Vayakhel 5784

Part I. The Shabbos Sanctuary

Don’t Change the Subject

וַיַּקְהֵל מֹשֶׁה אֶת כָּל עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם – Moshe assembled the entire congregation of the Bnei Yisroel and he said to them… (Shemos 35:1). That’s how Parshas Vayakhel begins: Everything we read in Terumah and Tetzaveh was said to Moshe on Har Sinai, and now Moshe gathered the nation together to give over to them all the details of building the Mishkan that Hakadosh Baruch Hu had commanded him.

And yet we find something strange here: Instead of talking about the Mishkan, Moshe Rabbeinu veers off course – at least it appears so – and he introduces an altogether different subject: אֵלֶּה הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה ה’ לַעֲשֹׂת אֹתָם – “These are the matters that Hashem commanded you to do…”. Which matters? The bigdei kehunah? The keilim of the Mishkan? No. שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תֵּעָשֶׂה מְלָאכָה וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי יִהְיֶה לָכֶם קֹדֶשׁ שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן לַהַשֵּׁם – Six days work may be done, and on the seventh day shall be for you a holiness, a Shabbos Shabboson to Hashem (ibid. 35:2).

And so, that’s a question because what is Shabbos doing here? We gathered around Moshe Rabbeinu to begin our preparations for building the Mishkan, not to hear a Shabbos drashah. We’re thinking now about the glorious ideal of building a place where the Presence of Hashem will live among us and Moshe is talking about keeping Shabbos?

A More Important Subject

The answer is that Moshe was saying like this. Despite the fact that we’re going to be busy building the Mishkan, despite the fact that I’ve been saying, V’asisa, V’asisa – “You should make this for the Mishkan and you should make that for the Mishkan” – all those instructions are only for the six days of the workweek.

Yom rishon, very good – build. Yom sheini, same thing. Yom shlishi and so on, keep up the good work of building the Mishkan. But when it comes to the seventh day of the week, יִהְיֶה לָכֶם קֹדֶשׁ שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן לַהַשֵּׁם – When the sun goes down on Friday afternoon everything must come to a halt and it should be for you a day of holiness (ibid.)

“Don’t worry about the Mishkan that you’re building for Me” says Hakadosh Baruch Hu, “because there’s something that I want you to build that is more important even than that. I want you to build a Shabbos Mishkan, the Sanctuary of Shabbos. And therefore this detour that Moshe Rabbeinu is taking, is intended to demonstrate that despite the vast importance of building a Mishkan where My Presence will rest, I want you to know that it is the Shabbos that is the first and most important ‘Sanctuary’ to be built.”

Entering the Sanctuary

It’s a startling idea! It boggles the mind! It means that every seventh day, as the sun goes down, the Am Yisroel enters into a Beis Hamikdash even more important than the Mishkan that was built in the Wilderness, more holy than the Beis Hamikdash in Yerushalayim.

Imagine that we had a Beis Hamikdash today or that we were back in the ancient times when the Beis Hamikdash stood on the Har Habayis and let’s say you were zocheh to come into the azarah. How would you enter into such a holy place? It’s the Home of Hashem, the holiest place in the world. You wouldn’t just waltz in — you would come in with great awe as if entering the palace of a mighty king.

That’s one of the reasons the Levi’im were stationed as guards around its walls – to create that aura of holiness. When somebody tried to approach the Beis Hamikdash, the guards asked him, “Are you tamei? Did you go to the mikveh? Did you have haza’ah if you were a tamei meis?” You couldn’t just step inside willy-nilly. You had to pass an interrogation before you could walk into the precincts of the Beis Hamikdash. And therefore, when someone approached the Har Habayis, he did it with the greatest trepidation, with the greatest preparation.

Entering the Sanctuary of Time

And so when we enter Shabbos it’s exactly the same. Hakadosh Baruch Hu declares that the twenty-four hours of Shabbos is a Beis Hamikdash. Although it’s not a sanctuary in space; you can’t point at a specific spot – “Over there is the holy Shabbos” – but it’s a sanctuary in time. That’s a chiddush of the Torah that time also possesses kedushah.

