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Old Beginnings: Shabbat Message by Rabbi Greg Weisman

Shabbat Message by Rabbi Greg Weisman graphic for Temple Beth El of Boca Raton

We begin again.

This week we restart our annual reading of Torah, returning once again to Parashat Bereshit and the story of Creation. But as momentous as it is to inaugurate another cycle of Torah reading, we actually return to this portion every single Shabbat, not just on this one.

As we introduce the Kiddush and prepare ourselves to sanctify and bless this holy day, we recite the first four verses of the second chapter of Genesis, the words that describe the first Shabbat:

The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. On the seventh day God finished the work that God had been doing, and God ceased on the seventh day from all the work that God had done. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from the all the work of creation that God had done.

We remind ourselves of the miracle of creation, how God worked to create the universe from nothing, and then rested, giving us this day of rest as well, to spend feeling the blessings of family and community. But for thousands of years, Jews have wondered about how God, infinite and timeless, could create a universe of space and time, and our answers have inspired us through those generations.

Like in 1798, when Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berdichev, one of our great Hasidic masters, wrote that these verses are meant to guide us to wonder how God created it, and from what. The answer? God lives in an infinite realm, a realm called Ein Sof, “without an end,” that is far beyond what we mere humans can understand or even begin to fathom. To him, the story of creation is the story of how God transformed that endless, infinitude into the finite space and time of our universe.

That work is encapsulated into the phrase, “the heaven and the earth were finished,” when God had somehow transformed the infinite into the bound. God had also created the heavenly bodies, split land between waters, and created all the living beings on earth, saving humanity for last. Last, but closer to God than all the others, Rabbi Yitzchok taught. Saving the best for last, God created us as beings to live on the same physical plane as the rest of creation, but with access to a spiritual plane that allows us to be closer to God than all the others.

The problem is that over time that plane has moved farther and farther away from its infinite origins. Over the generations we have widened that gap. How? As much of Hasidic thought, as well as others in our tradition, teach, our fundamentally human shortcomings, like the temptation to transgress or our inclination to self-serving behaviors, has over the generations drawn us away.

Knowing along along that this to be our fate, God created Shabbat.

Since Shabbat was something that was part of the process of creation, when we observe Shabbat it opens a portal back to that time and space. Rabbi Yitzchok teaches that each Shabbat God retraces the Divine journey back to those first seven days.

But it also gives us a chance to go back too. As God reminisces about the work that God did, we get to emulate God and get back to basics as well. We can use this weekly opportunity to remind ourselves of the best versions of ourselves, what our core principles are, and be inspired to clear off whatever is in our lives that have broadened that gap between our finite world and the Ein Sod.

How do we do that? By taking time to think. By pausing and resting. By using that day to visualize how we can bring our values into our lives in ways that we usually feel like we are too busy or too preoccupied to be able to do well.

We know that there is so much broken in our world. Our community holds the pain of last year’s Simchat Torah on its first anniversary, knowing that too many of our brethren are away from their families for yet another Shabbat. Here in the US, we are facing challenges we haven’t seen in a generation, of rising antisemitism, political polarization, and a slow weakening of Jewish engagement. These and others can so easily tempt us into despair that no matter what we do things can only get worse.

Not so, Shabbat teaches us. Shabbat gives us a weekly taste of those moments when the universe was new and our heightened spiritual plane kept everything in order. Shabbat is our weekly opportunity to enjoy and appreciate the blessings that we do have. Shabbat, our chance to re-create and re-experience the beauty of the creation story, is our chance to begin again our pursuit of a world of wholeness and peace.

 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Greg Weisman

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