Shabbat and the Wilderness: a kavvanah for Kabbalat Shabbat

We find ourselves in the midst of the book of Bemidbar, the book that depicts the ' journey through the wilderness, the midbar. The midbar looms large in the biblical imagination, not only a place of hardship and deprivation, but also as the setting of the first stages in the relationship between God and , which the prophets describe in tones that evoke a love affair. (9:10) quotes God saying, I found Israel as grapes in the wilderness." Jeremiah" – כַּעֲנָבִ ים בַּמִדְ בָ ר מָ צָאתִ י יִשְרָאֵ ל כֹּהאָמַּר יְהוָה זָכַּרְתִ י לְָךחֶסֶ דנְעּורַּ יְִך תאַּהֲבַּ כְ לּוֹלתָ יְִך לֶכְתֵ ְך יאַּחֲרַּ בַּמִדְ בָ ר ץבְאֶרֶ לֹּא ,waxes (2:2) So says the Lord: I recall the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how" ,זְ רּועָ ה you followed Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown."

What is it about the wilderness that makes it so fitting for this stage of Jewish history?

The essential characteristic of the midbar is its emptiness. It is empty not only of basic human necessities – food and water, but of any distinguishing features at all, anything that would allow a traveler to locate herself as here and not there. In the wilderness, an identical landscape stretches out endlessly in all directions, the view is the same whichever way you turn. Each hill, each sand dune is identical to the one that came before and the one that looms ahead. Every blade of grass, every rock, every grain of sand seems indistinguishable from every other. The vast undulating expanse of the midbar can be disconcerting, even terrifying. It can also instill a sense of awe, of what it means to be a finite being standing before the infinite. As the Israelites begin to grapple with the notion of an incorporeal God, the midbar is an ideal context to comprehend a relationship with a being unbound by the dimension of space.

The midbar is also where Israel receives the of Shabbat. When the manna שֵשֶ ת יָמִ ים :begins to fall in the weeks after from Egypt, God tells Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh" –תִלְקְ טֻהּו ּובַּ ּיֹום הַּשְ בִ יעִ ישַּ תבָ לֹּא יִהְ יֶה בֹו day, the Sabbath, there will be none” (Ex. 16:26). In that last word – "none" – we may detect an uncanny parallel between the midbar and Shabbat: the midbar is empty space, while Shabbat is empty time.1 Shabbat originates as a day of negation, a time let no" – אַּ ל יֵצֵאאִ יש מִמְ קֹּמֹו בַּ ּיֹום הַּשְ בִ יעִ י ,to do nothing, to go nowhere: God commands one leave his place on the seventh day" (ibid. v. 29). There is nothing to distinguish one moment from the next, nothing to break up the relentless monotony. At this initial stage, the mitzvah of Shabbat has no positive features at all – no rationale, no explanation; there is no mention of holiness or even of rest. As the progresses, this void is gradually filled with meaning: Shabbat becomes a day to remember Creation and the Exodus from Egypt, a day to take notice of one's workers and animals, a positive sign of God's eternal bond with the Jewish people. But during – אות an Israel's first weeks in the midbar, the emptiness of Shabbat suggests a dimension above time, the reality of a deity who is not only incorporeal but also eternal and unchanging.

1 See Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus (Doubleday, 2001), 235-6. As we enter into Shabbat each week, we, too, have a taste of Shabbat in its simplest, most embryonic form. Soon we will fill our Shabbat with light, with food, with songs and Torah study. But as night falls, all we know is that our work has ceased and that the world is still. The moments of Kabbalat Shabbat offer the hint of an existence undifferentiated by space and time, and with it, a keyhole view into the mind of God.