You know, we’re used to the idea of separating between different types of objects, some things are more holy than others, and between different types of people, some people are more holy than others; but the Torah declares that when it comes to time too, some times are more kadosh than others. To the untrained eye it might appear like any other day – Shabbos has an evening and a morning and an afternoon just like Tuesday does – but actually there’s a world of difference. About the Shabbos we say, וְקִדַּשְׁתּוֹ מִכָּל הַזְּמַנִּים — those hours of Shabbos are more holy than any other time of the year, even more than Neilah on Yom Kippur.

And therefore the first feeling when Shabbos comes is that you are entering a Sanctuary. You can’t come into the Shabbos like you come into a Tuesday! You need a certain frame of mind, a certain preparation of the thoughts, before you come into a time of holiness.

Bigdei Kehunah for Everyone

That’s why we do certain things before the Shabbos comes – in order to prepare our minds for the kedushah that’s coming. The Gemara (Shabbos 114a) says, מִנַּיִן לְשִׁנּוּי בְּגָדִים מִן הַתּוֹרָה – How do I know from the Torah that you must change your garments for Shabbos? So the Gemara doesn’t bring just a sevara, an idea, that in honor of the Shabbos it’s more beautiful to wear fresh clothing. No! The Sages bring the possuk of וּפָשַׁט אֶת בְּגָדָיו וְלָבַשׁ בְּגָדִים אֲחֵרִים. The kohen wears special clothes when he goes into the Mikdash (see Vayikra 6:4).

They bring a proof from the kohen in the Beis Hamikdash! You hear that parallel?! Just like a kohen, before he could enter the Mikdash he had to change his clothing, the same is by us; before we go into the Mikdash of Shabbos we get dressed up in bigdei Shabbos. It’s a remarkable teaching – on erev Shabbos we change our clothes because we are preparing to enter a Beis Hamikdash of time!

If you never thought about that before, tomorrow afternoon is a good time to start. When you’re putting on your Shabbos clothes, say, “I’m dressing myself in special garments now because I’m going in soon to the Mikdash of Shabbos.” Even if you do it one time in your life it’s something, but that’s how you should do every Friday afternoon. You’re a kohen entering into the Mishkan. And it’s not just a form of speech, a drush; you’re actually entering a Sanctuary.

Surrounded by Holiness

And so as the sun begins to go down you shouldn’t let that moment go lost. As the thick clouds of night begin to roll up over the heavens and the stars begin to appear, we should imagine that clouds of Shabbos are now coming up over the horizon and enveloping the world — we’re being surrounded by clouds of kedushah. I say ‘imagine’ but it’s actually the case. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is spreading a canopy of kedushah all around us.

That’s why when Shabbos comes – if you’re prepared for it – you tiptoe into the day. L’havdil elef havdalos if people were sitting in the theater, and somebody came in late he walks on tiptoe. Oooooh! With respect he walks. He’s afraid he might make the smallest sound and disturb the people in the holy pursuit of polluting their minds so he walks b’hadras kodesh. He shows that he understands where he is.

L’havdil elef havdalos that’s how we enter the Shabbos; on tiptoe. I’m not talking now about when you go into the synagogue. That’s something else; the kedushah of the beis knesses – we’re talking now about the kedushah of time. It means that even in your own home or when you’re walking on the street, on Kings Highway, and the Friday sun is setting you should feel like you’re walking into the Mikdash. Don’t look around at what all the ignorami, all the beheimos are doing. Don’t look in the store windows. You’re entering now the precincts of the Mikdash of Shabbos; you’re tiptoeing because for the next twenty-four hours you’re walking through a kedushah of time.

Shabbos Walks and Shabbos Talks

That’s why we say הִלּוּכְךָ תְּהֵא בְּנַחַת. We don’t stride at a rapid pace on Shabbos. We walk differently; we walk with a slow gait and that reminds us that we are like kohanim in the Beis Hamikdash who walked eikev betzad agudal – they walked heel-to-toe because they were walking in a place of holiness. And we imitate them because we’re walking through a time of holiness.

Now you can better understand why in the ancient times Jews did not talk much on Shabbos. The Gemara says that when the sun went down on Friday evening they stopped talking. There was a sage who had an elderly mother and she was talking. So he said “Mother, it’s Shabbos!”, and she stopped immediately; she clammed up (Shabbos 113a Tosfos s.v. shelo). You hear that? A person checked his tongue when he remembered it was Shabbos.

