Now we will talk about a king’s power. This is surely an outstanding characteristic of kings. Where does a king’s tremendous power come from?
The power wielded by a kingdom is very great. Let’s say a private person wants to build a house. He needs to trouble himself with all sorts of matters, and exert himself greatly, until he finally gets the house built. Whereas a king just says a few words, and they immediately build a whole city for him, replete with everything. A king’s power is testified to by the rivers of blood that were shed throughout the generations by people seeking to become king and attain the pinnacle of power.
About all this tremendous power it is said כי היא שלך המלכות – “Kingship belongs to You.” There is no king like Hashem, in fact there is no other king.
The reason a king has all this power is because of the keser, the crown. As we explained earlier, keser is higher than everything and represents a higher, more exalted reality. It is a force loftier than anything in the whole world. This is why the berachah to recite when seeing a king is “שֶׁחָלַק מִכְּבוֹדוֹ לְבָשָׂר וָדָם” – “He gave from His glory to flesh and blood.” Even an earthly king’s power and superiority stems from the exalted strength that Hakadosh Baruch Hu bestowed upon him.
But there is another reason why a king is so strong, and it is because he has nothing of his own.
The following humorous remark contains a kernel of truth that brings out the point. People say that the best parnassos in the world are those of the thief and the beggar. Because rich people, no matter how many houses and factories they have, are limited in their wealth. None of them owns everything. But the thief takes from everyone in the world, including the rich, so his wealth is not limited. Yet even the thief meets up with a hard limit in the end, because eventually he will be caught and sent to jail.
There is someone whose wealth is even greater than that of the thief, and it is the beggar. He, too, takes from everyone, including the rich, and there is no hard limit on how much he can take. However, people don’t give so much or so quickly to an ordinary beggar.
So who is the most successful beggar of all? The king. He takes from everyone (by taxing them) and ends up richest of all.
That’s the joke. Now let’s bring out the kernel of truth in it. The wealthiest person in the country has houses and fields, etc, and that makes him rich. What about the king? He might have no personal property to speak of. No houses and no fields. He has nothing of his own. So where does his wealth come from? He collects taxes from everyone. That’s what a king is. He represents and embodies the whole country, but has nothing particular of his own. He has the “totality” of it all. He is the kollel. So, in a certain sense, everything is his.
But this doesn’t mean the king is just a lowly beggar who happens to have the power to extract taxes. It all rightly belongs to him because everyone’s life and welfare depends on him. Without law and order, without “fear of the king,” the rich people in the country would be left with nothing, because one would swallow up another and it would be total anarchy. The king is the totality of the country who makes it all possible. He is the soul of the country and the cause of everyone’s wealth and wellbeing. Yet, he has nothing of his own.
Since the king is the totality of everything, he takes from everyone, rightfully, by collecting taxes, and thus ends up greater and wealthier than all others. His is the true power and the true wealth.
This explains Shabbos Hamalkah. Each of the six workdays has its own quality and character, its own “wealth.” The first day is לך ה' הגדולה, which is the trait of chesed. The second day is והגבורה, which is the trait of gevurah, of din. And so forth. The seventh day, Shabbos, is the trait of Malchus, which has no particular character of its own. It is the totality of all the midos. On the seventh day, the Shechinah comes to rest in the world. Shabbos Hamalkah has all the “wealth” in the world because it is the totality of everything.
What does this mean for us, practically speaking? How does it play out in our avodas Hashem?
Every holiday brings its special quality. When Pesach arrives, we attain freedom from the Yetzer Hara. When Shavuos comes, we receive the Torah. On Sukkos we are zocheh to deveikus, on Rosh Hashanah to yirah, on Yom Kippur to taharah. But Shabbos has no special quality of its own. It is the מעין הברכות, the fountain from which flow all the various kinds of blessing. All forms and expressions of kedushah come from it, from the Shechinah that fills it.
Shabbos has it all. From it we can draw freedom from the Yetzer Hara, Torah, deveikus, yirah, taharah and everything else. It lacks no positive quality. As Hillel said, in the name of the Shechinah, “If I am here, everything is here.” This is what Shabbos is like: “I am here.” It is thus more blessed and sanctified than any other day or time, because it has the Shechinah, the Source of all.
