A.
Our parasha opens, as Rashi informs us, on the day after Yom ha-Kippurim, just under six months after the Exodus. Moshe has returned from his second trip up the mountain with the second pair of tablets, ויקהל משה את כל עדת בני ישראל ויאמר אלהם אלה הדברים אשר צוה ד' לעשות אתם: ששת ימים תעשה מלאכה וביום השביעי יהי' לכם קדש שבת שבתון לד' כל העשה בו מלאכה יומת: (“And Moshe caused all the community of bënei Yisra’él to be gathered together and said to them, 'These are the things which Ha-Shem has commanded to do them: Six days mëlacha will be done, and on the seventh day you will have a qodesh, a Sabbath of resting [shabbath shabbathon] for Ha-Shem; anyone who does a mëlacha on it will be put to death”).
The parasha then goes on to recount Moshe’s instructions to collect the materials and make the Mishkan and its furnishings and accessories, as we have been discussing over the past three weeks. But this juxtaposition begs a question which must occur to anyone perusing the Book of Exodus Why does Moshe begin his pronouncement to this gathering with an admonition about shabbath? After all, the bënei Yisra’él had been aware of the laws concerning shabbath since before they had approached Mt. Sinai (cf. XV, 25, Rashi ad loc.).
B.
The reason, Rashi says, that הקדים להם אזהרת שבת לצווי מלאכת המשכן לומר שאינו דוחה את השבת (“he placed the admonition of shabbath before the commandment of the mëlacha of the Mishkan to say that [the mëlecheth ha-Mishkan] does not supersede shabbath”). Thus, “six days of mëlacha will be done,” the definition of mëlacha being those categories of activities necessary to fabricate and erect the Mishkan.
And no mëlachoth are to be done on the seventh day. Cessation of those activities necessary to make the Mishkan, which represents, as we have seen, the universe at large, is thus emblematic of G-d’s resting on the seventh day after Creation. Indeed, the Or ha-Hayyim tells us that this passage implies כי לא יקומו ששה ימים במלאכתו אשר הכינם ד' לעשות אלא אם יום הז' יהי' להם קדש אבל אם לא ישמרו שבת לא יהי' הששת ימים כי שבת הוא נפש קיום העולם וגו' (“that the six days would only arise though His mëlacha which Ha-Shem established to be done if the seventh day would be a holy thing [qodesh] to them; but if they would not keep shabbath, the six days would not be in existence, for shabbath is the soul of the universe’s existence [nefesh qiyyum ha-‘olam]....”).
“The soul (or, perhaps better, life-force) of the universe’s existence....” Why this is so becomes a bit clearer with a laconic remark of the Ba‘al ha-Turim, שעיקר התורה בשבת כשאדם פנוי מעסקיו (“that the essence [‘iqqar] of the Torah is inherent in shabbath, when a man is free of his pursuits”) and can devote more time to learning than otherwise. We are thus reminded that the Torah is both the plan according to which the universe was designed and made (אסתכל קב"ה באורייתא וברא עלמא, “The Holy One, Blessed is He, looked into the Torah and created the universe”; בראשית רבה פ"א סי' ב'), as well as the end and purpose of the Creation. Israel’s covenantal acceptance of the Torah and use of the various aspects of Creation to observe it within this world is, as the prophets and Hazal remind us, why the universe is here: התנה הקב"ה עם מעשה בראשית וא"ל אם ישראל מקבלין התורה אתם מתקיימים ואם לאו אני מחזיר אתכם לתוהו ובוהו (“The Holy One, Blessed is He, made a condition with Creation an said to it, If Israel accept the Torah, you are in existence; and if not, I am returning you to chaos!”; שבת פ"ח:), and: כה אמר ד' אם לא בריתי יומם ולילה חקות שמים וארץ לא שמתי (“Thus says Ha-Shem, If My covenant is not [observed] by day and by night, the laws of heaven and earth I did not set!”; Jeremiah XXXIII, 27).
Now with the Ba‘al ha-Turim’s help, we see that the prime focal point, the ‘iqqar, of Torah is shabbath, and are reminded that Ha-Shem Himself commanded: ושמרו בני ישראל את השבת לעשות את השבת לדרתם ברית עולם: ביני ובין בני ישראל אות הוא לעולם כי ששת ימים עשה ד' את השמים ואת הארץ וביום השביעי שבת וינפש (“And the bënei Yisra’él will keep the shabbath, to make the shabbath for their generations an eternal covenant. Between Me and the bënei Yisra’él it is a sign forever that [in] six days Ha-Shem made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He desisted and relaxed [va-yinnafash]”; XXXI, 16-17. It will surely not be lost on the sharp-eyed reader with a living sense of the Hebrew language that the last word in this passage shares its root with the word nefesh). על כן ברך ד' את יום השבת ויקדשהו (“Therefore, Ha-Shem blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it [va-yëqaddëshéhu]”; XX,22).