Of course they said ‘Good Shabbos,’ and they were friendly to each other. They ate and drank and sang and davened and studied Torah and they were happy; but they didn’t gab. They didn’t talk d’varim b’teilim. How could you gab in the Beis Hamikdash?

Fear of Shabbos

In the ancient times when Shabbos came in, an awe fell upon the people. Very many people became different during the Shabbos. Even the am ha’aretz, sometimes the most crude and ignorant person, on Shabbos he refused to tell an untruth; he refused to lie on the Shabbos. We have records testifying to that.

The Gemara (Yerushalmi Demai 4:1) tells us that on Shabbos you can ask an am ha’aretz about his produce, “Did you separate a tenth from it?” and you could rely on his word. During the week you couldn’t be sure but on Shabbos you could trust him because eimas Shabbos al ha’am ha’aretz, the fear of Shabbos was on the am ha’aretz. He was afraid to say a falsehood on Shabbos.

You hear the old time am ha’aretz? He was afraid to say something not true on Shabbos. Halevai, we should be an am ha’aretz like that. It’s because he knew he was in a sanctuary: About the Beis Hamikdash it says, “You should fear My Sanctuary,” and so the Am Yisroel feared the Shabbos.

The Authentic Shomer Shabbos

Now I’m not saying we can demand from ourselves such a respect for Shabbos all of a sudden. But at least a little bit, we should try to acquire this frame of mind that Shabbos means a Sanctuary of Time.

You see, we’re not talking merely about keeping Shabbos. Of course that in itself is extremely important and valuable – to keep all of the dinim of Shabbos, the d’oraisas, the d’rabbanans – but that’s the bare minimum. We’re talking now about an entirely different type of Shabbos, a Shabbos that is capable of transforming our minds every week if we’ll approach it like the Mishkan it is. It’s a Shabbos Sanctuary that gives us the opportunity to create the Shabbos Mind.

Part II. The Shabbos Mind

The Unfulfilled Shabbos

Now, if we’re going to utilize the Shabbos as it was intended to be utilized it’s necessary to have beforehand a picture, an idea, of what we intend to get out of the Shabbos. As we walk through the Sanctuary of Shabbos we should understand that we’re trying to accomplish something here; we came into the Shabbos for a reason, not just to look around and eat some chulent and take a nap.

It’s a pity that one Shabbos after another should pass by – lechah dodi, havdalah, lechah dodi, havdalah, we walk into the Mishkan of Shabbos and we walk out – but we don’t use the opportunities of the day. And that means that to some extent, maybe to a large extent, our lives pass by unfulfilled.

And so, it’s an important question that we need to answer: What is the number one program to think about as we go into the Shabbos? We go into the Sanctuary of Shabbos with mora Mikdash on tip-toe, and with special clothing and song, but we have to know, what for? What are we expected to do once inside?

Making Something From Nothing

And the answer is, there’s no question that more than anything else the lesson that Shabbos is trying to teach us is Bereishis bara Elokim; that in six days Hashem made this universe and everything in it, from nothing. בְּרִיאַת הָעוֹלָם יֵשׁ מֵאַיִן; creation ex-nihilo, they call it. Nihilo is Latin for ‘nothing’; ex-nihilo, ‘from nothing’. זֵכֶר לְמַעֲשֵׂה בְּרֵאשִׁית means that we have to think about how it began, בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹקִים , that in the beginning Hashem created yesh me’ayin, everything out of nothing.

That’s what Shabbos comes to tell us and we’ll never hear anything more startling than this statement, בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹקִים . Those three words are so revolutionary that they have no equal in all the statements and writings since the beginning of time and never again will a statement be made that has the same impact.

Old News is Good News

Now, I say it’s a startling idea but most people when they hear that, they’re not so interested. Briyas haolam?! What’s there to think about? That’s old news already; they know all about it. If I would tell you that Shabbos is for thinking sisrei Torah, secret things, mystical ideas, that would be something; but Bereishis bara Elokim? That’s the point?!

Yes, that’s it. There are other things too but this is the number one achievement of Shabbos, to look at the world as what it actually is – the imagination of Hashem; the word of Hashem that created existence from nothing.

