Moses convoked the entire community of the Israelites and said to them, "These are the things that Adonai has commanded you to do: For six days you will do your work, but on the seventh day you will have the holiness of a complete Shabbat day of rest for Adonai. Anyone who does work on it shall be put to death. Do not kindle fire in any of your settlements on the day of Shabbat." (Exodus 35:1-3)

Traditionally, the mention of Shabbat here, before the completion of the Mikshkan, is interpreted as a sign of the precedence of Shabbat over the building of the Mishkan. Based on this, the ancient rabbis derived the thirty-nine categories of work prohibited on Shabbat. Any work that could be connected to a large building project—from planting crops to carrying objects from one place to another—is forbidden on Shabbat because, as we learn from this week's portion, Shabbat takes precedence over the building the Mishkan.

There is another lesson, though, that we might take from the strange and repetitious appearance of the Shabbat restrictions at the beginning of this week's portion. It is not just that the commandment of Shabbat rest overrides the commandment to build, it is also that the very idea of rest should take precedence over the impetus to work.

Sigmund Freud wrote that human beings require two things to remain human: love and work. We need to love and to be loved. We need to have something to do that gives us a feeling that we are useful and have a purpose. Torah, though, suggests one more thing that we need—rest. We need to have time to sit and reflect on our lives. We need a time when our purpose is not to do, but to consider what all of that work means. This is what Shabbat is.

The odd thing, though, is that our tradition teaches that Shabbat rest actually comes before work. Before we even begin to work, we must take the time to reflect on our labors. It may not make logical sense—why take a break before the work is begun?—but it does make spiritual sense. 

Before we lift the hammer, plow the field, or start typing at the keyboard, we need to know what that work means. We need to understand why it matters. We need to reflect on how our struggles in life fit into the larger puzzle of a universe that is a mystery to us.

It can seem like human beings are the only animals that do not understand instinctively the need for rest. Every other creature appears to balance work and rest—like breathing in and out. We are the only animals who are in any danger of intentionally working ourselves to death. And we do it all the time.

When I see the way that people's work takes over their lives in our society, I worry. I see so many people who put work first—their number one priority. If our work life takes such a priority over every other aspect of our humanity, how can we be sure that we will ever rest long enough or deeply enough to ask the question, "What we are working for?"

Shabbat needs to come first—not just in time, and not just in law—but in our hearts. Shabbat, this beautiful gift of deep and spiritual rest, needs to be the touchstone of our lives. Shabbat is not just a break that allows us to catch our breath, it is the first of all of our holy days that allows us to find holiness in every other day.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Letting Go

Last night, I participated in a Havdalah event for families in our congregation's preschool program. We called it "PJ Havdalah" because we invited kids and their parents to come to the synagogue in their pajamas for the ritual that marks the end of Shabbat on Saturday evening. We all came down into the well of the sanctuary, in front of the bimah, and celebrated a moment that marks the meeting of worlds.

The ritual of Havdalah has three symbols: wine to represent the joy and sweetness of Shabbat, spices to comfort us for the loss of Shabbat, and a braided candle lit with fire to symbolize the end of Shabbat and the beginning of the six days of work. Blessings are made over each symbol, followed by a blessing to sanctify the distinction between Shabbat and the rest of the week. Then the candle is extinguished in the wine and a new week is declared. (You can download a Havdalah service on the Resources page.)

The ritual is well known, but there are mystical origins to havdalah that are not often taught or understood. This is not just a ritual for saying goodbye to Shabbat. Havdalah is a moment in which we rehearse the divisions that separate the world of material reality from the world of spiritual reality. Shabbat is understood as a gateway to the supernal world and havdalah marks the transition in which the two worlds meet.

The spices we smell at havdalah do not just comfort us for the loss of a day of rest. They also cushion the shock from losing the extra soul that fills us on Shabbat. We learn of this extra soul from the passage in Torah we recite on Shabbat that begins, "V'sham'ru v'nei Yisrael et haShabbat," "The children of Israel shall keep Shabbat" (Exodus 31:16). The passage ends with the phrase, "Uvayom hashvi'i shavat vayinafash," which can be translated as, "On the seventh day [God] rested and was ensouled." This extra soul is within us just for Shabbat and departs from us when Shabbat ends.

We have two souls, one for our physical existence and one for our spiritual existence. Shabbat is the gateway in which we are so in touch with the world of spiritual existence that that second soul can even enter into and survive inside of our material bodies. It is a time when the world of ultimate meaning is so close to us that we can almost touch, taste, smell, see and feel it with our bodily senses.

