Why Is There Shabbat?

Why Is There Shabbat?

A Poem for Shabbat Acharei Mot-Kedoshim

April 19, 2013

by Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

What if God had not ceased from all creation?

Would there be any jagged edges left?

Any crags cleft into the smooth surface?

Would there be pain?

Would there be love

Or shelter from the darkness?

Some safe harbor to embrace,

A light to shelter behind slumbering lids?

Would there be memory,

A shattered fragment from a looking glass

Holding shades of long-lost love,

Of faraway shores and blue-green seas?

Would there be mystery

Or happy endings to pursue?

Would we, humans, charged with blessing,

Still tremble at the touch, the sound, of holy?

Whom would the angels shout praise to

And who would hear their chorus of “kaddosh!”?

What soul would Hope arise from,

What vastness hold her longing wings?

But God did cease God’s holy work.

Light was put away,

Put on lockout,

In darkness to await the spark.

Now chaos holds sway

In realms not yet created

In the non-presence of no-moment

In the deepest void of not being

An unlit match still awaits,

Imprisoned in its own casing,

For a word to emerge

And free it from its bindings

The word is ours,

The silence, ours.

And ours, too, the blessing

To create, to give form, to launch in time.

We are here, hineinu!

Hear us, God!

Us—the mortal creatures You created

B’nai Elohim—divine children—in Your image!

We bless You

Because You ceased creation

And left a moment incomplete

For us to fill with all our might, with all our souls.

Baruch atah Adonai, m’kadesh HaShabbat—

Praised be You, Adonai, whose sanctity is from end to end

From beginning to beginning,

Who left crags in the rock

For honey to drip out of,

For manna to sate our hungry souls,

For blessings to exist

And miracles to come true.

 © 2013 By Boaz D. Heilman