This week’s (double) parasha opens with Moshe gathering B’nei Israel and telling them- once again- to keep the Shabbat:
These are the things that Hashem commanded to do them: six days work shall be done, and on the seventh day it shall be holy for you- a Shabbat day of rest…
-Vayakhel, 35:1-2
Interestingly, the wording here, ‘six days work shall be done’, seems a bit inexact:
- Technically, it should have said ‘forsix days work shall be done’, or ‘work shall be done for six days‘.
- Instead of the passive ‘work shall be done‘, it would be more direct to say ‘you shall do work‘.
We’ll return to these points. Let’s first look back at the commandment of Shabbat we received at Har Sinai.
Because six days Hashem made the Heavens and the Earth, the oceans and everything in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore Hashem blessed the day of Shabbat and made it holy.
-Yitro, 20:11
-Interesting- there too,
‘six days Hashem made…’,
and not
‘for six days Hashem made…’.
Other questions which arise there:
- What does it mean that Hashem ‘rested’? It can’tbe taken literally, because Hashem does not get tired, and so doesn’t need to rest.
- What does it mean that He ‘blessed’ the Shabbat?
To figure all this out, we should really examine the source itself: the first Shabbat in history, which followed the six days of creation.
And God finished the work He did on the seventh day, and God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, for on that day He rested from all His work, which God created to do.
-Bereishit, 2:3
-Here, too, problems arise:
- And God finished the work…on the seventh day. – Didn’t He finish His work at the end of the sixthday?!
- Again, we need to understand this ‘resting’.
In fact, this idea of Hashem ‘resting’ is expressed even more strongly elsewhere:
Because six days Hashem made the Heavens and the Earth, and on the seventh day He rested and ‘breathed’.
-What’s going on here?
The holy Or Hachaim answers all of these questions:
Hashem created the world in such a way that the six days of Creation would not last- the days and what He created on each one were not automatically permanent.
Rather, as our Sages tell us,
‘The world was weak and shaky- but when Shabbat came, it became solid.’
– Midrash
Explains the Or Hachaim: Hashem designed the Creation so that the Shabbat gives life to the world. The other, regular days are not able to sustain themselves, and the entire world should really collapse after every Friday- but Shabbat brings life once more. Shabbat, in this way, is like the neshama, the soul and life force, of this world.
This also explains the pasuk saying Hashem ‘breathed’; that expression really comes from the word ‘nefesh‘- meaning ‘soul‘. Even gramatically, vayinafash literally means ‘and He gave breath’ (venafash would mean ‘and He breathed’)
– or, the way we now understand it:
And He gave a soul.
-Hashem gave the Shabbat to the world as a soul and force that would sustain it. So the Torah never meant, in any of the places we looked, that Hashem rested because the work tired Him. Rather, His creation of Shabbat was His way of not recreating the world anew every six days.
So, again, instead of
‘He rested on the seventh day’,
let’s now read it:
He gave rest to the Creation through the Shabbat.
And instead of
‘And He finished the work He did on the seventh day’,
let’s now read it:
And He finished the work He did with the seventh day
-meaning that the Shabbat was His means of recreating; Shabbat would now be the life force of the world- just as Hashem gives each of us a soul that He designs to give us life.
Have a great Shabbat!
Elli Schwarcz is an alumnus of the Toras Moshe, Ner Israel, and Carteret Yeshivos, and has been involved in Jewish outreach for almost 15 years. He is a Hebrew School and English Language Arts teacher, and has a Master’s Degree in Counseling from Johns Hopkins University. Of all his pursuits, Elli most enjoys teaching high-level Jewish thought and Talmud to teenage boys, exposing them to the beauty and wisdom of their heritage while highlighting their own ability to engage in advanced Torah learning. Elli lives in Lakewood, New Jersey, with his wife and children.