24. Shabbos
Understanding the message, and using zemiros
Shabbos is an example of a day that holds an incredible amount of potential, but is often a struggle to capitalize on properly. Without the right framing, the restrictions of Shabbos can feel choking, turning what should be a beautiful, restful island in time into a frustrating experience. What are some ways to take more advantage of Shabbos Kodesh?
Understanding the Message
The most basic step to energize Shabbos is for parents to have clarity regarding the purpose of Shabbos, and then find opportunities to convey that to their children. (This is true about all areas of religious life, especially so when there is potential for a negative rather than positive experience.) Here’s how I like to say it, based on Rav Hirsch and Rav Soloveitchik:
After creating the world in six days, Hashem created a mini-creator, man, to continue His involvement in the world. As long as humanity saw themselves as representing Hashem down here, they would continue to dedicate their lives to the right goals. The challenge, though, is that Hashem doesn’t “show up to the office” every day; it’s like He is the CEO of a global company who hired a bunch of very talented managers to run the company’s local branches, and then disappeared into his penthouse apartment. What will stop these managers from slowly beginning to make decisions as if they’re the ones in charge of their branches, rather than representing the actual owner — the CEO?
Hashem’s decision was to “close the office” once a week, on the anniversary of Man’s first full day in the world.1 This serves as a weekly reminder to the “Man-agers” that even if they want to be involved in building, fixing, and impacting the world, they can’t — because the world doesn’t belong to them, it’s not their “company,” it belongs to Hashem, their Employer. Utilized properly, then, Shabbos becomes an incredibly powerful source of inspiration to use the sheishes yemei hamaaseh properly, keeping our eyes focused on Hashem and acting as His representatives down here.
According to this understanding, every melachah that presents itself over the course of Shabbos — and there are many — is an opportunity to remind ourselves of this dynamic. “Can’t rip the words on this package — that’s mochek, one of the melachos, and the office is closed!” “Can’t climb the tree today — that’s a gezeira based on the concern that you might snap off a branch, which is the melachah of kotzeir, and the office is closed today!” “Careful when you take out that bug — you have to make sure that you don’t trap it, which would be tzad — and the office is closed today!” Muktzah, while d’rabbanan, relates to the same point — either avoiding a melachah, or highlighting Shabbos as a day removed from melachah specifically and the routine of the week more generally.
This mainly relates to the shamor aspect of Shabbos, the issur melachah that reminds us of Hashem’s role as Creator — zecher l’maaseh bereishis. The second component to Shabbos, the zachor element which triggers the chiyuv to make kiddush and eat three celebratory meals, enjoins us to not just keep Shabbos, but to celebrate Shabbos and the reminder it delivers every week about our relationship with Hashem. Wearing our Shabbos best and enjoying two feasts in twenty-five hours (plus some sesame noodles, the shaleshudis staple) is meant to be our declaration that we are bought in to this system and are excited to participate, a role which we were granted as we left Egypt — zecher l’yetzias Mitzrayim.
I try to mention the basics of this around kiddush Friday night every so often, and talk about it when a melachah stops us from doing something in the simplest or most comfortable way. One week, I set up our plata before Shabbos, but forgot to flip the switch that actually turns on the Shabbos clock it was plugged into. Late the next morning, we realized that we would be “enjoying” cold potato kugel and grilled chicken for Shabbos lunch. On its own, we knew that that would be a frustrating experience — not the “taste” we wanted our Shabbos to have. But when we broke the news to our kids, we were able to frame it within the broader context of Shabbos’s weekly message: we affirm our significance to Hashem and to the world by avoiding melachah in situations like these. While that didn’t make the cold kugel taste any better, it did save it from being a purely negative experience. Appreciating the significance of the system should at very least give meaning to the fact that there are things that we can’t or won’t do, on top of the fact that Hashem said so. Rather than undermining the sense of commandedness, it enhances it with a potential explanation of what Hashem wants us to gain from the commandment; we do it whether we understand it or not, but understanding the meaning is the ideal form of compliance.
Celebrate With Song
Zemiros are a great opportunity for many families to enhance their Shabbos experience. There is something uniquely beautiful about a family singing together around the Shabbos table or at shaleshudis. Here are a number of suggestions for parents:
Establish one or two zemiros as the “family songs.” This is especially powerful if they were passed down from a grandparent or are somehow connected to a family mesorah, but they can also just be tunes that you particularly enjoy. Every Shabbos, make sure you sing those songs, even if you don’t do any more.
Rotate in different tunes and zemiros each week. Once you’ve built up a good number of tunes, give kids the opportunity to choose something to sing.
Dance! Attend the seudos of any camp and most school Shabbatons and you will find that one of the highlights for many kids is the dancing that accompanies zemiros. You can bring that to your home! Young children especially love it, and it can grow with them as they get older.
One idea that can bring zemiros to a wider audience: A musical college student or parent can come to an elementary school on Friday mornings to lead erev Shabbos singing. Growing up, the fourth-grade rebbi in my elementary school did this, and it was one of our highlights of the week — while we also learned new tunes and had something exciting to share with our parents at the Shabbos table.
This is the Gemara’s explanation for the machlokes in Shabbos 69b: A traveler who loses track of the days of the week and doesn’t know when Shabbos is should either mark Shabbos that day and every seven days hence, or first count six days and then mark the seventh. From Man’s perspective, Shabbos is the first day of Creation, as he was created in the middle of the sixth day; from Hashem’s perspective, it is the seventh.