C.
In a comment on this last verse, the Or ha-Hayyim writes: לא עשה בתכונת בריאתה שיעמדו אלא ששת ימים ומעתה יצטרך ד' לחדש הבריאה בכל יום א' ובאמצעות נפש העולם שהוא שבת שברא ד' נח מהתמד' המלאכה וכמאמרם ז"ל שהי' העולם רופף ורועד ובבא שבת עמד בקיומו והוא אמרו "וינח" ביום הזה ויום זה מעמיד העולם עוד ששה ימים ובכל יום ששי לערב שכלתה תכונת העולם יבא שבת ויקיים העולם עוד ששת ימים אחרים וגו' (“[Ha-Shem] did not provide in his establishment of creation for [the heavens and the earth] lasting more than six days, and from that point Ha-Shem had to renew the creation every Sunday. By means of he nefesh ha-‘olam, which is shabbath, which He created, Ha-Shem desisted from perpetuating the mëlacha; as Hazal say, the world was provisional and conditional, and when shabbath arrived it stood in its exist-ence; and this is why He said, ‘and he desisted’ on this day; and this day sets the world for another six days. And on every Friday, toward evening, when the establishment of the world is coming to an end, shabbath comes and effects the world’s existence for yet another period of six days....”).
Had Ha-Shem not desisted from the hathmadath ha-mëlacha, the “perpetuation of the mëlacha”, the universe would have remained provisional and conditional, unfinished, not in a final configuration, since all of the creative functions would have been ongoing. G-d’s “resting”, then, froze the universe’s configuration as of twilight of the sixth day. As G-d Himself tells it: ויכלו השמים וכל צבאם: ויכל אלקים ביום השביעי מלאכתו אשר עשה כו' ויברך אלקים את יום השביעי ויקדש אתו כי דבת מכל מלאכתו אדר ברא אלקים לעשות: (“And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their content. And G-d finished on the seventh day His mëlacha which He had done.... And G-d blessed the seventh day and sanctified [va-yëqaddésh] it, because on it He rested from all his mëlacha which He had created to do”; Genesis II, 1-4).
From this point on, the Or ha-Hayyim tells us, the creative processes had to be renewed for another six days, then “set” again in the configuration’s next iteration.
And then Israel arrived on the scene.
D.
The Torah consistently and very strikingly uses in the passages cited above, as well as many others relating to the “sanctification” of shabbath the pi‘él or factitive verbal form of the root quf-dalet-shin, which conveys the sense of “holy, sacred”, qiddésh, rather than the hif‘il, causative form, hiqdish. The reason appears to be that hiqdish is used to render a previously existing thing or entity sacred; an example is an animal dedicated for sacrificial purposes. Such a thing or entity is thus said to become heqdésh, and is divorced from the profane world.
A factitive verb, by contrast, brings into being a state, condition, or entity which did not previously exist; in this case, something sacred, shabbath. The term designating such a sacred entity is qodesh.
As the Torah tells us, this is what G-d did on the arrival of the first shabbath, and then on every subsequent seventh day throughout the 26 generations stretching from the advent of the first man until Israel’s fateful encounter at the foot of Sinai: He blessed the Sabbath day, va-yëqaddëshéhu.
Once Israel had come into being through acceptance of the Torah on that occasion, the factitive function of “making a qodesh” in this world at the end of each six-day period devolved on the new Torah-nation. This is what we are actually doing, every Friday night, when we (as the colloquial phrase has it) “make qiddush.” The animating force of the universe, its nefesh, has been placed in our hands.
We attest to this fact numerous times in the course of the week, for instance, when we recite Proverbs III, 17-18, which begins by telling us of the Torah, עץ חיים היא , “It is a tree of life” (עיי' זוה"ק ח"ב קכ"א. ברעיא מהימנא, וע"ע המגיד מישרים לפר' בשלח) or, perhaps most tellingly, in the blessing said by each ‘ole la-Torah as his ‘aliya ends, and he recites the bëracha containing the words וחיי עולם נטע בתוכנו; “and the life of the universe He has planted within us” (עיי' נפש החיים ש"ד פכ"ו).
A thought to keep in mind, as we “make qiddush this shabbath, and from now on.
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