The twisted havdalah candle also has mystical meanings. It is a torch made up of at least two wicks. The dual candle represents the duality of the material and the spiritual worlds. While the blessing is made over the fire of the candle, there is a traditional practice to gaze at ones cupped hand to observe the light of the candle glinting off the fingertips and the shadow cast by the fingers on the palm. The contemplation of light and dark reminds us of the distinction between the world that we can see around us and the hidden world of God's presence. 

The reflected light off of the fingernails has further symbolism.  According to the Zohar, when God created the first human beings, they were clothed in bodies of pure light. The soul of the human being shined visibly within this translucent body. It was only after they ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, that Adam and Eve were given material bodies made of flesh. However, as a reminder of our original form, God allowed us to retain a single vestige of those original bodies. Our translucent fingernails are a reminder that, in our origin, we are beings of light. As Shabbat departs, we gaze at the light of the candle reflected in our fingernails to remember this truth about ourselves.

We are more than physical bodies, and the world is more than what we usually perceive with our physical senses. The world we live in is only complete when it includes the universe of meaning, connection, spirit and the hidden truth of divine presence. Havdalah is a moment to reflect on that universe and to claim it as an ongoing part of our glowing, spiritual selves.

Here, at the end of Leviticus, the Torah gives a list of onerous punishments that will befall anyone who flouts the commandments.  God declares:

If you despise My laws and your soul spurns My rules, so that you do not observe all My mitzvot and you break My covenant, I in turn will do this to you: I will wreak misery upon you — consumption and fever, which cause the eyes to pine and the body to languish; you shall sow your seed to no purpose, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set My face against you: you shall be routed by your enemies, and your foes shall dominate you. You shall flee though none pursues.  And if, for all that, you do not obey Me, I will go on to discipline you sevenfold for your sins. (Leviticus 26:15-18)

This is the kind of passage that sometimes leads people to conclude that the God of the Hebrew Bible is vengeful and cruel. How could a loving and compassionate God threaten people with such misery for disobeying rules?  A deeper reading, though, shows that the passage is not necessarily just a list of punishments to be meted out against transgressors. Rather, it can be read as a description of the natural consequences that follow when people choose to behave in ways that desecrate life.

We are told, when you bring misery to the people around you, do not be surprised when your own life is overtaken by misery—not because of thunderbolts from heaven, but because of the expectations and standards created by your own behavior. When you plant the seeds of enmity all around you, do not be surprised when people around you adopt hostile and aggressive behavior to your own detriment. This is derech eretz, the way of the world, and the Torah has the wisdom to teach us to be wary of it.

Rashi, the great medieval commentator on the Torah and Talmud, adds another insight to our understanding of the passage. Rashi says that the "sevenfold" discipline that will be suffered by malicious evil-doers is a reflection of their own sevenfold descent into sin. He says: 

Behold, there are seven transgressions—the first begets the second, and so on to the seventh—and these are they: 1)  Not to study God’s mitzvot.  2) Not to observe them.  3) To scorn those who do.  4) To despise the sages.  5) To prevent others from observing.  6) To deny the Divine origin of the mitzvot.  7) To deny the existence of God.  

Rashi describes the internal process through which a person can harden his or her heart against wise and good behavior, and how that descent leads to the person's own misery.  It begins with the failure to pay attention to the landscape of a moral universe. People who ignore the wisdom of accepting a moral authority outside of themselves will naturally begin to behave in bad ways and believe that those who behave well are dupes. That conviction will, over time, expand into a hatred of the entire belief system of those who seek wisdom from the teachings of the past, which leads to hatred of the past, and finally to hatred of belief itself.  Rashi describes a slippery slope of psychological constrictions and hardenings that begins with the first intentional transgression.

To understand Rashi's point, think about the mitzvah to rest on Shabbat. Those who choose to ignore Shabbat and who have no interest in learning about it, obviously, will not observe it. Such people tend to justify their choice by viewing the mitzvah merely as an onerous and capricious restriction. That choice, in turn, makes it more difficult for them to open their minds to the possibility that the laws of Shabbat are actually intended for their own benefit—that by mandating rest, the Torah intends to guide them toward happier and more fulfilling lives. 

“Why should I spend my time doing nothing,” they might ask, “when I could spend that time being productive?” They become trapped in a cycle of denying their own spiritual needs. Instead, such people tend to view those who do observe the mitzvah as "superstitious" or "ignorant," and may even come to believe that it is their duty or right to "teach" others not to observe the mitzvah. From that point, it is very likely that such people would deny that the mitzvot comes from a relationship with God and, ultimately, deny the very idea of God. 

