Or: Starting Shabbos

Now that I covered “the thoughts I have while davening Shemoneh Esrei the times I think while davening”, let’s move on to the Amidah for Shabbos.

The first part of the central, Shabbos-specific berakhah differs with each tefillah. Friday night it begins “אַתָּה קִדַּשְׂתָּ – You Consecrated”. The night is a time for the Shabbos of creation. We shall see, G-d Willing, how the morning tefillos (Shacharis and Mussaf) are about the Shabbos of revelation, and the afternoon (Minchah) relates to Shabbos as me’ein Olam haBa — a glimpse of the world to come. Current custom is to close the berakhos slightly differently as well, for the same reason.

Here is the opening paragraph, with a translation somewhat pre-loaded with Tefillah Meanings:

אַתָּה קִדַּשְׂתָּ אֶת יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי לִשְׁמֶךָ – You consecrated the seventh day for your name

Both taharah and qedushah come from havdalah – separation. Taharah is separation from something. It usually takes the preposition “-מ”. Qedushah is to be separated “-ל”, for, something. Which is why I used “consecrated” rather than sanctified. Still talks about holiness, but has the connotatons of being set aside to be used for something holy.

Here we say that the seventh day is consecrated to be Shabbos, as a day for relating to Hashem’s “name”, in other words as humans perceive Him.

תַּכְלִית מַעֲשֶׂה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ – the culmination of the making of heaven and earth

Takhlis is a complicated word to translate. It comes from kalah to finish or complete. It implies the purpose of something, but also the end. After all, purposes, goals, come after the process to get them. The “finish” sense then grows into the word “akhilah – eating”. The completion sense gets us “kalah – bride”. The nearest English word I can think of was therefore “culmination”.

What is it bewing called the takhlis of creation?

We could mean just the last word – “lishmekha“. The name of Hashem,The world was created so that there would be something to perceive Hashem, relate to Him, partner with Him, and emulate Him. This would mean that takhlis is beng used as “the purpose” or “goal”, as the Divine Name wasn’t the last thing made.

Or we could be refuring to “yom hashei’i“. Shabbos. Which would lean more towards takhlis as final thing to be made, the pinnacle of the process.

The last possibility is that we are saying the whole phrase — Hashem consecrating Shabbos as a day of contemplating Hashem’s “name”, i.e. Hashem as He is percieved by people. This best fits the idea of takhlis, as it is describing Shabbos, the end of Maaseh Bereishis in a way that is quite plausibly the point of Creation — that we partner with and emulate Hashem. And Shabbos as a day to take the time to learn from Hashem’s example when setting the tone for the next week.

Shabbos, or sanctifying Shabbos as a day of The noun being described here is a little ambiguous, and it could be taken in three different ways: Are we saying that:

1. Hashem’s “name” is the culmination of creation.
2. Shabbos is the culmination of creation. Perhaps more in the “final thing to be made, the pinnacle of the process” sense, more than the purpose of it.
3. The sanctifying of Shabbos is the culmination.

I tend to lean toward the third, a union of the two previous ideas which also uses the full richness of the word takhlis. Creation is so that (takhlis as purpose) there would be people who relate to (and thus name) Hashem. Therefore, having a day to stop doing and think about that relationship and what that implies about what and how we should be doing is the culmination of creation.

וּבֵרַכְתּוֹ מִכָּל הַיָּמִים – and He blessed [Shabbos] from all the days
וְקִדַּשְׁתּוֹ מִכָּל הַזְּמַנִּים – and He consecrated it from all the times

As Rashi says, “כל ברכה שבמקרא לשון ריבוי הוא — every berekhah found in scripture is a term for increase.” (Sotah 10a, “bameh virkhu.” An idea a number of rishonim used to explain Chazal.

And yet qedushah is a limiting term, to be consecrated for one thing will mean avoiding those things that would distract us from that goal or would otherwise make it harder to accomplish.

Combine the two, and I get a mental image of Shabbos as a day of blessing because it’s a day where I see where my abilities and resources can be constructively used, and where I am wasting them. And so, leaving me with more time and energy to do what I am really supposed to accomplish in life.

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How are “yamim – days” different than “zemanim – times”, and why does that mean that Shabbos as a special yom should get a berakhah, whereas as an important zeman it gets qedusah?

On parashas Miqeitz, “Vayhi mikeitz shenasayim yamim“, I suggested that the Torah speaks of two kinds of time: cyclic – the way every year has a Pesach, a Shavuos, etc… Circular time is time as the attribute of processes. The way we measure time with the swinging of a pendulum, the ticks of a clock escapement, the vibrations of quarts or radition from a cesium atom.

And the Torah also describes linear time — the progress of humanity from Adam’s sin to Mashiach.

Shanah, from the word for repetition (and two) is a measure of cyclic time. “Yom” is akin to “yam“, a sea, and “hamayim bayamim — the water in the seas” (or: in the sea beds). A yom contains things. A unit of progress.

R Aharon Kotler makes a similar dichotomy between eis and zeman. He writes that when we give a berakhah that a baby’s beris should be “be’ito ubizmano“, we are first asking Hashem to ensure that the beris is when the baby is physically ready, the eis being the right time for the baby. It is a point in the baby’s progress, like a yom is a unit of human activity. And second, we ask that it be bizmano – at the ideal time on the timeline, the eighth day. The zeman comes regardless of people, like clockwork. Cyclical time.

And so, Shabbos is in particular a day of berakhah. If properly utilized, Shabbos can get us further in our ascent up Har Hashem than other days. But only because it is also a zeman, a time, of qedushah. A repeating appointment with our destiny.