A Different Type of Building

You know, it’s possible to make skyscrapers out of dust. It’s possible. If you take the dust and you mix chemicals, you can amalgamate it in such a way that it becomes bricks and building blocks.

You can make almost anything out of anything else. Today we know it’s even possible to transform one element into another. It’s being done today in laboratories with some of the elements. You can even change matter into energy or energy can possibly be changed into matter. In principle yes, it’s possible because we’re working with yesh and to make yesh into yesh, something into something, it’s possible.

And yet, whatever miracles of chemistry will ever be achieved, it’s only a matter of changing one thing into another. Before Bereishis, nothing existed. There were no building blocks. There was no Big Bang, and there was no Little Bang. There were no black holes and no explosions of stars. There was nothing to explode. There was zero. Nothing at all existed except for the ruach Elokim, the spirit of Hashem which pervaded all ‘space’ – I don’t want to say space because there was no space yet – but Hashem pervaded All. There was only Hashem and nothing else.

And then, from absolutely nothing, הוּא אָמַר וַיֶּהִי – Hashem said, and it came into being (Tehillim 33:9). Hashem created everything; He Willed space into existence. And then He Willed that the space should be filled with heavenly bodies; and that there should be one planet that should have an atmosphere and a hydrosphere, that’s water, and a lithosphere, that’s soil, and that it should have all living things. He Willed that everything should come into existence including Man.

Angelic Thoughts

Yes, the achievement of thinking about Maaseh Bereishis, that’s it. There are other things too but this is the number one achievement of Shabbos. And it’s so important that the Gemara (Shabbos 119b) says as follows: בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁאוֹמֵר וַיְכֻלּוּ – Tomorrow night, Friday night, when you stand up in Shemoneh Esrei for Vayechulu and you proclaim that Hashem made this world from nothing, בָּאִים שְׁנֵי מַלְאֲכֵי הַשָּׁרֵת – two angels come, and they put their hands on your head, and they say to you, וְסָר עֲוֹנֶךָ וְחַטָּאתְךָ תְּכֻפָּר – “Your iniquity will depart and your sins are being forgiven.”

Now we must pay attention to that statement. At the time when you make that declaration of Vayechulu, something very important is happening. Not the fact that malachim are coming; that’s interesting but it’s not the most important thing. And not the fact that the malachim are telling you that your sins are being forgiven. That’s certainly good news but that’s not it. The angels are only a result of something else, of something much more important than angels.

There’s something that’s happening, something very important happening in you; and it’s happening in the place where the biggest changes can take place – in the mind. When you think these thoughts, that there was once nothing and now there’s something, and that it all came about through the Will of the Creator, your mind is transformed!

You Are What You Think

Now, I know what you’re thinking. That it’s an exaggeration, it’s over the top. Because what will I gain from thinking more about it? If I know, I know. I have to think about it more? What am I learning now that I didn’t know before? How could thinking these thoughts be so valuable that it becomes like Yom Kippur, when all your sins are forgiven? A little bit of daas should be so valuable?

Absolutely! Because you are what you think; to a great extent, that’s what makes a man, his thoughts. And therefore each time you think about Maaseh Bereishis you’re becoming a new person. Because when we’re talking about daas, about a Torah mind, then even what appears small is actually very big.

Good Things In Small Packages

I’ll give you a little mashal to understand this point. Let’s say there’s a capsule of radium, pure radium, and it’s worth imagine $100,000. And it was lost in a hospital. A nurse who was handling the radium machine had taken out the capsule and put it on the table for a moment and when she reminded herself and came back it wasn’t there.

So they made an alarm: What happened to the radium capsule?! $100,000! They called all the orderlies and they said maybe it was swept off into the waste baskets. So they took all the waste baskets and they examined them thoroughly, each one. Nothing.

But then somebody said maybe in the meantime the waste baskets were taken down to the basement and dumped into the big garbage bin. So they raced down to the basement and they started combing through the garbage.

Then somebody said the garbage truck has been here in the meantime and it carted it off to the dump. And so they got in their cars and they raced to the dump. It’s a true story I’m telling you now; a true story. And they divided the dump into piles and they went through each pile separately. It was worth all the trouble and all the expense because when something is precious, even the smallest amount of it is extremely valuable.