Finally, Rashi suggests that even when such people become trapped in misery caused by the failure to recognize that their lives have meaning beyond their own needs and desires, they will become hardened against pursuing their own happiness. Their conviction toward meaninglessness will prevent them from listening to the needs of their own spiritual being. 


Each time a person begins to define a piece of wisdom as ridiculous, it places another brick in the wall that separates them, not just from the one mitzvah, but from entire categories of good life choices.  A person who sees Shabbat as “wasted time” will begin to think of all time as a commodity—a thing that has only utilitarian value—and the possibility of the joy of sacred time will be diminished for that person.  This rejection of whole categories of sanctity is one way of understanding Rashi’s warning against “despising the sages” — despising the very idea of living life wisely.

Within each mitzvah is the possibility that you will listen and grow more connected with the presence of Divinity in your life, or the possibility that you will ignore it, and place one more brick in the wall that separates you from awakening to spiritual experience.  Living with this knowledge helps to transform the mitzvot from onerous obligations into opportunities for celebrating life’s joys.

I thoroughly enjoyed morning services this Shabbat, led by my friend, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat. In the study session she led after services, she brought her wonderful teaching for Parashat T'tzaveh, in which she points out that the recurring phrase, "an offering of fire for a pleasing odor to Adonai," can be read in a number of ways. The anthropomorphic image of God smelling the aroma of the offerings should be understood metaphorically—God does not literally have a nose, you know. 

Rabbi  Rachel shows how the word "rei'ach" (odor) is used metaphorically within the Torah itself (e.g., Exodus 5:21) to mean something like "the lingering ethical and spiritual effects of a person's actions." (It's not so different from the metaphors we use in English when we say that something is "sweet," or that it "stinks.") In the parlance of the Torah, our good and reverent actions result in leaving a pleasing rei'ach for God. Our bad actions make God reach for the metaphorical gas mask.

For me, the real payoff of our study, though, came from another insight from a member of our group. Mrs. R. observed that smells are effortless. Things that smell good need no effort to spread their fragrance and they don't expect anything in return. So should it be with our prayers. Prayers offered in joy are not like cosmic purchase orders submitted in anticipation of the delivery of our wishes. They are offered freely with no desired outcome.

This should be true even of the bakashot, the prayers in which we make requests of God—for example, prayers for healing, for sustenance, or for the coming of redemption. We offer up our words of yearning, but we don't expect God to hand us what we want like gift-wrapped presents. We leave it up to God to shape our yearning into the outcomes that reflect God's will—not our own.

This got me thinking about Shabbat and the exclusion of bakashot from Shabbat prayers.  The thirteen request blessings that form the backbone of the Amidah during the week are replaced on Shabbat by a single blessing of appreciation for the sanctity of the day. Shabbat is a time when we distance ourselves even further from seeking outcomes from God—we don't even ask for what we want on Shabbat because to do so would move us further away from the ideal of a free "offering of fire for pleasing odor" to God.

This is a bit of an inversion of the usual reason given for omitting bakashot on Shabbat. Often, we are told that it is inappropriate to ask God for things on Shabbat because God should get to rest on Shabbat, too. It is as if our requests on Shabbat would only "noodge" God on Shabbat. That explanation rubs me the wrong way. Psalm 121:4 says, "The Guardian of Israel never slumbers or sleeps," and I'm not convinced that God needs "a day off." I am much happier to understand that the reason for not making bakashot on Shabbat is  for the sake of our rest, not God's.

We spend so much time during the week considering and analyzing the possible outcomes of real and imagined scenarios. Our minds are busy, busy, busy all week thinking about what we want  and how we will get it. Like the hungry wild animals we used to be, we instinctively focus on grasping for the things we want. That's good, to the extent that we strive for things that truly benefit us and others, but we also know that we often overdo it. We hunger for things that we cannot have, or which would be bad for us. We create desires and expectations for ourselves that, ultimately, leave us unsatisfied and unhappy.

Shabbat is a time for letting go of our attachment to outcomes. It is a time for letting go of our desire to direct the universe toward the things we think will benefit us. We make no requests of God on Shabbat because we need to have a time that is just about being—not doing, making and striving.

In truth, our overall happiness—seven days a week—can be improved by using Shabbat as a time to train our minds and our souls to let go. By releasing ourselves from the anxious striving toward outcomes that are not really under our control, we can release ourselves from suffering and the needless distancing of ourselves from God.

And there is also this: Happiness does not come from getting what we want. Happiness comes from receiving the world as it is with equanimity and peace. "Who is rich?" asks Pirkei Avot (4:1) and the answer can only be, "Those who are happy with what they have."  When we let go of pursuing outcomes, we allow ourselves to receive God and God receives the pleasing odor of our happiness.