Image from amazon.com
[First posted 2017. This is the final chapter of our MUST READ/MUST OWN. Please read related post: “Sometimes There is no Reason”. This is available as an ebook at amazon.com if you can’t find a paperback version which would be surprising, since it’s a bestseller. Rabbi Kushner has 11 other published books besides the two we have featured in this website. For those interested here’s a list of titles:
- Conquering Fear: Living Badly in an Uncertain World
- Faith & Family: Favorite Sermons of Rabbi Harold S. Kushner
- Overcoming Life’s Disappointments
- The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom
- Who Needs God
- Living a Life That Matters: Resolving the Conflict Between Conscience and Success
- How Good Do We Have to Be? A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness
- When Children Ask About God: A Guide for Parents Who Don’t Always Have All the Answers
- To Life: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking
- When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough: The Search for a Life That Matters
Reformatting, highlights, images added.—Admin1]
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CONCLUDING MEDITATIONS
Each of the six days anticipates the Shabbat to which it leads. Just as the days of the week prior to Shabbat are considered to be a part of that coming Sabbath’s Torah portion (and the first lines of that Sabbath’s Torah reading are read in the synagogue on the Monday andThursday of the week before), so too are those six days understood to be bound up in that coming Sabbath’s spiritual substance. Each of those weekdays receives its flow of holiness, its essential energy, from the Shabbat that it anticipates. Collectively, they are the body, and Shabbat is their soul.
Thus are we commanded to “remember the Sabbath day in order to sanctify it” (zakhor et yom ha-shabbat le-kaddsho). That act of remembering is a daily spiritual practice in which we bring to mind the way in which this particular day (the one in which we find ourselves) is rooted in the coming Sabbath. It is yom ri’shon be-shabbat—the first day (i.e., Sunday)—that is of the coming Shabbat. It is anchored in the Shabbat that is anticipated. It is part and parcel of that Sabbath’s spiritual energy, and every thought and action of that day must be aligned with the Sabbath that stands at its source.
How is our attitude different during the six days of the week as we contemplate their rootedness in the anticipated Shabbat? How might the promise of Shabbat offer us an anchor of intention for our behaviors and our thoughts from Sunday to Friday?
As we learned from R. Tzadok ha-Kohen, the weekdays are sustained and nourished by their connection to the Sabbath source; we must move through the practice of our everyday lives with an ongoing awareness of the fountain of blessing that flows into those ordinary moments. In living with such a heightened awareness, with such a focused state of mindfulness, we truly effect the sanctification of the ordinary. Each day becomes a fulfillment of the command to sanctify the Sabbath day through an act of remembrance, an act of zakhor.
Remembering the Sabbath may be understood as a kind of mental intention, a focusing of the mind on the deeper meaning of time as we intention, a focusing of the mind on the deeper meaning of time as we experience it in the ebb and flow of the work week. Our goal is to achieve a state of Sabbath awareness, where we recall how the life we live in ordinary time is an organic outflow of the life of holy time. Each moment can be traced back to its source in the life-living energy of the Sabbath, in the soul of weekday time.
The Hasidic masters teach that each week constitutes a special and incomparable unit in the fabric of Being and time. A unique creation, the individual week stands on its own as something of deep significance—it is not simply absorbed into the sweeping flow of the calendar, week in and week out. Shabbat is not rest and cessation; it is the energy source for the contained organism of the seven-day unit. For just as it is a zeikher le-ma’aseh bereishit—a remembrance of the act of Creation—so too it is the force of renewal that animates our lives, a fresh beginning that opens into new possibilities and new responsibilities. Each week is a treasure unto itself, a dimension of reality and experience that has never before been in this world. We must therefore approach life as it unfolds in each new week as filled with wonder and illumination, mystery, and anticipation.
To be aware of the true renewal of Shabbat and its six days is to be open to the untraveled road that beckons at the gateway of this new creation. By receiving each Sabbath as a renewal, we come to realize the preciousness and fragility of every moment, the power of a new beginning to raise our awareness of the sacred, and of all that needs repair and transformation in our lives. Attaining this mindfulness may lead us to a new embrace of repentance and self-examination, an approach of true compassion toward the others we encounter on the path of time.
The renewal of the created world extends to include a renewal within the person, all of which is made possible through the redemptive power of Shabbat. Even if those six days are a time of darkness and great challenge, the Hasidic mystics assert, remember that the Sabbath holds the power to raise you out of your state of misery, to bring healing and redemption to even the most desperate and despairing. A semblance of the world to come, Shabbat is a glimpse of perfection. And in opening ourselves to that otherworldly force—in receiving the Sabbath as the groom receives the bride—we allow the power of redemption to enter into our deepest selves, to infuse our despair with the life-giving energy of a new soul from the divine realm.
