This week’s parsha includes a list of holidays, the first of which is Shabbat. I’d like to take the opportunity to think through some ideas about Shabbat.
We Are Not Like Angels – Not Defined By Work
Shabbat is defined, here and elsewhere, as a day of no melakhah, no work. The word melakhah has the word malakh, angel, in it, which makes sense because a malakh is defined by their work. A malakh can have only one mission at a time and disappears once their mission is completed. Their whole raison d’etre is to do this job.
But we are not malakhim. During the week, we are encouraged to do the work of a malakh, to do melakhah, to be God’s hands on earth. But we are not malakhim because we human beings are not defined by our work. Shabbat comes to remind us of this difference, to remind us that we are, unlike an angel, more than our work, even if it is sacred work.
Remembering Who We Really Are
It’s not true that “arbeit macht frei”. Shabbat makes you free. Shabbat asks us to disentangle from and disidentify with work and to disempower its hold over us so we can remember who we are at a deeper, more basic level. Shabbat is yoma dinishmata, the day of the soul, our soul, our essence, the part of us that is me’eyn olam haba, from another world, indefinable, precious beyond words, not reducible to a task.
The Pearl Buried Inside Us
We can touch this otherworldly divine essence buried deep inside us. It is shiny, like an exquisite pearl. Maybe it will help to bring to mind the story of Yosef Mokir Shabbat, the man who loved shabbat so much that he bought a giant fish right before shabbat. What did he find when he dug deep into the belly of this fish? A marganita, a pearl. Finding this pearl deep in our own bellies is the gift of shabbat, to be able to see and know who we are, know that our essence, though normally hidden, is effervescent and glorious, like a pearl, not of this world. Shabbat teaches us our own infinite value as a radiant gem in this world, and we can learn to inhabit that identity.
Our Anxious Parts
It’s not easy, learning to identify with the pearl. We are not always like Yosef Mokir Shabbat. We spend a lot of time like the other character in the story, the man who was so anxious about holding on to his wealth and his property that he sold it all to buy this pearl and stuck it under his hat until one day, walking across a bridge, a wind blew the pearl out of his hat and into the water where the fish swallowed it. We are often this anxious, this controlling, this untrusting. We hold on tightly to our property, to our accomplishments, to our success, tucking them under our hats for security, trying desperately not to lose them because we think that is who we are, that we will have nothing, be nothing without them. We so easily forget that we are the pearl, that it is not something we can lose, but something intrinsic to us. We are so shaky and anxious sometimes – a core restlessness about our identity and security – that we are like a fluttering bird in the sky who can’t find a place to land.
Let Them Find Rest Like Noah’s Dove
We are like the yonah, the dove, that Noah sent out of the ark to find land, velo matzah hayonah manoah, for a long time, we, like the dove, can’t find a dry place to rest our weary anxious selves. We are overwhelmed and exhausted, fluttering about and flapping our wings. But then, as the shabbat song goes – yonah matzah vo manoah, then the bird does find a resting place, the resting place that is shabbat.
Maybe we can do that, too. Maybe we can let our fluttering bird parts land in the Shabbat place inside us, let them find manoah inside us, let them come to rest there, in the place of the Pearl, the perfect Resting Place, the Shabbat inside us. There is such a spot inside us that is always at rest, always a manoah, always at peace. There can be fluttering doves all around, harsh winds and a storm inside like Noah’s flood, but still there will always be this Shabbat point of perfect peace inside us, like the eye of the storm. Yonah matzah vo manoah. We can let our fluttering parts come to rest in this spot, let the flapping gradually die down,slowly coming into stillness.
Time to Just “Be” With God
Shabbat, is, according to our parsha, actually called a mo’ed like the other holidays, and the word mo’ed literally means a meeting place, like the ohel mo’ed, the tent of meeting, a place where we and God can meet and be together, not from a place of doing, but from a place of simply being together and enjoying each other’s company. No agenda, not even praying or asking for anything or praising, just being together. As we slow down and become quiet, we might sense how God has been right there, waiting to connect to us. Tachlit ma’aseh breishit – for this the world was created. There is nothing that matters more.
Remember Shabbat During the Week
This sense of peace and connection inside us, we don’t only need it on shabbat, and we don’t only need it when we meditate. The goal is to let it overflow into all our days and into all our activities. Zakhor et yom hashabbat, the Torah says – remember Shabbat, remember it when you are not in it, take it with you, let it infuse everything you do. Even when you work, work from a place of rest. Maybe instead of saying we will “do our best,” we can set an intention to “do it from rest,” to do whatever we need to do from this place of rest inside us.
Work From a Place of Rest
The pasuk says that six days of the week te’aseh melakhah, the work will be done,” in the passive voice, not “you will do,” but te’aseh, “will be done.” Maybe this is what it feels like to approach work through a memory of rest – it means to do it in a way that flows, as if it is being done through us, not to force or to struggle, but to become aligned with the divine will so thoroughly that our work is more like floating down a river with the current than building a dam to stop it, to work from a place of rest, from a place of joining and collaborating with the divine forces that want to unfold in the universe.
The World That Is Coming
We say that shabbat is me’eyn olam haba, a taste of the world to come. I like to translate olam haba as “the world that is coming,” that is right now unfolding before us, wanting to emerge into a better world. When we act in the world out of the Shabbat Resting Place inside us, then we align with the forces that want to come, that want to move forward into olam haba.
Photo by Lisa Fotios at Pexels
