Last week’s post drew wonderful compliments – far more than any article I’ve ever written – and I’ve been wondering why.

Perhaps, it was the awareness that we all need help. There are times when it’s hard to enter Shabbat, and times when only a hug will help us. Or perhaps, it was Netivot Shalom’s insight, that so perfectly captures the joy of Shabbat.

So this week, I offer another teaching about Erev Shabbat.

The Or Hachaim taught that when God created the heavens and the earth, He only gave them enough strength to last for one week. And as the sun set on the first Erev Shabbat, God gave the world a soul. “God rested on the seventh day and gave the world a soul,” the Or Hachaim taught. “And that soul gave the world the strength to last for an additional week.”

Ever since that day, taught the Or Hachaim, there have been people who kept Shabbat – first Adam and Eve, then their children, and this week it is us. And every week, as we make Kiddush on Erev Shabbat, the world’s soul is renewed.

It’s a remarkable concept – that tonight, when we light our candles and say Kiddush, we become part of a chain going all the way back to the Garden of Eden. And through our actions tonight, through making Kiddush, the world will gain strength for one more week.

Why would God put so much faith in us? Why would He leave His world in our hands? Rabbi Jonathan Sacks answered it this way:

God asks us to become, in the rabbinic phrase, his ‘partners in the work of creation.’ The God who created the world in love calls on us to create in love. The God who gave us the gift of freedom asks us to honor and enhance the freedom of others. God, the ultimate Other, asks us to reach out to the human other. More than God is a strategic intervener, he is a teacher. More than he does our will, he teaches us to do his. Life is God’s call to responsibility.

That’s what happened when I came back from my father’s funeral. God, the Ultimate other, saw that I was lonely, and He taught a 14-year old boy how to help me. And through that one boy, we fixed a little part of this all-to-broken world.

Perhaps, taught Abraham Joshua Heschel, God is lonely too. Perhaps, He is lonely for people who care as He cares, for people who comfort as He comforts. Since the time of creation, God has been waiting, teaching, hoping that we would become those people.

“There is a divine dream,” wrote Heschel, “which the prophets and the rabbis have cherished and which fills our prayers and permeates acts of true piety. It is the dream of a world, rid of evil by the grace of God as well as the efforts of man, by his dedication to establishing the kinship of God in the world. God is waiting for us to redeem the world. We should not spend our life hunting for trivial satisfactions when God is waiting.”

May we find peace and renewal on every Shabbat, and may we bring the world closer to God’s ancient dream.

Shabbat Shalom,
Art