Shabbat is a fountain of hope, the promise that we can be raised from even the lowliest of places, the dream that we can heal and rebuild from even the most profound state of brokenness. And how does Shabbat have that power? What is it about the seventh day that can promise such redemption?
For the spiritual masters, the Sabbath as we know it is an indwelling of the divine presence from above. Divinity becomes manifest through this wondrous moment in time, and so infuses the world with the blessing of spiritual mystery, with the flowing river of eternal light. We must learn to become present to that force of rest and restoration, to receive it into out hearts and our souls, a kabbalat Shabbat true and deep. Whatever the pain and suffering that we carry all week long, Shabbat offers us the chance to release that pressure for a time, to transcend our limiting enslavement to pettiness and greed, to pride and strife. On Shabbat, in the company of love and friendship, we may experience the redemption of hope, the liberation of peace.
The Sabbath is the stabilizing force of all that is. And just as Creation was incomplete without the introduction of rest into the world, so too reality needs the peace of Shabbat in order to exist. The Sabbath peace is a cosmic energy bestowed by God. It is the equilibrium and harmonizing element of all Being.
Shabbat Shalom! What is the meaning of this “peace” that we associate with the Sabbath?
As the Hasidic mystics teach, we should not think of peace as merely the absence of violence, discord, and conflict. It is that, to be sure, but it is first and foremost a positive force in and of itself.
Shalom is a flux of energy, a pulse of divine being that courses through the rivulets of life and time. Peace is a blessing that is bestowed, an overflow of divine emanation that blankets all reality with tranquillity and centeredness. When we receive the gift of shalom, we are reconnected to our deepest anchor, to the orienting ground of our existence. And this peace—this sheltering—is the cosmic force of Shabbat. For just as there is Shabbat in this world, so too is there the dimension of Shabbat within the divine Self. It is the ultimate register of calm and perfection. Its entrance into our time on the seventh day offers us a glimpse of what is possible in a world redeemed.
The challenge of the spiritual quest is to release the turmoil of mahloket (discord, contention) within ourselves, and to open ourselves up to receive the gift of peace from above. The peace we speak of is not just the resolution of interpersonal and international conflict. It is those things too, but the guiding state of shalom must begin in the inner regions of our own selves, in our hearts and in our minds. We must learn to let go of the competitions and the bitterness that eat away at our emotional and physical health. We must allow ourselves release from the tight grip of egoism and pride, from grudges and anger, from obsessions with pettiness and selfishness that keep us locked in the prison of an inner violence, resentment, and anger. The peace that comes to dwell within us on Shabbat is a vision of the equilibrium that we week throughout the six days of ordinarily time.
The calming energy of Sabbath peace fills the world at sundown on Friday, and it is this tranquillity that we hope to retain through one last inhalation of the spices during Havdalah on Saturday night. But even the Sabbath cannot fill our hearts with peace if we keep them stubbornly guarded and obstructed! This is the true meaning of kabbalat Shabbat, the reception of the Sabbath on Friday evening. We must open our hearts to the flow that streams from the Source of all blessing and all holiness. We must face the luminous presence of Shabbat with souls turned open to the serenity of the hour. Likrat Shabat likhu ve-neilekhah, ki hi mekor ha-berakhah! “Toward the Sabbath let us go forth, for she is the source of blessing!” Penei Shabbat nekabbelah, “Let us receive the face of the Sabbath!”
Shabbat is the time when the barriers of perception fall away, when the shalom of Shabbat bestows a vision of sheleimut, the oneness and wholeness of all Being. Shema! Hear, O Israel, our God is the sublime Oneness of all that is! This is the ultimate moment of prayer, the experience upon which all devotion is based: to be at one with the organic force of all life, to be opened to the presence of God so completely that all divisions disappear, and it is only the blessed name forever and ever (barukh shem kevod malkhuto le-olam va-‘ed). This climactic moment is expressed in the subsequent paragraph of the Shema as well: to love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength is to break open the walls that enclose your fragile heart and soul, keeping it far from the brilliance of the world outside. To be fully present to God is to pour out your heart, to free it of all the pent-up resentments and regrets that fester inside like incubating toxins. Then the Shema is the long exhalation of deep meditative release. We send the breath out, emptying our minds and our souls of all that keeps us from the restorative light of the sacred. In the Shema, our breath becomes one with the Source.
