WELCOMING SHABBAT

Shabbat is more than a day of refraining from worldly activity.

When experienced to its spiritual fullest, its holiness enlightens all other days of the week.

We invite you to enhance your Shabbat with these words of Torah.

 

Lit blue and white Havdalah candle

The Light We Make

The Light We Make

Sacks, Rabbi Lord Jonathan ZT"L
March 25, 2022

“…God created the universe. …Then came Shabbat, the seventh day, the day… to show that there are boundaries to creation. …Holiness consists in respecting boundaries and honouring the natural order.

 

On the sixth day, God creates a being who, like Himself, had the capacity to create.

 

…God tells the first man not to eat of the fruit of one tree… [which] represents the fact that creation has boundaries… between the permitted and forbidden.

 

…on the sixth day… [Adam and Eve] transgressed the command and were sentenced to exile.

 

But in compassion, they were given an extra day in Eden – namely Shabbat. For the whole of that day, the sun did not set. As it too came to a close, God showed the first human beings how to make light…

 

…the light of the first day was created by God. The light of the eighth day is what God taught us to create. It symbolises our ‘partnership with God in the work of creation.’…

 

God empowers us to join Him in bringing light to the world. On Shabbat we remember God’s creation. On the eighth day (motsei Shabbat) we celebrate our creativity as the image and partner of God.

 

This, according to the Sages, is the reason we light a Havdalah candle at the end of Shabbat to inaugurate the new week.”