The shabbat rest

Rav Avishai Schreiber • 2007

Shabbat takes us to a world of rest. On understanding the relationship between work and rest.

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Shabbat, which appears in this weeks Parasha, is an issue often discussed in chasidik literature, and especially in the Sfat Emet. Its would appear that Shabbat is always at the essence of what he is saying, and in every parasha, from different aspects, it becomes the centre of his insights.

This specific insight is on Parshat Yitro form the year תרל”ו, based on a portion from Bereshit Rabbah:

R. levi said: when Avraham was traveling through Aram Naharaim and Nahor, he saw its inhabitants eating and drinking and reveling. ‘May my portion not be in this country!’ he exclaimed. But when he reached the Promontory of Tyre and saw them engaged in weeding and hoeing at the proper seasons, he exclaimed ‘May my portion be in this country!’ said the Holy One, blessed be he, to him: “To your seed I will give this land”.

Abraham doesn’t know in advance where this promised land that god leads him to will be, rather he just ‘journeys’ without a set destination. Throughout this journey he fears that his portion will be in a land that lacks labor, and therefore only when he reaches Eretz Yisrael, where he witnesses people engaged in weeding and hoeing at the proper seasons does he pray- may my portion be in this country.

Why is the labor of the country so important to Abraham? It seams that he wishes for a land that reflects the effert put into it, a land that demands from a person his innermost self- his labor. The effort put in the labor of the land is a projection of a persons spirits will. Abraham sees in idleness an expression of estrangement and the root of moral corruption and debauchery, therefore those places cannot possibly be the final destination that god intends for his descendents.

Although the Midrash speaks of physical labor, it can be seen quit clearly as reflective of mans inner nature. If a person is not working but rather sitting idly eating and drinking, his spiritual labor is most probably lacking as well. On the other hand- if a person is weeding at the proper seasons and so on, he will be the one to weed the parts of him that need weeding. That is why Abraham chooses Eretz Yisrael, the land of hard-workers, in order to fulfill in it the word of god.

In contrast to labor is Shabbat, which guides man to a state of rest and identifies holiness within. “When God promised the world to come to benei yisrael, they said to him- show us an example, and he showed them Shabbat, which is one sixtieth of the world to come. [From the midrash]

Menuchat Shabbat, the “Shabbat rest” is not empty idleness, rather Me’eiyn Olam Haba the essence of the world to come. The world of Shabbat is different to the world of work and labor- which is the “portion” of the six days of creation- we ought to experience Shabbat as if our labor has already all been done. And just as the “labor” includes the inner work of the soul, so to the rest is of a spiritual sort, as the Sfat Emet says- “ during Shabbat there is no need to work at anything, even the battle against the evil inclination.”

It would seem that Shabbat is connected to the labor of the rest of the week. “whatever rest a person does not experience during Shabbat- is due to lack of labor during the days of the week” but, the Sfat Emet remarks, the passion that a person has throughout the week for Shabbat in itself rectifies the days of the week and brings them into the holiness of Shabbat.

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