Shabbos Morning

Last time we looked at the opening of Friday night’s Amidah, today, the next Shacharis. (We will deal with the common portion of the middle berakhah for Shabbos later.)

The berakhah begins, “יִשְׂמַח מֹשֶׁה בְּמַתְּנַת חֶלְקוֹ – Moshe will? be happy with the giving of his portion”. The conjugation of “יִשְׂמַח” is difficult. Normally one would assume it’s future tense “Moshe will be happy”. But that’s implying that Moshe wasn’t happy with it until now.

I therefore think there is poetic license being used, and the conjugation is being used in the Tanakh’s way, to indicate the imperfective aspect. To explain that grammar term by example: In English, the perfective form would be “He ran”, and the imperfective — “He was running.”

I am suggesting that the authors wanted to describe Moshe’s happiness as something continuing. Moshe has been happy since he was made the one to transmit the Torah, including Shabbos. And that happiness is still continuing (currently in the World to Come) and will do so, eternally.

---

Rav Shimon Shkop warns us about ingratitude. Because we strive to have a high self-esteem, we prefer to think of what we ourselves accomplished and belittle what others contributed to our success. And this isn’t only true with material accomplishments. It is more true of intellectual pursuits. As we feel more one with what we know than with what we own or otherwise put out there in the world.

Rav Shimon uses this line of the siddur to buttress his point. Notice it doesn’t talk about Moshe being happy with his portion, but “with the giving of his portion.” Moshe’s happiness with receiving from Hashem is only because (translation mine, Widen Your Tent, pg. 54):

“כִּי עֶבֶד נֶאֱמָן קָרָאתָ לּוֹ – You called him a reliable servant”, that there is no joy in receiving the aspect of wisdom unless he is a reliable servant who possesses nothing, that it is all his master’s and lord’s. Only then there is complete joy in acquiring wisdom. Without this [attitude] it is possible that there is no happiness in acquiring wisdom, for through it he is capable of reaching heresy.

If I were to just do whatever Hashem made me for, my role in the running of the vast engine of creation, just as Moshe Rabbeinu fulfilled his role, I too can have the same never-ending joy.

---

“כְּלִיל תִּפְאֶרֶת בּרֹאשׁוֹ נָתַתָּ – a crown of glory You placed on his head.”

The word for crown isn’t the usual “כתר”, related to “כותרת – the top of an עמוד, a column”, both in the sense of the capital of a physical column, or the headline of a page of text. This would be a crown as a symbol of being at the top of the power structure. (And is only found in Tanakh in the book of Esther.)

Rather, Moshe gets a כליל, from the same root as כלה, bride, or to complete. Moshe’s crown was not just a statement of power, it was a symbol of accomplishment.

As we said earlier, it is by accepting and trying my best to accomplish the role Hashem made me for that I too can have a כליל תפארת. That role is as critical to the workings of the entire universe as any other. And that realization could give me too the eternal joy of Moshe Rabbeinu.

We saw the Shabbos of Friday night’s davening was that of creation. This morning we discuss the Shabbos of revelation, of Torah and a life lived with purpose. And how that purpose could bridge from Creation, and the fact that I was designed, to the eternal happiness of Shabbos as the Glimpse of the World to Come, the topic of Shabbos afternoon.