Noach 2020
“Noah is Shabbat” - Tikuney Zohar, 138b
The seventh Rebbe of Lubavitch, the great Tzadik, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson taught (in Maamar Bati L’gani) that the place of God's most intense dwelling in this world is the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, and the beams which hold up the Mishkan are called in Hebrew, “kerashim.” He said the word “keresh” has the same letters as “sheker,” which means “falsehood,” (also the same letters as “Kesher,” but that is for another time). Sheker, falsehood, is the source of sin, as the Talmud relates (Sota 3a), “Reish Lakish says: A person commits a transgression only if a spirit of folly enters them.”
The Lubavicher Rebbe said our job is to make God’s presence more manifest in the physical world by utilizing our “sheker," our falsehood and folly, our earthly desires - to serve God. In this way we bring the Divine Presence back into our world from which it has dissipated due to human sin. We thereby transform our “sheker”, our falsehood, our sin, into “keresh”, a beam for God’s holy Temple. This is one of Judaism's foundational ideas, that we need not forsake our earthly self and our physical desires, but rather transform them into something holy through the use of the Torah thereby making this physical world a Godly place.
The Slonimer Rebbe, Rabbi Shalom Brezovsky, OB”M, in his book Nitivot Shalom, writes that the ultimate vehicle for transforming the physical, the desires of the flesh, into that which is holy and sublime, is the Shabbat. Shabbat is the holiest day, yet we do not shun the physical on Shabbat, quite the opposite, the mitzvah is oneg, to enjoy the physical - food, drink, rest, and sexual intimacy. How can it be that the holiest day - some would say it is holier than Yom Kippur - is the day that is also the most physical? The answer is that Shabbat has a unique sublime power to transform the physical into something spiritual if we treat the Shabbat like the holy and special day it is.
The Slonimer concludes with the following words: “The power of Shabbat is similar to the concept of Noah’s ark...The power of Noah's ark emerges from it being the place in which all the holy and pure gather together, protected from the impurity outside...This too is the idea of Jews sitting together on the holy Shabbat, by coming together on Shabbat we draw down the holy light of Shabbat above to the world below…”
May it be God’s will to bring us back together again, in the communal holiness of Shabbat, speedly in our days. Amen.
(Special thanks to my Nitivot Shalom chavrutah Rabbi Dan Epstein)
