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Did God Really Need to Rest on Shabbat?
 Imagine that you’re sitting in the middle of a theater, watching a movie of your life on a split screen. On one side of the screen would be one of your worst days – a day when you felt helpless and overwhelmed by your worries, fears and responsibilities. On the other side would be one of your best days – a day when you felt at peace; when you felt excited and fortunate just to be alive. Chances are you’d be struck by just how much our experience of life can vary from day to day. But you might also wonder if these opposite perspectives are two equally valid ways of seeing things, or if perhaps one perspective is actually a more accurate representation of reality. Do all of these different feelings stem from the same “me,” or do some of them, in fact, emanate from the deeper core of my true essence?In this week’s Torah portion, we are instructed to cease from all manner of creative activity (“melacha”) on the Shabbat, because “on six days God made the heavens and the earth, but on the seventh day, He rested and was refreshed.” (Exodus: 31:17) Seems simple enough – we rest because He rested. But what does the Torah mean when it tells us that God rested? Did He exert himself too much while he was doing all that creating? Did He simply create a day of rest and relaxation because He was exhausted and needed to rejuvenate? According to the Kabbalah, God’s act of creation was in fact, nothing more than an act of hiding. He literally had to constrain His Infinite and boundless essence in order to make room for the universe. But how does God hide? One way to better grasp this concept is to understand that God’s original act of creation was in essence an act of pure giving. He simply willed the universe into existence and bang, out it came, without any assistance from us or anyone else for that matter. But as creation progressed, a different kind of universe began to take shape – one guided by laws and principles of cause and effect; one that requires our effort if we are to get anything out of it. So when the Torah tells us that God worked during the six days, it’s really telling us that he hid his true essence – that of a complete and perfect giver - behind the laws and principles of the “natural” world of effort and reward. Which means that His resting on Shabbat was nothing more than a return to His true essence. On Shabbat, the universe once again became a place that reveals God’s presence; a place where His care and providence could be palpably felt. Now we can better understand the nature of our own rest on Shabbat. During the six days of our creativity, we wrestle with the world for our daily bread. Of course, this struggle is actually a tremendous opportunity, because without it, we could never leave our mark on the world, since we could never express our own innate creative abilities. But this struggle comes at a high price. As we direct our energies outward and exert our influence upon the world, we can also feel its weight on our shoulders, and it can get pretty heavy at times. On Shabbat however, we stop. For one day of the week, we cease being creators, producers, bosses, managers, administrators, executives, and consumers. But stopping, for us too, is much more than simple rest and relaxation. Because it’s only when we cease adding our own input to the world, that we can begin to detect a flow in the opposite direction. It’s only then that we can begin to get in touch with a deeper part of ourselves and recognize that regardless of how much we produce, we are in fact on the receiving end. And it’s only then that we can begin to recognize how fortunate we are just to be here, not to mention all the other blessings that have come our way during the course of our lives – many without our ever having to even lift a finger. Shabbat is much more than a day of rest. It’s an opportunity for us to reveal the true inner essence of the world, and reconnect to the part of us that knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are indeed being taken care of in so many of the most important ways; that life is indeed at it’s essence a blessing and a priceless opportunity – one that we can not possibly ever claim to deserve, regardless of how much we struggle to make our mark on the world. Isn’t it nice to know the world can keep running without us? |