The verse reads, “And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath.”
Why is the first day of Passover referred to as, “the Sabbath”? Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev explains that, “it was only at the Exodus from Egypt that the Creation of the world was completed, and the purpose of Creation revealed, because then the love of God for Israel was revealed.” Just as the day of the Sabbath that followed the six days of Creation represents the physical completion of Creation, so the first day of Passover represents the conceptual completion of Creation. It was when the Israelites left Egypt that the conceptual intent of Creation was revealed. To quote Rashi on the first verse of the Torah, “In the beginning,” i.e. Creation, was all for the sake of Israel, who are called “a beginning.”
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak explains that the Sabbath that followed the physical Creation of reality is known as the Lower Sabbath (שבת תחתון), while the conceptual Sabbath, referred to by the first day of Passover, is deemed the Higher Sabbath (שבת עליון). It is specifically regarding the Higher Sabbath that the sages said, “If the Jewish people were to keep two Sabbaths, they would immediately be redeemed.” In fact, these two Sabbaths are included in every single Sabbath: the Lower Sabbath is Friday night, when the rest and cessation from the week’s labor is felt and the Higher Sabbath refers to the daylight hours of Saturday, which is the time for ascending from strength to strength (starting from the transition from Sabbath morning to the delight of the afternoon), as alluded to in the verse, “the righteous have no rest” on “the day that is all Sabbath and rest”; they attain this dynamic rest through the observance of the commandments, which increasingly reveal the purpose of creation.
RETROAcTIvE REvElATION Of MIRAclES
Rebbe Levi Yitzchak proceeds to explain a special phenomenon regarding the days of Passover using the Atbash letter transformation, where the first letter of the aleph-bet is replaced with the last letter, the second letter with the second-to-last letter, and so on. The first five letter pairs in Atbash are thus: aleph-tav, bet-shin, gimmel-reish, dalet-kuf, and hei-tzaddik. The aleph stands for the first day of Passover, the bet, for the second day, and so on. The second letter in each pair is an initial or acronym for another holiday during the year that will fall on the same day of the week as that particular day of Passover.
In detail, the letter tav stands for Tishah B e’Av and it will always be on the same day of the week as the first day of Passover. The letter shin stands for Shavu’ot and it will always be on the same day of the week as the second day of Passover. Reish stands for Rosh HaShanah, which will always be on the same weekday as the third day of Passover. Kuf stands for k r i ’a h (הָיאִרְק) alluding to the day of reading, or Simchat Torah, which will always be on the same weekday as the fourth day of Passover. The letter tzaddik stands for tzom, or “fast day alluding to Yom Kippur, which always falls on the same day of the week as the fifth day of Passover.
However, the next pair, vav-pei, is somewhat different. The pei refers to Purim, but instead of being the upcoming Purim that will be 11 (or 12) months after Passover, it refers to the Purim that already was that year, a month before Passover. Why does Passover retroactively refer to the previous Purim?
The miracles of Passover—the Ten Plagues, the Parting of the Red Sea—were overt miracles that annulled Nature, while the miracles of Purim were concealed within the natural course of events. As long as the world seems to go about its business-as-usual routine, Nature conceals the fact that everything is by Divine Providence, and that everything that is and happens is actually a miracle veiled by the mask of Nature. But when God disrupts Nature with overt miracles and His Providence becomes evident to all, we retroactively realize that even those events we thought were natural were miraculous. The past is revealed to be no less the handiwork of God than the present.
This retroactive revelation of God’s stewardship of reality governs the relationship Passover and Purim. By extension, it also governs the relationship between how God affected Nature during the Exodus and the way in which Nature seemed to reign independently from Creation until the Exodus. The miracles that preceded the Exodus, before the love for Israel was revealed, were relatively hidden miracles (even if they completely deviated from nature), because the purpose of Creation that lay beyond the clockwork functioning of Nature had not yet been revealed. But from the moment the purpose of Creation was revealed with the Exodus from Egypt, it became clear, in retrospect, that all prior events, all of God’s Providence over Creation was all intended for Israel.
Let us add a beautiful numerical allusion that relates to this teaching from Rebbe Levi Yitzchak. The sum of the first pairs five pairs of letters— צ"ה ק"ד ר"ג ש"ב ת"א—is 1105, the value of the first five words of the Shema, “Hear O’ Israel, Havayah is our God, Havayah [is one]” (שמע ישראל י־הוה אלהינו י־הוה [אחד]). The idea is that only after these five pairs of letters can the “One” (אחד) within Nature, God who works through Nature be revealed; retroactively, God’s oneness is revealed as the Providence behind Nature as well.
Similarly, it is explained in the Tikkunei Zohar 21 (62a) that the first five words of the Shema are symbolized by the five river-stones David collected into his shepherd’s bag—symbolizing the “hard stop” (פסיק טעמא) that follows the first five words—which then became “one” (אחד), a united single stone that David shot at Goliath’s forehead.
The value of the sixth combination—ו"פ—is 86, the value of “Nature” (הטבע) and God’s Name, Elokim (אלהים), alluding to the revelation of God’s “One”ness that is above Nature. Indeed, the product of “Elokim” (אלהים) and “One” (אחד) is 1118, the value of the complete Shema (שמע ישראל י־הוה אלהינו י־הוה אחד). Again, a retroactive revelation that everything is a miracle and all is for Israel.
