Secrets: Shabbat

Yom Kippur Eve 5768
Rabbi Seymour Rossel

We Jews may be separated by many differences but we are one people with One God, a single body of human beings that inhabits the earth and represents heaven. And, if we are the body, the head on that body is the wisdom we have gathered--Jewish law, Jewish history, Jewish myth and legend, Jewish thought, and Jewish philosophy. The crown we wear on our head is the Torah, an unbroken circle. We harbor the sacred notion that it was God who placed that crown on our head, so that the crown of Torah stands for the covenant connecting us with heaven. And the central jewel, the glowing diadem, in that crown of Torah is Shabbat.

Nothing in Judaism equals the genius of Shabbat. Nothing equals it for beauty. Nothing equals it as a possession. It is part of the Torah, but it supersedes even the Torah. Shabbat is the climax of Creation, a day set aside for us not just to represent God on this earth, but to dwell with God on this earth. All we have to remember in order to emulate God on Shabbat is to rest, just as God rested.

The Sabbath allows us one day out of seven to create a space in our souls, a space in time, a space in which we can inhabit heaven. Therefore, we call it, "a foretaste of the world to come," as we look forward to a time when Shabbat will be with us 24/7.

Shabbat is more than what you see, hear, and feel on the surface. Some Jews do not observe Shabbat at all. Some pick and choose parts of Shabbat they wish to observe. Others observe Shabbat to the extreme--every law, whether it is ancient, medieval, or modern. The ways of observing are well-known: blessing the lights, the wine, and the challah; ceasing from forbidden work; gathering around the Sabbath table for festive meals; attending synagogue; praying and studying. But even those Jews who observe every jot and tittle of the law do not always know the inmost secrets, the mystical meanings, of the Jewish Sabbath.

In the Talmud, the great teacher Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai sat at the head of his own academy. He turned to the Book of Exodus and read to his students.

Adonai said to Moses: Speak to the Israelite people and say: No matter what, you must keep My sabbaths, for this is a sign between Me and you le-olam, "forever," that you may know that I Adonai make you sacred. [Ex. 31:12-13]

Yochanan said: "The mystic Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai studied this verse and discovered deep meaning here. When he came to the word le-olam, he saw that it is written without the vav, the vowel letter that stands for "o.". Of course, since the whole Torah is written without vowels so you can still read this word as le-olam, meaning "forever." But Rabbi Simeon taught us to read it just as it is written, not as olam, but as alam, meaning "a secret." Rabbi Simeon taught us that the verse really says, "No matter what, you must keep My sabbaths, for this is a secret sign between Me and you, that you may know that I Adonai make you sacred."

The students were perplexed. What is secret about Shabbat? Everyone knows where and when Shabbat came into being. God rested on the seventh day and commanded us to do likewise. Shabbat is one of the ten commandments, given to all the world. Why should God call it a secret sign between God and the people of Israel? Rabbi Yochanan waited and listened. Finally one of his best students offered a guess. Perhaps God made it a secret sign for the Jews because the punishment for not keeping Shabbat is so severe. If it is a secret between God and the people of Israel, then God can be merciful and not punish non-Jews who do not keep the laws of the Sabbath.

Rabbi Yochanan was pleased. "That is a good answer," he said. "Still, there is a deeper significance. Rabbi Simeon the mystic taught us to look at the whole sentence. It says, ‘this is a secret sign between Me and you so that you may know that I Adonai make you sacred.' Shabbat itself is a secret sign--like a password, like a special handshake, like a watchword, like a signal--known only to God and the Jews. Sharing the secret of that signal puts Jews on the side of God, makes us sacred as "the chosen people," as "God's treasure," as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." God gave the commandment about Shabbat to the Jews as a secret because Shabbat is a unique possession, a password to God's heaven."

The students were still a bit confused. Some of them were very literal. This mystic idea sounded a little too poetic to them. They wanted it explained: How can a day of the week be a password known only to God and the Jews?

Rabbi Yochanan said, "Look again at the words. There is still more in the words. The words say, ‘this is a secret sign between Me and you so that you may know that I Adonai make you sacred.' Do you understand what it means to know?" Up pops Rabbi Rossel from the twenty-first century to see if he is a good student of Torah. He says, "Surely, a secret is something that is true but that you do not know is true. Take gravity, for instance. For thousands of years, people and objects obeyed the laws of gravity without knowing gravity. One day an apple fell from the right tree and suddenly the secret was revealed. Knowing the secret of gravity did not change gravity. It did not get the apple off the ground, but it did get the scientific revolution off the ground. Is it possible that if the secret of Shabbat was revealed, it might get your spirit off the ground, too?"

