on Shabbos, and thus was completed the entire work of creation.
Now isn’t that strange? On the seventh day, G-d created rest?! Why did He have to create rest? Just stop what you're doing and - voila! - you’ve got yourself some rest! Do colleges offer a course called Relaxation 101? Can one train for a degree in "Restology"?
I think that the answer can be readily understood if we study our own generation. We have much "easier" lives than our parents and grandparents had; we have more time to rest and relax and more forms of recreation than our predecessors ever had - yet we are hardly at rest with our souls and ourselves.
The following excerpt from the essay titled "The Paradox of Our Time", attributed to Dr. Bob Moorehead, puts it beautifully:
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness. We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years.
If these words ring true for you, then you will agree that resting and enjoying quality time with our loved ones is a rare experience – and especially in the modern era with all its technological “intrusionsâ€. Real genuine rest and peace of mind has to be created - and only G-d has a recipe that works.
That recipe is Shabbos. When we light the Sabbath candles and sit down together with our families, putting all the business of the week out of our minds, turning off our smartphones, and focusing on our most precious gifts – our spouse, our children and our own spirituality and relationship with G-d – that is when we experience true R. & R.
But wait, there’s more…
Jewish Mysticism teaches us that the Hebrew language is different from all other languages in a qualitative way. The language was created by G-d Himself, not merely by a consensus of human beings as other languages were.
It follows, therefore, that any words which have similar spellings or root words, must be related in meaning as well. Since G-d is a purposeful Being, none of His spellings are arbitrary. If two words were spelled alike, they must be related in some way.
The Hebrew word for repentance is teshuvah. The root of the word teshuvah is shav, which means “to returnâ€. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for the Jewish day of rest, Shabbos (or "Shabbat") has the identical root, shav.
What connection is there between the concept of teshuvah, or repentance, and Shabbos, the day of rest?
As quoted in the recent Yom Kippur Issue, the sixteenth-century mystic, the Maharaâ€l of Prague, writes that the essence of teshuvah is reflected in the root of the word, shav, which consists of two letters, shin and beis. The twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, he explains, represent the entire span of a person's life.
Alef, the first letter, symbolizes birth and the beginning of life. When we are born, we start off with a clean slate. Our neshamah (soul) is pure when it enters into the body. As we get older, we sometimes do the wrong thing and sully our pure, untainted neshamahs. By giving in to temptation and by not controlling our negative character traits, we add layers of negativity and indifference to our souls.
The last letter, tof, represents death, when our neshamah ends its sojourn here on earth, and we can longer change and perfect ourselves. But, before it's too late, we have the opportunity to do teshuvah and to come back to our essence, which is pure at its core.
We thus are shav – returning from shin to beis - i.e. we go from the letter shin (the second to last letter in the alphabet, just before tof) all the way back to beis (the letter immediately following alef), which represents the time right after we were born. By sincerely repenting to G-d and committing ourselves to act differently in the future, we can strip away the layers of "dirt†and go back to what we always were deep inside.
The problem is, how can we focus on improving ourselves through self-awareness and repentance if we're so caught up in the daily grind of our workaday lives? Who has the energy and time to put things in their proper perspective and to reassess life's priorities, between shopping at the mall and doctor's appointments, tennis and G-d knows what else!
That's where Shabbos comes in. It has the same root, "shav", to return to one's essence. Once a week, we come back to who we really are. We come back to our spouses, our children, to our neshamas/ourselves. We have no distractions, there's only time, and lots of it; time to think about what we're doing here in this world; time to think about what we want to accomplish in our lives; time to think about what kind of legacy we want to leave our children and grandchildren when we are no longer here.
Shabbos is the greatest gift that G-d has given to man. When we experience Shabbos properly, we come away with a feeling that there is nothing more special than this day. Shabbos is the gift of time - the one thing our generation seems to lack the most. Even more importantly, it is the gift of life itself, putting us in touch with who we really are – in a generation when people are so out of touch with their inner selves.
Shabbos is what G-d created on the seventh day, and it is His everlasting gift for us to truly enjoy.
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