This week we begin the annual cycle of Torah reading anew, turning back to the biblical account of creation of the world. In six days, God creates the world – light and darkness; the water and sky; dry land and the seas; the sun, moon and stars; fish and birds; animals and, of course, human beings. And, it was good. In fact, as the Torah teaches, by the end of the sixth day, God saw that it was very good.
And, then, the Torah relates how God rested on the seventh day and made it holy. The Torah’s words are the ones we recite in the Friday night service and before the Kiddush at our home Friday night meal: “Vayechulu hashamayim v’ha-aretz…The heavens and the earth were finished, and all their array. On the seventh day God finished His work that He was doing, and He stopped on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God stopped from all the work of creation that He had done.”
In order for we humans to live, we have to work, whether in an office, on a farm, in a store, or in some other way contributing to the greater society. But, we also know that humans cannot work all the time and we need time to rest. And so, through God’s stopping his work and resting from the acts of creation, the Torah further teaches us that we cannot just rest when we ‘feel like it’ or when we think we need it. Rather, one day every week, on Shabbat, we abstain from our usual work and take time out of our busy schedules for rest just as God rested after six days of creation.
In the ancient world, the idea of a day of rest was unknown. Moreover, are we to understand from the Torah that God’s acts of creation were work like human work and God needed to rest just as humans need to rest from work? And, if so, how then do we understand the continuation of creation each and every Shabbat? After all, the sun rises and sets on Shabbat, the clouds appear, and new babies are born each week. Is this not God’s ongoing creative work?
The Midrash relates this same concept through a story told of someone who once asked Rabbi Akiva, "If God honors Shabbat so much, why does God allow the winds to blow, the rains to fall, and the grass to grow on the day of rest?" (Each of these are activities which are prohibited on Shabbat.) Rabbi Akiva responded: “Since this whole world is God’s domain, God is permitted to ‘carry’ things everywhere” (implying that Rabbi Akiva was performing an action that would be considered work from which we refrain on Shabbat).
Yet, after declaring his creation of humankind as very good, God teaches through example how we are to conduct our lives to be good and to be holy. And, perhaps that is the message itself - Shabbat is not only about needing physical rest, not only about physical rejuvenation. Shabbat solely for the purpose of relaxing from work and mustering strength for the next week would certainly have been an important and worthwhile institution – albeit a human one. But, Shabbat is not a human institution; Shabbat is God given. Shabbat, as the Torah prescribes, transcends humanity and entwines us, and the day, with the Divine.
By ceasing to work - "resting" - we establish and declare that the world with which we have just spent the last six days is not really ours. We "return" the world to our Creator for the day. We bring to life the words of the Psalmist “The earth is Adonai’s and all that is in it”, recognizing that the world, and everything within it, is a "private" domain of God. Shabbat gives us an opportunity to ‘take stock’, to give thanks to God for what we have, to advance our minds through study, and our character through deeds. When we light candles, say the Kiddush and delight in our Shabbat meals with friends and family, when we sit in fellowship and prayer with others in synagogue, when we share words of Torah with others, or when we individually contemplate how we can partner with God in the continuous recreation of the world, we help sanctify ourselves and God and we help make holy this time that is ours.
As the late Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: “The Sabbath is an assurance that the spirit is greater than the universe, that beyond the good is the holy. The universe was created in six days, but the climax of creation was the seventh day. Things that come into being in six days are good, but the seventh day is holy. The Sabbath is holiness in time… The soul is enhanced, time is a delight, and inwardness a supreme reward. Indignation is felt to be a desecration of the day, and strife, the suicide of one’s soul. Man does not stand alone, he lives in the presence of the day.”
On this new cycle of Torah readings of the new year 5766, this Shabbat Bereshit, when we read the Torah anew, may we all be blessed to experience the goodness of creation and to recognize the holiness of Shabbat by ceasing our work, focusing on God’s world, and by following God’s example to separate and sanctify the day.
Shabbat Shalom.