Shabbat is the End…and the Beginning In reading a book by R’ Cardozo, he brings out a point that Shabbat-keepers usually understand, but those who don’t, can’t. Keeping Shabbat is the culmination of the workweek. The idea is not that we are so exhausted by earning our bread, clothing, and shelter by Friday evening that we merely limp home to lick our wounds and recharge in order to do the same the following week. The one who loves Shabbat understands that Shabbat is the pinnacle of working during the week, not the bottom of a six-day slide! It is Shabbat that lends meaning to the mundane work of the week. It is for the beauty of Shabbat that I elevate the work I do Sunday through Friday afternoon. There is no point to simply enduring the workweek, but each minute of the mundane is to be offered as the weekday sacrifices, for they are meaningful. Once the last of the steps of a Torah-filled week are set in place on Friday evening, we cross the threshold of their completion, the Shabbat. Or should we say the Seventh Day of Shabbat that began on Yom Rishon, Day One? This is how the Levites in the Temple used to count the days of the week in prayer. On the first day of the week, they’d say, “Today is the first day of Shabbat.” One might even say we’ve continued working on the Seventh Day, but what we are creating is rest. How close is our rest to the Shabbat created by Elohim on the Seventh Day of Creation? Does it represent a day to “crash,” or is it a day to review how we prepared for Shabbat the preceding week and to contemplate the upcoming workweek and how we can make each moment count as new, fresh, and exciting step toward the next Shabbat? Shabbat should evangelize our next workweek! I sometimes make the mistake of calling my regular job “working for Pharaoh.” It is a mistake, though, if I want to offer each day as a sacrifice to the Holy One of Israel, not Pharaoh, Uncle Sam, Obama, the warden, or any other in the chain of command in my earthly job. Sublimating the workweek to working for Pharaoh ensures that my daily sacrifices will be tainted with blemishes of disgruntlement and reluctance (was I ever gruntled?). Establishing my workweek as preparation days for holy Shabbat unchains both my workdays and my Shabbat to a Divine freedom and partnership with the Holy One. Rabbi Cardozo writes, “The point is to take a break from the world of everyday activity, to remove ourselves from all that it concerns, so that when Shabbat ends and we have to return to that world, we do so with a heightened awareness of its ultimate meaning. By focusing our attention deliberately and acutely on the purpose of creation for one day a week, we ensure that all our work toward that aim in the week to come will be infused with a consciousness of our divine mission as partners with God.” (p. 78) Step up to Shabbat...and to the next week. Keep climbing that ladder.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 16:22:20 +0000
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