The Bereishis Capsule

And now we come to this great gem, this great capsule of daas that we call briyas haolam yesh me’ayin. How precious it is to understand this principle that there’s nothing in the universe except devar Hashem. It’s much more valuable than a radium capsule worth $100,000. There’s nothing better for a Jew than to see the world as it really is, as nothing more than the Word of Hashem.

But not only if a Jew never knew it before. Like many people I’m sure here didn’t think about it before and now they possess it. They’re going home tonight millionaires. If you didn’t know it before, you weren’t aware and now when you’re going home with the idea that you are only the word of Hashem and your street is only imagination and everything in this world is nothing but d’var Hashem concretized into something physical because He imagined it, then you’re leaving here a million dollars wealthier than when you came in!

The Imaginary Reality

You’ll leave this place tonight and walk outside and you’ll see a different street than when you walked in. It’s not a sidewalk; it’s the devar Hashem concretized into what we see as a street. He imagined a sky so there’s a sky. He imagined a sun so there’s a big ball of fire, a nuclear fire. But it’s all His imagination. Intrinsically nothing has any existence; everything is nothing but the imagination of Hashem.

So if you gained that awareness tonight then you became wealthy. You’re rich! And it’s a Yom Kippur and malachim are putting their hands on your heads and saying וְסָר עֲוֹנֶךָ. Because that’s the highest form of teshuvah; to understand that there’s nothing in the world except the Will of Hashem – there’s no better teshuvah than that.

But suppose a man has been saying this for many years already. Him too! For him too it’s a Yom Kippur, because when he says it one more time he gains a tiny grain of more awareness. By repeating it, it becomes a little more clear to you. So even though you said it thousands of times, if you say it one more time it’s becoming more and more firmly embedded in your mind. That little bit is so precious that it’s worth everything. Because when a principle is so great then every grain of it is precious.

Diamond Dust

It’s like the man I know who has a diamond shop and all day long he is rubbing diamonds with a wheel to shape them. When five o’clock comes he gets down on his knees with a pan and a brush and he collects all the dust underneath his machine.

So a visitor says to him, “What’s this? A man like you, a rich diamond merchant, should be worried about dust?”

So he says, “This dust is diamond dust and it’s worth my while to lie on my knees and to collect it. It’s too precious. I can’t afford to let it go to waste.”

Explosions of Daas

And the dust of daas is much more precious than diamond dust and therefore it’s worth our while even on one Shabbos to say it once more. And it’s so great an occasion this little bit of extra daas that we gain, that we deserve that malachim should come to us. Because daas is not diamonds and it’s not radium capsules. It’s a hydrogen bomb going off in your head!

When a man makes this declaration Vayechulu hashamayim veha’aretz, he has put into his mind not a bit of important information; he has actually set off a hydrogen bomb into his head. When you declare that the world was created from nothing you are in effect saying that there’s nothing in the world except Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And if you let that sink into your head, the results of this idea are incalculable.

Part III. The Shabbos Life

Ah Gantz Vuch Shabbos

Now, when a person understands that every Shabbos he’s walking into a ‘Sanctuary of Time’ so he makes sure to utilize that day for thinking these thoughts. It’s true, there are many other Shabbos thoughts – we’ll talk about them one day – but Bereishis bara Elokim, that’s number one. And the wise shomer Shabbos makes sure to utilize the day for thinking about it. Some more, some less, but as much as he does, that person is achieving – he’s creating for himself a mind.

And it’s a mind that doesn’t go away after the Shabbos ends, after havdalah. The neshamah yeseirah, yes, it leaves. All the dinim of Shabbos go away. But the mind that was created, the daas he acquired when he said Vayechulu, remains with him all week long until the Mishkan of Shabbos comes again the next week.

Anxious Feet and Troubled Eyes

Now, the Gemara (Brachos 43b) states that פְּסִיעָה גַּסָּה – a hasty footstep, נוֹטֶלֶת אֶחָד מת”ק מִמְּאוֹר עֵינָיו שֶׁל אָדָם– takes away one five-hundredth of a man’s eyesight. That’s what the Chachomim say, that if you’re in a hurry, you’re afraid you’ll be late and you’re rushing with anxiety, whatever it is, you have to know that it’s going to affect your eyesight. The Gemara says “one five-hundredth” but it’s not measured with a caliper; it means that the anxiety takes away a little bit of man’s eyesight.

