Shabbos Speech: When Words Become Deeds

1“These are the things that Hashem commanded, to do them.”¹ The holy Ohr HaChaim asks: the main mitzvah of Shabbos is a passive one, to refrain from work. If so, the verse should have said “not to do them.” He also looks closely at the next verse, “Six days work shall be done …”² Why does it say te'aseh, “shall be done,” as though the work will get done by itself? It should have said ta'aseh melachah, “you shall do work.”

2aWe may explain this by first citing what my holy great-grandfather, zy"a, wrote in the holy sefer Divrei Binah in the name of the holy Maggid of Kozhnitz, zt"l:³ the word melachah, “work,” stands for melo chol ha'aretz kevodo, “the whole earth is full of His glory.”⁴ He explained it this way: “Melachah points to the holiness within each particular thing. Every Jew has the power to serve Hashem in all the affairs of the world, and in every act of each of the thirty-nine kinds of work, the categories of labor forbidden on Shabbos. In every single thing a person does and is busy with, he can serve Hashem, blessed be He, for lofty light and life are hidden within it. Man is Hashem's messenger to this world, sent to serve Him in all these things, and through this they are all raised up to their root and source. That is why every kind of work is called melachah, a word that speaks of a mission. [For in the holy tongue a messenger is called malach,⁵ and melachah comes from the word malach.]

2b“A person must truly know that he is Hashem's messenger, sent to raise all things up to their lofty root through the power of his service in this world. When all of a person's work is for this purpose alone, and not, Heaven forbid, for his own pleasure and desire, he naturally draws every good blessing down upon himself with ease. He will need no toil and effort, only speech: by the power of his words all his undertakings will be done and completed. So it was at the beginning of creation. Hashem did not create the world with toil and effort; rather, ‘by the word of Hashem the heavens were made.’⁶ So too, when a person is worthy, he can accomplish all his work and labor through the words of his heart, without toil and effort.

2c“This is the meaning of the verse ‘These are the things that Hashem commanded, to do …,’ for devarim, ‘things,’ also means ‘words.’ From this verse Chazal derived all thirty-nine kinds of work forbidden on Shabbos.⁷ For through the holiness of Shabbos, Jews can reach the level where all thirty-nine kinds of work are done through their speech alone. By the power of their holy speech they will draw down upon themselves every kind of abundant blessing, and they will lack nothing.” Those are his holy words. Every Jew, then, is charged with setting right all thirty-nine kinds of work, for lofty light and life are hidden within them. When a person is worthy, he can set them right even through speech alone, for “by the word of Hashem the heavens were made,” and on Shabbos it is possible to reach this level. That is why Chazal derived the prohibition of the thirty-nine kinds of work from the words “These are the things”: the verse hints that through words alone it is possible to set right and to do the thirty-nine kinds of work.

3aHis holy words may be explained as follows. Before Adam HaRishon sinned, everything was ready and waiting for him without any trouble or toil. Only because of the sin was he cursed, “By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread …”⁸ Every holy Shabbos, in turn, is a reflection of the time to come. As Chazal said, on Shabbos the Levi'im would say “A psalm, a song for the Shabbos day,” that is, “a psalm, a song for the time to come, for the day that is entirely Shabbos and rest for life everlasting.”⁹ So through the holiness of Shabbos a person can be privileged to reach the level of the time to come, when there will be a day that is entirely good and everything will be plentiful even without toil.

3bAs the Rambam writes, in the days of Moshiach “good things will flow in great abundance, and all delicacies will be as common as dust.”¹⁰ Chazal's sayings imply the same: “In the future, all the barren trees in Eretz Yisrael will bear fruit,”¹¹ and “In the future, Eretz Yisrael will bring forth fine loaves of bread and garments of fine wool.”¹² This is the fullest form of “the six days that are blessed from it”:¹³ blessing flows from the holiness of Shabbos to all the days of the week, so that it comes even without trouble and toil, like Shabbos, which is a reflection of the day that is entirely good.

4aThis lets us explain a Midrash: “Adam HaRishon met Kayin and asked him, ‘What became of your judgment?’ Kayin answered, ‘I repented and reached a settlement with my Maker.’ Adam HaRishon began to strike his face, saying, ‘So great is the power of teshuvah, and I did not know!’ At once Adam HaRishon stood up and said, ‘A psalm, a song for the Shabbos day.’”¹⁴

4bShabbos and teshuvah, we may explain, are connected. The holy Shabbos is a time when a person can come to true teshuvah, as is well known: the letters of Shabbos (שבת) stand for Shabbos bo tashuv, “on Shabbos you shall return.” On Shabbos he can repair every blemish he has caused, because Shabbos is the day on which all created things can return to their good root, as they were before they were blemished, as we have seen. “A psalm, a song for the Shabbos day” is, at its root, the psalm and song of the time to come, the day that is entirely Shabbos and rest for life everlasting. Every Shabbos is a reflection of that future, the time when the tikkun, the repair of all things, will be complete, and on Shabbos a person can be privileged to draw down something of that future tikkun. Kayin had been privileged to repent, so the light of the tikkun of Shabbos, which returns a thing to its root, was drawn down upon him. That is why Adam HaRishon began to say this psalm in particular.

5This is the meaning of “These are the things that Hashem commanded, to do.” Through the holy Shabbos a person can be privileged to have even his speech count as action, so that by mere words all his needs are actually done. That is why the verse about Shabbos says “to do”: the doing will come about through these devarim, these words. This answers the Ohr HaChaim's first question. And this is the meaning of “Six days work shall be done”: it will be done by itself. If Jews are privileged to make their work a melachah in the sense of “the whole earth is full of His glory,” then without any toil or effort they will receive a great abundance of blessing and success, in the spirit of Chazal's words, “When they are worthy, their work is done by others.”¹⁵

6This lets us understand why Chazal forbade weekday talk on Shabbos. They said, “Your speech on Shabbos should not be like your speech on a weekday,”¹⁶ and Tosafos, the classic commentators on the Gemara, bring there the Yerushalmi's statement that only with difficulty did they permit greeting one another on Shabbos.¹⁷ But what is the reason for this prohibition? Since the whole tikkun of Shabbos comes about through speech, a person who speaks weekday talk blemishes the very heart of that tikkun. That is why Chazal forbade idle talk on Shabbos. We find, too, that earlier tzaddikim made a practice of not conversing on the holy Shabbos even about necessary matters. My holy ancestor, the Rebbe of Lentshna, zt"l, took care not to converse from Kiddush on Friday night until after seudah shelishis, the third Shabbos meal.

7So a holy duty rests on each of us: on Shabbos at least, to watch over our speech. Above all, we must take care not to talk in the middle of the prayers, for the yetzer hara is very strong in this. Through this may we be privileged to bring near the day that is entirely good, the time of the complete tikkun. Amen.