One of the more profound tensions that many of us hold as citizens of planet Earth is the disparity between the world as it is and the world that we would like to see. When we look around at the suffering in the world and see so much inadequate response to that suffering, it is easy to feel despair. When we see human dignity being trampled upon in countless ways in every corner of the globe and in our own backyards, God can seem absent, indifferent, and even non-existent.
While many of us feel immense gratitude for the abundant blessings in our lives, it becomes difficult for some of us to fully rest in that gratitude when we are aware that others do not share the same opportunities. If our hearts are truly open and our concern extends beyond ourselves, then we cannot be fully content with what we have while others do not.
Our Torah and Jewish tradition dreams of a world in which human dignity is real and the presence of God is manifest. How do we hold on to that dream, nourish it, not lose hope and not conclude that the way the world is, is the way it has to be?
With Shabbat, we have the possibility to live this sacred time in a way that responds to this question. We have a pathway that allows us to fully inhabit our blessings, and at the same time gives us strength and hope to continue to act in ways to create the world that we would like to live.
The entire book of Leviticus, is all about the tightly ordered world of the sanctuary and how the priests are expected to behave within it. Rabbi Shai Held argues that the mishkan – the portable sanctuary represents a radical alternative to the often frightening and chaotic world that we inhabit. Within the sanctuary, there is order, peace, and joy, kind of like an oasis. Many interpreters have noted that Shabbat is to time what the mishkan is to space. Like the sanctuary, Shabbat is a counterworld, or what Rabbi Heschel calls a “sanctuary in time,” where goodness abounds, wholeness is possible, and God’s presence is almost tangible. Rabbinic tradition teaches that Shabbat offers a glimpse of another reality. A midrash imagines a conversation between the Jewish people and God. Israel said: “Master of the world, if we observe the mitzvah, what reward will we have? God said to them, “The world that is coming.” They replied, “Master of the World, show us what that world is like. God responded: “It is Shabbat, which is 1/60th of the world that is coming – which is entirely Shabbat.
Our tradition forbids all the labors that are necessary for building the mishkan, the sanctuary, on Shabbat. This makes a direct connection between sacred space and sacred time to teach that on Shabbat, we live as if the mishkan has already been erected. We do not try to perfect the world because, we insist, that it is already perfect. We are forbidden to perform any task necessary for constructing the counterworld, because the counterworld is already fully built. As R. Yitz Greenberg writes, “it’s not that one is really forbidden to work on Shabbat. It is just that everything is perfect, there is nothing to do.”
Imagine resting in the fullness of what is rather than being consumed by the pain of what is not yet, and by the anxiety that it may never be. The challenge and opportunity of Shabbat is to do just that once each week.
Another enormously powerful dimension to all of this is that we live in a world of staggering inequality. Some live in lavish luxury while others struggle to scrape by – and many cannot even do that. The inequalities are so vast that for some people, it can be tempting to internalize them, to think – consciously or not – that they reflect some deeper metaphysical truth. Maybe some people really are worth more than others. Of course the Torah rejects that temptation and insists that such thoughts are both ethically and theologically insidious.
One of the most radical ideas in all of Jewish law is the insistence that we may not handle money on Shabbat. On Shabbat both the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor leave their wallets at home. For one day a week, we are totally equal. Socioeconomic status tells us nothing at all about metaphysical status. On Shabbat – and in the ideal future iit represents, human equality will be discernible to all.
So when enter into Shabbat, regardless of what work we have to do that is not finished, we act as if it finished. Yes, we will be able to pick it up again after Shabbat, but for now we act as if it finished. Only if we truly let our work go, do we have the opportunity to enter God’s world – where we can fully inhabit our blessings, where we can open fully to nature’s beauty, where we can celebrate the dignity of each human being. By realizing that Shabbat is a taste of Olam Haba- the world that is coming, we give ourselves permission to sink deeply into that reality so that that vision can guide our lives.
The end of the Torah’s first creation story concludes with the verse – God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy because on it God had ceased from all the work God had created to do. (Gen 2:3). Nahum Sarna explains that this seemingly superfluous Hebrew word in the verse La’asot to do, at the end of the verse, means that God has work for humanity “to do” going forward and that this is connected to Shabbat.
Every Saturday night, having lived in the mishkan – the sanctuary, as it were during Shabbat, we are now asked to help build it. Having tasted a hint of the world to come, we are asked to help make this world look more like that one. That is how we balance the awareness of the world as it is and our commitment to help build the world we want to see.
How do you balance accepting the world as it is with actively working to create what it could be?
How does Shabbat inspire you to live a more fulfilled life? If you don’t find inspiration in Shabbat, how might you observe it in a way that creates more meaning and connection?