I remember once I went to an eye specialist. I was seeing rainbows and I didn’t know what it was; I was afraid. Baruch Hashem, it wasn’t serious. The doctor discovered that it was a piece of foreign matter lodged in the tear duct. But I remember one of the questions he asked me, before he examined me, was “Do you get angry often?” Because it’s a known fact that anxiety and haste; nervous excitement, affects the eyes.

There are people who are blind today just because of emotional disturbances. I know a man who is totally blind and he explained to me that it’s because of excitement. He’s an Orthodox Jew and his son was straying off the road. There were battles in the house and the excitement aggravated his diabetes and it led to blindness. I remember we were seated in a taxi together and he was crying to me that he’s becoming blind because of his arguments with his son.

The Hustling Jew

Now, most people don’t take it that far but we all suffer from p’siyah gasah to some extent. What are people doing all week? They’re running around. Even if you don’t have a son making you crazy, but you have someone else who does; maybe a wife or a husband or a neighbor. Or you have other things. Everything is an emergency. I have to catch this customer. I have to catch that customer. I have to do this. I have to pay these bills and my account is in overdraft. I have to make this and that phone call. People are worried all week and it’s affecting their eyes.

Now, don’t misunderstand me; there’s nothing wrong with being a hustler. You have to hustle to make a living; you have to hustle to raise a family too. But it depends how you hustle. If you’re hustling with your body, very good. But when you hustle with your emotions, when you’re anxious and worried and rushing, that p’siyah gasah, that hasty step, damages the eyesight.

Intellectual Eyesight

Now it’s true literally, but it’s true metaphorically also. The anxious footstep takes away more than the physical eyesight. It takes away also your intellectual eyesight. The weekday busyness dims our mental eyesight, our ability to see things clearly. There’s no question that then when you’re busy all week with gashmiyus – even kosher gashmiyus, glatt kosher gashmiyus, but after all it’s gashmiyus, materialism – so the gashmiyus is a mechitzah between a man and the truth.

He might say that everything is Hashem and that Hashem is in full control, but his hasty steps are a mechitzah between him and that truth. He feels that he’s the macher here, that he’s the one doing things. It means that his intellectual eyesight dims somewhat.

Now if that’s the case, if the eyesight of a man is taken away because of the anxieties of life that cause him to remove his mind from the great truths, so the Gemara asks מַאי תַּקַנְתֵּיה – what’s the remedy for this? What can you do about it? How can you repair that situation?

And the Gemara gives us a queer remedy, a very easy remedy it seems. לְהַדְּרֵהּ בְּקִדּוּשָׁא דְּבֵי שִׁמְשֵׁי – You can restore the health of your eyesight by making kiddush Friday night. It means when you make kiddush or when kiddush is being made, it’s an opportunity to restore the health of the body and the sharpness of your mental vision.

Now some people will tell you certain things about this maamar. That by looking at the candles during kiddush it’ll heal your eyes. Or by drinking the wine of kiddush, that’s the refuah. Very good. Excellent. I’m not going to say different but listen now to the pshat.

Clearing the Mind

It’s Friday night. You’re seated around the Shabbos table and finally the week is over. Finally בָּא שַׁבָּת בָּא מְנוּחָה. After all you can’t do anything anyhow. Like this, erev Shabbos you were frantic. What should I do? Maybe I should run to City Hall? I should speak to a politician? I should call long distance in Cleveland? All kinds of things I can do maybe in the last minute to help myself.

But now it’s Shabbos so you’re stuck. You’re stranded. You can’t do any business. You can’t make any telephone calls. You can’t do anything. You’re a frum Jew after all. You can’t pick up the telephone. You can’t touch a pencil even. So naturally you relax. Whatever it is, you’ll have to let things slide for a while. And therefore even for the simple Jew, for the frum Jew who keeps Shabbos, Shabbos is a day of healing.

But it’s more than that. Because besides for healing your anxiety; more important, is that you’re healing your mind.

