The Power of Kiddush Hashem
On Shabbos, we’re in the King’s house, so to speak, and this calls for completely different behavior than during the week.
Once on Shabbos I (Rav Pincus) visited one of my rebbeim, R’ Yosef Liss, zt”l. I was standing and talking to him next to a fence around a yard. I fiddled around with the gate as we spoke, unconsciously pushing it open and closed. Suddenly he asked me, “What are you doing?” “Nothing,” I answered, not quite getting the point. He asked again, “What are you doing? You’re doing something!” Again I answered, “Nothing.” After the third time he asked what I was doing, I suddenly noticed my hands opening and closing the gate... Then he said to me, “You know, something like that would never happen to me. My hands would not move on Shabbos without my knowledge of exactly what they’re doing. Do you know why? Because I had a grandfather who was a Kotzker chassid. He was a great man. I remember that every erev Shabbos at noontime, his hands started trembling, and they wouldn’t stop until Shabbos was over. When we visited him on Shabbos, he would look at our hands the whole time. ‘Where are your hands, where are your hands...?’ He trained us in the important behavior that on Shabbos a person should always be conscious of what his hands are doing!”
One who has learned hilchos Shabbos well, especially the laws of muktzeh, knows that on Shabbos it is almost impossible to lift a hand or foot without the “permission” of our Great King. If a person picked up his hand and is not aware of what he is doing, he is likely to desecrate Shabbos. Why does our every move matter? Because we are in the presence of the King!
Being careful about what we do on Shabbos actually affords us a tremendous opportunity to sanctify Hashem’s Name. Rambam states that one way to fulfill the mitzvah of Kiddush Hashem is by doing a mitzvah or refraining from a sin for the sole reason that Hashem said so. If a person does a mitzvah l’shem Shamayim, not because of any personal considerations, he has actually fulfilled two mitzvos: the immediate mitzvah he has done plus the great mitzvah of Kiddush Hashem.
Let’s say on Shabbos morning the husband is in shul davening, and the children are playing in the yard. The wife is in the kitchen, and some sauce suddenly spills on the floor. She quickly looks around for something to wipe up the spill and spots a roll of paper towels—but on Shabbos it’s forbidden to tear a piece off the roll! But no one is watching her...If she would start searching for an old towel to soak up the spill, by the time she’d get back the sauce would have spread all over the kitchen...but she knows and remembers that Hashem is watching. And Hashem says, “Remember the Shabbos Day to sanctify it.” So she stays away from the paper towels. This women, besides keeping the mitzvah of Shabbos, has fulfilled another tremendously important mitzvah: Kiddush Hashem!