The human being is a microcosm for the very nature of Being. Our bodies are composed on many different parts and elements, but all are interdependent pieces of a single organism. For even though we may speak of limbs or organs as individual entities, can they really be defined apart from the whole? The soul is the divine force that animates this physical self, uniting it as a living being. So too, in the created universe. Though it may appear that this world is composed of separate, independent elements, the deeper truth is that it is all one an inseparable from the life-force of Divinity. We need only wake ourselves up to this fundamental realization, this theological awareness that the seeming manifold character of the world is but a mask for the secret of oneness.
The Shema is the devotional call to this awakening. It is the cry at the heart of the spiritual life that opens our eyes to the truth that God is Being; Divinity is the All, and we are but the outer marks of particularity inscribed in the complete circle of divine unity.
The splendor of Shabbat awakens our yearning for God—we are as lovers entering the wedding canopy. It is the sacred time of the Sabbath that stirs us to fulfill the command of the Shema, “you shall love God with all your heart”, and we are moved to a deeper level of devotion than we are able to reach within the bounds of the ordinary. There is an intangible quality to our encounter with the sacred—senses opened to the sublime, the heart called to purpose and direction. In the restorative airs of Shabbat, our hearts are opened to the flow of divine love, the world is filled with possibility: in the echoes of an ancient song of courtship and desire, we receive the spirit and send it forth. The mystics of old would go out to the fields to receive the Sabbath bride in the twilight of working time. She is the force of rest and blessing that gives breath to nature; she is the face of Shabbat, the light of the Other World.
Community and fellowship have the power to lift us beyond our ordinary natures, indeed beyond the very confines of the natural order. The phrase ‘al tiv’i, beyond nature, is one that we also see with some frequency in the writings of the Gerer rebbe, the Shefat ‘Emet. There Shabbat is characterized as a dimension of reality that reaches beyond the edges of ordinary time and space. Shabbat is le-ma’alah mei-ha-zeman u-le-ma’alah mei-ha-teva’, beyond nature. It evokes something of the otherworldly, a plane of spiritual reality that touches the rim of heaven, transcending the regular structures and forms by which we know and measure existence.
And yet, many hasidic mystics invoked the famous gematria (
We might expect the mystic to say that one requires seclusion and meditative retreat from other people in order to attain the heights of spiritual experience and encounter with Divinity. But several Hasidic teachers assert that individuality and solitude will get one only so far. To reach for the summit of the spiritual quest, a person must become bonded to the life and energy of a community. That koah ha-rabim (the power of the multitude, the strength of community) holds the force of mystical transcendence, where a person can break through the boundaries of ordinary transcendence, where a person can break through the boundaries of ordinary physicality and natural law. The limitations of our natures are conquered through the collective elevation of devotional fellowship, and this is the rarefied condition that we seek on Shabbat. Individual contemplation and devotional practice are of great value, but is through the energy of togetherness that we are able to climb to new rungs on the ladder.
What is it about community that allows us to reach beyond ourselves in a way that we cannot in solitude? Carried on the tide of melody—now contemplative, then ecstatic—we are transported to another spiritual region of consciousness and feeling. The thunderclap of Sinai pounds within us once again, reverberating in the interconnected caves of time. In the hands of spiritual fellowship, our souls become buoyant and new, able to reach beyond the shapes created by language and tradition. It is through that force of community that we are lifted to a new plane of spiritual consciousness and feeling. The boundaries of physical existence are effaced, and we are able to touch the mystery of the Great Beyond.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the late afternoon light begins to unravel—the hour of separation is approaching. Soon the mystery of the seventh day will yield again to the pressures of this world, the realm of souls giving way to ordinary time. For as much as it holds the eternal, Sabbath is also elusive, ever returning us to the mundane rhythms of life. And this is necessary: for it then awakens in us the yearning for that center of calm, that restoration of stillness in our innermost selves.
The dusk throws its otherworldly shadows over the land and the city. We can feel the retreat of the Sabbath Queen, her return to the place of light above. The flame of the Havdalah candle burns bright with its converging strands, offering us a glimpse of the world redeemed. And the spices we inhale are sustenance to the soul as it releases the Sabbath energy; we draw that scent inward, a marker of the ruah, the spirit, that dwells in the seventh day.
A new week begins, unfolding to undiscovered land, the Sabbath both memory and dream. In entering and exiting the sacred time, we are travelers into the terrain of the eternal and the timeless. For the spark of this day shines with the light of a world beyond our experience, and still with the vitality of generations gone by. Years, centuries, millennia: the candles lit, the food prepared, the prayers said. We can almost hear the voices of unknown ancestors, resounding, and surprising, even as it arrives like a familiar old friend. Likrat Shabbat lekhu ve-neilkhah: Let us go forth again to greet the Sabbath in the fields and on the pathways of this earth. She is the always present soul of our ordinary lives, calling to us from beneath the veils of existence, leading us on our quest for spiritual purpose in this world.