You’re sitting there at the Shabbos table and you, or the master of the house, picks up a goblet of wine and he makes a declaration, וַיְכֻלּוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ… אֲשֶׁר בָּרָא אֱלֹקִים לַעֲשׂוֹת – that Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the entire universe with everything in it out of nothing so that it should continue to function. And as you’re saying these words or listening to them you attempt to picture in your mind that right now at this moment when you’re entering the Sanctuary of the Seventh Day, that’s when all of nature began functioning like a well-oiled machine. That’s what it means וַיְכֻלּוּ, from the word כָּל. All of creation yesh me’ayin came to an end and everything was now functioning as a completed world.

Whose World Is It Anyhow?

It’s a world that depends only on the d’var Hashem for each detail; the Word of Hashem that caused every detail to come into being and that continues to cause everything to exist. It means that it’s a world that is being created right now the same as it was by Maaseh Bereishis.

Now you’re not going to acquire too much of a mind if you just say the words without thinking. You have to think about what you’re saying – that just like He caused everything to come into existence, He keeps it in existence. He didn’t make it and then let it remain. No. Every second it exists because He says it, “Let it continue to be!” The world only exists because Hashem wants it to continue to exist.

That’s what you’re thinking. That everything is nothing but His will. Your boss and your competitors. Your friends and your neighbors and your enemies. The Italian mafia man who wants his money. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is willing them into existence. They’re all His imagination.

Not only all the materials, objects and people of the world but all phenomena in the world; whatever happens in the world is His will. That’s the real meaning of briyas ha’olam yesh me’ayin, that because it’s all His imagination, His will, so even when it’s Vayechulu and it looks like everything is running on its own, actually Hashem is directing everything. He made everything from scratch and He continues to make everything and therefore it’s all under His full control.

Who’s In the Driver’s Seat?

That’s one of the fundamental purposes of visiting the Shabbos Sanctuary – in order to acquire the attitude of the mind that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is in charge. He is guiding every man’s fate, steering the steering wheel of history – the history of the world and the individual.

Shabbos means that nothing is done unless Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants it. So what are we worried about? You mean to say that He’s not going to handle it properly? The Chafetz Chesed, the One Who desires kindliness and He has full power to carry it out, do you mean to say He’s going to allow it to turn out other than good?

Now, it doesn’t mean what we think is good. Many times if we were asked to write a prescription for ourselves, if the pharmacist would say, “Come in. Take whatever you want!” you wouldn’t walk out alive. It’s only when you’re told what to take.

And so, Hakadosh Baruch Hu knows what to give us. He knows best and He’s capable and He’s doing it. He’s driving the car, so how can a man have any anxieties?

The Shabbos Plan

What are you excited about? All your worries are only phantoms conjured up by the yetzer hara to get you confused; you worry about this and you worry about that. The Borei Olam is on the job and therefore the whole thing is only a dream. Everything is going according to Plan.

Which plan? The plan you were thinking about when you walked into the Sanctuary of Shabbos and said Vayechulu. Of course the more you understand that the Shabbos is a Sanctuary of Time – a Sanctuary so important that even the building of the Mishkan in the wilderness yielded to – so you’ll try to utilize the Shabbos even more. Vayechulu will be only the beginning of your walk through the Shabbos Mishkan. As much as you can, a minute here and a minute there, while you’re chewing the challah you’re chewing over these thoughts in your head. And the more you do that the greater and greater you become. You’re the real shomer Shabbos because you’re utilizing the Mishkan of Shabbos to create for yourself a new mind, the Shabbos Mind.

Have A Wonderful Shabbos

This week’s booklet is based on tapes:

106 – Preface to Shabbos I | 227 – Preface to Shabbos II | 301 – Serene Mind | 722 – Shabbos: Day of Knowledge | 794 – Bitachon and the Calm Mind | E-261 – Wealth of the Mind

Let’s Get Practical

Creating a Sanctuary in Your Mind

This week we learn that Shabbos is more important than the Mishkan, construction of the physical Mishkan is halted as we construct a spiritual Mishkan of Time in our minds. The benefits of sanctifying the Shabbos are innumerable, but most importantly, it sanctifies our minds. Every day this week, as I’m about to recite the ‘shir shel yom’, I will bli neder set aside thirty seconds to consider the fact that Shabbos is “a Mishkan in time” dedicated to remembering Hashem’s creation and His constant Management of all affairs.