Now you have Shabbat and you know it is a secret sign. The trouble is that secrets just don't reveal themselves, even to the wise. For example, the first century Stoic philosopher Seneca called the Jewish Sabbath "an absurdity." The Jews are so backward, he wrote, that they waste "almost a seventh of their life in inactivity." Seneca observed the Sabbath from outside, but with all his wisdom, its secret remained hidden from him. Is it hidden from you?

The Baal Shem Tov told about a small town where every Jew was invited to a great dance and celebration. The night of the party, a traveler rode into town. Now the town seemed strangely deserted: nothing was open; no one was home. Finally, through a window, the traveler could see a people crowded into one room, jumping up and down, bowing and raising their hands to one another, hugging and pressing one another, pushing and pulling one another. "Aha!" the traveler thought, "It is even worse than I imagined. The town is not deserted! In truth, everyone in town has lost his mind!" Just then, one of the townsfolk opened the window to let in some fresh air and the sound of the fiddle came soaring out of the hall. Only then did the traveler understand that the people were all dancing. A thing can be obvious, it can be true, but it is only obvious and true when you know it--until you know it, the thing is still a secret.

Shabbat is like that dance and celebration. Since ancient times, everyone on earth has been invited to stop and rest one day each week. Where are we now? Well, we Americans like things bigger and better, so we have weekends of two days and many of three days. We have invented all kinds of ways of using our days of rest. We rush from place to place, from appointment to appointment, catching up on everything we could not do during the week. We fight traffic to get out of town and fight traffic to get back into town. We hurry to malls and struggle to park to be with crowds shopping for things that became essential because they were advertised. Movies, beauty shops, golf courses, ball games, rallies, museums, whatever. For most of us, our Sabbaths, whole weekends of rest, are spent with our eyes glued to wristwatches and our ears attached to cell phones. At the end of a typical weekend of "rest," we are likely to collapse exhausted on a couch or chair before a television set where we fall asleep before getting ourselves up to go to bed. In this way, we Americans have made our Sabbaths into so much more than what our ancestors imagined--and so much less. Will someone please open the window so that we can hear the fiddler playing the music of dance and celebration that our ancestors managed to hear?

Do you imagine that you know where I am going with this sermon? Do you think I am trying "to guilt you out," trying to tell you that you should come to CJCN every Friday night? Of course, it is true that every Friday night here is a celebration filled with sacred moments, the kinds of moments that reality television only wishes it could bring you. But this is not a sermon to advertise CJCN. The mystery of Shabbat is not about us, it is about you!

Do you not find it curious that the commandment to observe Shabbat is given openly so many times in the Torah? My professor Cyrus Gordon taught us that "Any time you find a commandment repeated multiple times, you can be certain of one thing: people were not following it." With all their laws and regulations, Jewish leaders through the ages never could convince most Jews to observe Shabbat. Jews are stiff-necked, independent, not prone to following rules. This even gave rise to a famous Yiddish saying, "everyone makes their own Shabbes."

The rabbis of the Talmud even tried to organize an advertising campaign for Shabbat. They said, "If only every member of the Jewish people would keep two consecutive Sabbaths, the world would immediately be redeemed" (Shab. 118b). Just every Jew, just two Sabbaths in a row, that was their goal. But, of course, it never happened.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel tried poetry. He called Shabbat a "cathedral in time." Unfortunately, he hit the nail on the head. Cathedrals are often admired, regularly visited, and used by only a small portion of the people who could use them all the time. In truth, Shabbat was probably a late addition to Judaism. Most scholars look for its beginnings after the days of the kings, in Babylonia during the first exile. It is generally agreed that the Creation story featuring the seven-day week and Shabbat as its climax was later placed at the beginning of the Torah to make it seem like Shabbat was always with us, but six hundred years later, the rabbis were still trying to teach Jews to love Shabbat. So they told stories about the meaning of Shabbat.

