Shabat

Editorial notes:
This essay moves from a brief reference to the Mishnah Shabbat to Kabbalistic categories mentioned in passing referring to Shabbat and everyday affairs, on to Midrashic analogies and the desirability of being true to oneself and ends with applying Kabbalistic terms to the crucial importance of the material world. This is related to the Fifth Commandment of honouring one’s parents. The basic thread uniting all these reflections is the pervasiveness also in the spiritual life of hidden consequences of seemingly minor behaviours. Examples are given of how outwardly simple things and actions in this material world can have deeper spiritual ramifications when analysed and seen properly, so the material actions actually change deeper spiritual levels, which in turn change the material world itself. That is especially so regarding the Shabbat. Yet doing this need not be done for God-centered reasons, just for the sake of beauty or elegance. The reference to “In 2 ways – 4 ways” of Mishnah Shabbat is to its opening chapter’s discussion. That chapter begins by discussing how one deals on Shabbat with someone (e.g., a beggar) at the door bringing a gift or asking for charity. If a single person lifts or carries something like food over the threshold separating private and public domains and sets it down in the other domain this constitutes a serious violation of explicit Biblical law for Shabbat observance. Rabbinic legislation extends this liability to situations in which the initiator and the recipient are both involved, one lifting the item in one domain, the other in another domain receiving it. If this occurs, such actions according to Rabbinic interpretation produce four different possible Shabbat violations depending on who does what. This, in turn, can be qualified further. The basic point Shai is making is that Jewish tradition teaches that each action has multiple hidden aspects when examined closely in its full context. The outer simple appearance is only the beginning of understanding the spiritual depths. In short, how worldly people measure the importance of things, persons and actions is not the way God does. This opens up a whole new way of seeing the world, others and oneself. A multiple-perspectival approach is necessary. Instances of this way of seeing things can be found in the Rabbinic laws at the end of the Mishnah tractate Shabbat about setting up a mikveh or Rabbinic teachings about giving to the poor. Another Midrashic illustration is Abraham digging a well in the desert which later benefits others. Shai applies this to Kabbalistic teachings. In the world of Asiyah (the Kabbalistic term for this world of actions in the lower material world), our feelings are also involved, and they help to connect those actions to the higher realm of Yetzirah, Formation. This points us to the dynamic integrated powers behind things which penetrate and “enclose” (like a b-g-d, garment) the material realm. We contact those spiritual powers through our feelings and passions, so we can redirect, rectify and even sanctify the material world through those same feelings, passions, and thoughts when coordinated by our will and enacted in the world. This can link material events even to the highest primal realm preceding the Creation of the universe and still sustaining it, the realm of Atziluth, Emanation, that contains the plan of the universe spanning all space and time, and that exists in eternity. The effects of our deeds, therefore, go far beyond what we think they do. This is likened to the childless woman Tamar of the Genesis account (Gen. 38), whose two previous husbands had died so she seemed doomed to a sterile life, but through justifiably tricking Judah she was able to get pregnant and have twin sons. There were world-changing effects from this lasting far into the future that none of those involved could know of. From one of her sons, Perez, would eventually come King David and even in the End of Days the Messiah. So, Shai remarks, Tamar’s experience gives hope to all future childless would-be mothers (and fathers). Kabbalistic concepts teach us about such ramifying consequences of our slightest acts, extending to the end of time. They relate to the Eternal’s transcendence of, but also presence in, the temporal lower worlds, coordinating everything. In the Kabbalah this is symbolized as a kind of marital fusion between the masculine aspect of God enthroned in the highest heavens whom we address as HaShem (Zeir Anpin, especially located in the sephirah Tiferet but also involving others) and the receptive feminine aspect of God shown in the Divine Presence (Shechinah, Nukvah, located in the tenth sephirah Malcuth) which we experience here on earth, that enfolds those who sanctify their lives. So one must learn to shape one’s mundane behaviour in terms of eternity. That is one thing the Shabbat teaches us to do. Yet Shai adds that one need not do this by focussing on God. The Hindus show the way in the various forms of yoga they practice. They have explicitly devotional forms centred on the personal form of God (termed Krishna, Shiva, etc.), called bhakti yoga. But there are other forms of meditative yoga in which ritual as such is viewed as a way of rendering one’s behaviour meditative, elevated and beautiful in itself. So in this mode, Shai undertakes to observe as much of the laws of Shabbat as possible in terms of the final result, which is the experience of kedushah, holiness, “enveloped in being free and true to myself.” That is one way the pea, details or “fringes” that symbolize the commandments, can elevate the Shabbat. Shai concludes with an aside on the distinct reality of the material world as such. It is not identical with the world of action, Asiyah, which according to the Kabbalah has to do with the functions of material interactions and the appearances of things to us. But the actual material world exists apart from superficial actions, appearances and chance relations, in its sheer facticity. It is the final stage in the unfolding of the universe. As such, it includes all that went before. The interactions and dynamics of the higher realms result in this world of finite things. It is all condensed into matter. Shai offers some Kabbalistic ways of expressing this. He concludes that the way we deal with materiality is for our own rectification, more than for the material world’s literal rectification. (Shai does not state explicitly that material rectification follows from our own self-rectification: there is a hint of the view developed in other philosophical essays that our own experiences of the world do not literally change the reality of actual material things, they only seem to do so.) So we make ourselves, and the material world we experience, holy, by doing holy things with it. The crown creates the king beneath it. Our observing the Fifth Commandment to honor our parents is for the good of the parents, not the children. [EZ*]. *Many thanks to Dr. Evan Zuesse for providing the commentary for this essay.

