“...When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a Shabbat for Havayah” (Leviticus 25:2)
First Reading: Unifying the Divine Mind with Human Intellect
Rebbe Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev provides an explanation from the Arizal regarding Sabbath:
“And the land shall rest—a Sabbath to God.” For it is written in the writings of the Arizal regarding the verse, “And you shall speak unto the children of Israel, saying: ‘My Sabbaths you shall safeguard.’” The Tur states that during the time of enslavement in Egypt, Moses requested Pharaoh to allow the Jews to rest one day per week from their labor, and he chose the Shabbat day. When we were commanded about the Shabbat, Moses rejoiced in his portion because he had previously conceived of it as a day of rest. This is the meaning of the words with which God begins the commandment to keep the Sabbath, “And you shall speak,” because it was you who previously wished to prescribe rest on the Shabbat. This is the meaning of, “My Sabbaths you shall keep,” to stress that Israel should rest on the Sabbath not because of rest from their labor, but because God has commanded that they rest on the Sabbath.
Similarly, Rebbe Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev also explains the notion that the Sabbatical year will be “a Sabbath to God”:
This is the meaning of, “And the land shall rest—a Sabbath to God.” For it is common practice around the world to plow a field for one year and leave it fallow the next to enhance its potential. But this is why the Torah writes, “And the land shall rest—a Sabbath to God,” indicating that the Sabbatical year, when the land rests, is not due to the benefits afforded the land, but a Sabbath to God—in keeping with His commandment.
From Rebbe Levi Yitzchak’s teachings, we can conclude that Moses acts as an intermediary, connecting the human intellect and the Divine intellect. Human intellect instructs us to pursue that which is preferable and beneficial based on our rational mind and in accordance with Nature. Divine intellect represents God’s absolute will; it reasons in a way that our rational mind cannot understand and prescribes that which is absolutely beneficial, even if it contradicts Nature. Meaning that Moses has an intuitive sense within his human intellect that aligns it with God’s will. Indeed, it is stated that “Moses performed three acts [of leadership] that were of his own accord [and independently of God’s will], and the Holy Blessed One concurred with him.” We even find that Moses says “Thus says Havayah, the God of Israel” regarding his own innovations.
We therefore learn that the ultimate goal of the entire Torah, “the Torah of Moses,” is to elevate us to unite with God’s will specifically through the soul of Moses our Teacher, a point revealed in the verse, “and they believed in God [through] and in Moses His servant.” This is the secret of what we say every Shabbat morning, “Moses will rejoice in the gift of his portion, for You have named him a faithful servant... and among them [he intuited] the observance of Shabbat.”
The sages describe this special power that Moses has with the phrase, “Moses attained understanding (binah),” referring to the intermediary faculty of our intellect (corresponding to the first hei in God’s essential Name, Havayah) that mediates between God’s wisdom and will (corresponding to the yud and the tip of the yud in Havayah) and human intellect, which considers the emotional attributes (corresponding to the vav and hei in Havayah) and strives to attain what our mundane mind finds to be humanely beneficial. Hence, when God approves Moses’ understanding and explicitly commands what Moses has suggested of his own accord, it is said of him, “Moses will rejoice in the gift of his portion”—and joy is the inner dimension of the sefirah of understanding.
The letters of “will rejoice” (ישמח) permute to spell “Mashiach” (משיח), in this case referring to Mashiach the son of Joseph, whose origin is in the Supernal Mother’s intellect, i.e., the sefirah of understanding, a connection alluded to in the verse, “Moses took the bones of Joseph with him.”
In particular, Moses has an essential connection with the number 7 and to the Sabbath, the seventh day (and Rebbe Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, as we saw, expands this teaching to the Sabbatical year, the seventh year) because he himself is referred to as “the seventh”—the seventh generation from Abraham—and “anyone who is seventh is endeared.” Joseph corresponds to and symbolizes the sixth day of the week, when a double portion of manna fell from Heaven enabling the Sabbath to be “a day of rest.” Joseph, the sixth, thus prepares for Moses, representing the seventh.
Numerically, “a day of rest” (יום מנוחה) has the same value as one of Moses’ most important statements, which reveals his essential quality of self-nullification, “And we are naught” (ואנחנו מה). Adding the value of “Moses” (משה) to “And we are naught” (ואנחנו מה) we get the product of “that” (כי) and “good” (טוב), alluding to the way his mother described him when he was born, “[She saw] that he was good” (כי טוב).
The Sabbath is “Good” when it is safeguarded because of God’s commandment to do so and not because of the natural benefits gained from it and from keeping the Sabbatical year. Indeed, the Sabbath’s good is hinted to in the traditional Yiddish blessing, “Good Shabbes.” The average of the words “Sabbath” (שבת) and “a day of rest” (יום מנוחה) is 17 squared, where 17 is the value of “good” (טוב).
When we safeguard the Sabbath and the Sabbatical year because of God’s command and not to benefit from it naturally, we rectify the sin of the Earth that occurred during Creation. God had commanded the Earth to produce a fruit tree, in which “the taste of the tree will be identical to the taste of the fruit.” The union of the tree and the fruit through their common taste represents the unification of the means [the tree] and the end [the fruit]. When applied to the Sabbath and to the Sabbatical year, it represents reaping the natural benefits inherent in both (rest and rejuvenation of the earth) even while safeguarding solely because of God’s commandment.
(excerpted from Ma’ayan Ganim, Vayikra, Emor)