After the Creation, they said, Shabbat came and pleaded with God, "Am I to be bereft? Every day has a partner except me. The first day has the second, the third has the fourth, the fifth has the sixth. But You created me without a partner." God told the Sabbath, "Do not despair. Yours is the highest honor. The ordinary days are partnered with one another, but you are created to be the partner of the Jewish people. They will call you ‘bride' and ‘queen.' And each week you will be wed to them in celebration."

There's more to tell. Since there is a wedding every week, God presents the Jewish people with a wedding present every week. According to Resh Lakish--the Roman gladiator who became a rabbi--as the bride Shabbat enters, God gives each Jew the gift of a neshamah yeteirah, an "additional" soul, which only departs as we say the Havdalah prayer. Some say the loss of our extra soul each week is so injurious to us that we smell spices at Havdalah to revive us, just as smelling salts would (Tur, OH 297:1).

The neshamah yeteirah, the extra soul doubles our capacity to enjoy the Sabbath. In fact, on Shabbat nearly everything is doubled. Many Jews place two loaves of challah on the table to remind them of the double portion of manna given for Shabbat in the wilderness (Ex. 16:22). A prayer service called Musaf was added to the morning service to recall the double sacrifices offered in the Temple on Shabbat (Num. 28:9). The Shabbat commandment is given twice in the two versions of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:8 and Deut. 5:12). It is a double mitzvah to make love to your spouse on the Sabbath. The Sabbath Psalm (92) begins with the words Mizmor Shir L'yom Ha-Shabbat, doubling as both a mizmor, a "psalm," and a shir, a "song." It would be enough to kindle one light to welcome the Sabbath, but the mystics taught us to double this, and kindle two. One light reminds us that Shabbat refreshes our soul and the other reminds us that on Shabbat we possess that extra soul. And the greatest of all the doubles: on Shabbat we live in two worlds--with one foot in this world and one foot in the next--as it is written, "The Sabbath is a foretaste of the world to come" (Gen. R. 44:17).

Rabbi Yose ben Judah taught: Two angels, one good and one bad, visit our homes before Shabbat. If the Sabbath lights are kindled, the wine is blessed, the table is arranged, and all is ready for the Sabbath feast, the good angel says, "May it be God's will that the next Sabbath will be as beautiful as this one." To this, the bad angel is forced, against its will, to say, "Amen."

But if the table is not ready, the lights are not kindled, and the wine is not blessed, then the bad angel intones, "May it be God's will that the next Sabbath will be like this one." To this, the good angel is forced, against its will, to say, "Amen" [Shab. 119b].

In the twelfth century, the Jewish poet and philosopher, Joseph ben Jacob ibn Zaddik commented that all of creation was God's way of preparing for Shabbat to let us know that we must also prepare. A Jew who does not prepare for the Sabbath meal during the weekdays will have nothing to eat on Shabbat. And the subtle, hidden meaning that God teaches in this way is that a person who does not prepare with good deeds in this world will have no share in the world to come.

The mystics teach that God gave the commandment to observe the Sabbath as a password to the Jewish people because the secret reward for observing the Sabbath was "that you may know that I Adonai make you sacred." The mystery, they say, is in the word "know." God wants us to know that we are sacred. Rabbi Akiba explained the difference between a fact and knowing a fact in the Mishnah. Akiba taught:

We humans are beloved since we were created in God's image; but it was through an extra measure of love that God let us know that we were created in God's image.... [The people of] Israel are beloved since they were called [Adonai's beloved] children; but it was through an extra measure of love that God let us know that we were called [Adonai's beloved] children.... And [the people of] Israel are beloved since the treasure [of the Torah] was given through us; but it was through an extra measure of God's love that God let us know that the treasure [of the Torah] ... was given through us ... (Avot 3:18)

"Knowing" is the heart of the secret of Shabbat. "Knowing" is an extra measure of God's love. As human beings we inherit that essential frontal lobe which takes us beyond instinct and experience into the realm of "knowing." We think we know a lot since our senses are so active. We call this knowing of the senses, "being conscious." Our senses pour data into what we call "consciousness" or "mind" which in turn directs our actions. Things are about to get complicated, so let's simplify them for a moment.

Imagine your consciousness is an internal movie screen that plays scenes of what you see, touch, hear, smell, and taste. The movies run every minute, day and night. Of course, your senses send more information to your brain than you can handle on your inner screen, so your consciousness decides what should be allowed to play on the screen and what should not. You could hardly focus on what I am saying if your consciousness was showing you scenes of the temperature in the synagogue or the lighting or the things you need to do when you leave the synagogue or the things you forgot to do yesterday.