Mishna 1: in 2 ways 4 ways^[I].

This is like the rabbinical laws, which are like the measuring of the mikveh at end of last Mishna Shabat.

This is like giving to poor, rectified with the queen.

beit-gimmel-daled (Avraham giving water to those in the desert, and what a blessing to find a well in the desert!)

combines with aleph

the land.

This occurs in asiya (aleph) but in our minds via yetzira (b-g-d), thus rectifying the nukva with the legs/thighs^[1] of the zeir anpin (which in the merkava is a single foot), with the foot of Israel, thus combing with yud qua Malchut of Atzilut (since it occurs at bottom of bgadim of yud/caf through to kuf, but in another way kuf is the Malchut of Atzilut, since the curtains of the Mishkan are connected with silver, and are 5 curtains (at that level)), and this is like Tamar who was the hope of the mothers we never knew (or fathers).

To learn how to have “sacred” motivations in life, but alongside, “non-sacred, mortal, mundane, petty, ecce homo” [b/c Jesus &c (aka all) was just a man, even if he was the son of good too),

is to learn how to integrate shabat into life which is without shabat.

Shabat’s can be performed without sequence, e.g. “this week, not this week, etc”, because they are done as bhakti yoga, aka, acts of devotion (this does not mean, however, cf. yoga, that it is motivated by devotion per se (since menorah burns to centre, but Moshe was not seen), rather it is done as meditations on scheena, aka, this shabat I will look as much as possible at samech sofit, and that kedusha I will envelop in kedusha of observing laws as much as possible, and that kedusha I will envelop in being free and true to myself.

This is one way Pea connects to Shabat.

(Why do we see the world as being below asyia, aka world of matter, 5th world? Because aleph is also Malchut of yetzira, and hence is also seen as Keter of asiya which is hidden from the Malchut, but by learning to see yud as a Malchut (aka we are the hand of God, aka sons of God), then we will learn to see that Aleph is the Keter (like the land which was the spoon defining the shape of the soup, thus the crown creates a king beneath it, like the necklace of the old parents which is that mark where the crown was lifted from, hence the 5th commandment is for the good of the parents, not the children)

^[1] Eliezer is like Yitro, which is like the part of ourselves that rises to become Moshe, rectifying Cain and Abel and the war of Babel (Armageddon between generations which looked like world wars). But this occurs after childhood since Avraham has already lived, cf. notes on Vayichi.