So our inner movie screen, our conscious mind, filters out things that do not make immediate sense or that cause its organized way of thinking to be upset. Normally, this is a good thing. Almost everyone has had some experience that we could call "unreal," that could not be explained logically. People sometimes have powerful, even prophetic dreams. People sometimes die on the operating table and are revived and have memories of what played on their screen when they were dead. People sometimes experience healing through prayer. People are sometimes visited by the presence of a person who recently passed away. At the moment experiences like these occur, they are so powerful that our inner screen is forced to play them. But such experiences are dangerous because they do not jive with the reality of our normal movies. So the mind, the conscious part of us, copes with these experiences, usually by not replaying these sorts of experiences on our inner screen and by convincing itself and convincing you that these are just "your mind playing tricks on you." Of course that is not true, these things do occur, pretending that they do not occur is just your mind playing tricks on you.

The trouble comes from the fact that extraordinary things are out at the creative edge of your reality. They are very normal, very typical, very human. But most of us prefer not to upset our logic by entertaining these images. Nevertheless, this is the edge of reality where mystics live; and, lo and behold, this is also where modern physicists and astronomers live. Ask an astronomer, a physicist, or a mystic and they will explain that after an extraordinary experience or epiphany, the scene in their consciousness is more real to them than the ordinary world is to you. They become mentally alive in a way that most of us choose not to imagine because it would turn our inner movie screen into a transparent wave of energy that bends and distorts things in new ways instead of allowing them to stay in plain focus.

Mind you, this is not only the place where mystics, astronomers, and physicists live, it is also the place where faith lives: just beyond the boundaries of everyday reality. Faith cannot play as a scene on your normal movie screen. Belief can only be sensed in the mind, actually experienced by the screen itself. When you have faith, it is not the image, but the screen that controls your actions. With faith, you suddenly come to life in a different way. You live on the creative edge, guided more by your inner knowledge and less by what normally plays on your screen. That is what happens when your movie screen stops seeing and feeling and tasting and smelling and listening to what is "out there" and gets in touch with something that is "in here," something that is in you. I call it "religious awareness," seeing the world not through open eyes, but through an open soul.

If you are ready for the creative edge, how can you get beyond what you see on the screen and begin to know the screen itself? One way is through meditation. Mystics, philosophers, scientists, and highly intelligent people clear their minds, shut down the normal rush of movies played on their screen of consciousness, and focus on the screen. Meditation is one way, prayer is another, study is another, responding directly to nature (as when you live a glorious sunset) is another, relating directly to other human beings (as when you open yourself entirely to another person) is another. There are many ways of shutting down the normal screen and opening up the sacred portal. What you achieve when you do this also has many names. In the East, it is called nirvana or moksha, the blending of your soul with the greater soul within you and outside of you at one and the same time. Westerners like us call it by other names: ecstasy, bliss, contentment, joy, equanimity, and enlightenment. In Judaism, we call it shalom, not in its meaning of "peace," but in its original meaning of "wholeness."

People who know have been trying to explain knowing to us for centuries. In Greece, "Know thyself" was inscribed above the portal to the oracle at Delphi. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, "It is wisdom to know others; it is enlightenment to know yourself." The poet Lord Byron lamented, "How little do we know that which we are! How less what we may be!" And the master of homely wisdom, Benjamin Franklin, taught, "Observe all people; yourself most." What will you find in yourself when you stop the movies on your inner screen and take a close look at the screen itself, at your soul, at your consciousness, at the divine spark inside you?

You will never know unless you find a way to stop the solid stream of movies that are only responses to what you see, touch, hear, smell, and taste. You will never know until you discover the inner mystery of Shabbat. The real secret of Shabbat is not that you are made sacred by God. The real secret is knowing that God makes you sacred. Shabbat is the password because using Shabbat you can turn off the ten thousand commands a minute that come at you from outside and crowd onto the screen of your consciousness and weigh down your religious awareness and haunt your soul. Shabbat is the secret sign because Shabbat shuts down the everyday world, ushers you into the cathedral in time, and makes you aware that you are sacred, that you are an essential part of something so big that we can only know it as God.

That poor Roman, the otherwise wise Seneca, got it very wrong. We Jews don't waste a seventh of our lives--through Shabbat we follow the advice of the Book of Chronicles, "Know your God" (1 Chronicles 28:9). And as Heschel once wrote, "There is no self-understanding without God-understanding" (The Prophets). All week long you carry your divine spark everywhere you go, you use it to navigate your world, you call it your "conscience" when it helps you make right decisions, you call it your "instinct" when it gets you out of difficulties, you call it your "intuition" when you rely on it without stopping to understand it. But in the special atmosphere of Shabbat you can call it by its real names. It is your "soul," your "divine spark," your "religious awareness." Shabbat is the sacred sign, the password. You share this secret with God, and it makes you God's partner in creation, it opens your everyday world to the world to come, it binds you to heaven, it makes you a blessing to all who know you. It is your real "self," the you that is just beyond the world of everyday consciousness.

Our Sephardic kinfolk welcome each Shabbat with a prayer call Raza deShabbat, "The secret of the Sabbath." It begins like this: "It is the mystery of the Sabbath, united with the mystery of the One, that becomes the instrument of Oneness." Knowing yourself is knowing God. Knowing yourself is knowing that you are sacred.

It is a Jewish custom to prepare for Shabbat by giving tzedakah, as thanks for a good week, as a blessing for a good week to come. Once upon a time, the Baal Shem Tov was in the synagogue preparing for Shabbat when he heard a man say that he did not have enough money for his daughter's wedding. Here was an opportunity. Immediately, the Baal Shem Tov told his driver, "Give the man a kopek for the bride." His driver put his hand in his pocket and there was nothing there. He whispered, "Master, we spent our last kopek for food for the Sabbath. We have nothing left to give." The Baal Shem Tov insisted, "Reach into your pocket and give the man a kopek for the bride." The driver shrugged, but when he put his hand into his pocket again, wonder of wonders, he felt a single coin! There was indeed a kopek in his pocket. He drew it out and gave it to the man, looking with new admiration at the Baal Shem Tov and thinking his master had kept closer accounts of spending than he did.

But then the Baal Shem Tov said to the driver, "Reach in your pocket and give the man another coin." Frantically, the driver whispered in the Baal Shem Tov's ear. "I am sure that my pocket is empty." The Baal Shem Tov just raised a hand in the air, pointed, and said, "Do it." So the driver shrugged and reached into his pocket again. To his utter astonishment, he found another kopek to give for the bride.

Later, after the Sabbath prayers were complete, the Baal Shem Tov took his driver aside. "Dear friend," he said, "Learn now the mystery of life: if you have faith, you have all the money you need. If you lack faith, no amount of money will ever be enough."

Taking some time on the Sabbath to pray is a matter of faith. Taking some time to know yourself through prayer and to know God through prayer, that is the secret password of Shabbat. God took the Jewish people aside and said to them, "My dear friends, if you have faith, you will have all the money, all the wisdom, all the love, and all the blessing you need. Everything will be known to you and you will understand yourself and your world. If you lack faith, no amount of money will ever be enough, no amount of love will be enough, no amount of blessing will be enough, and you will never gain the wisdom to know yourself. Therefore, I give you Shabbat. If you observe it, you will not only be My sacred creation, you will know with perfect faith that you are sacred."

In the twelfth century, a Jewish mystic explained that there is something more to the idea that we Jews would be redeemed if we only kept two consecutive Sabbaths. What a great opportunity God gives us from time to time, he said. On occasion, Yom Kippur, which is called  Shabbat shabbaton, "the Sabbath of Sabbaths," is hosted by Shabbat. When Yom Kippur is a guest on the seventh day, we Jews can observe two Sabbaths consecutively in just one day! If every Jew attended the synagogue and observed just this single conjunction of Shabbat and Yom Kippur, it would be enough and the world would immediately be redeemed (in Noam Megadim, parashat Emor, by Rabbi Eliezer Ish Horowitz).

Shabbat was given to the Jewish people as a secret sign between God and us so "that you may know that I Adonai make you sacred." If you hear what I am saying, you know the Raza deShabbat, the greatest secret known to all Jews who have learned to know Shabbat not only with their hearts, but with their minds. It is no pun when I say, "The rest is up to you." And let us say: Amen.