The Passive Labor of a Spiritual Week2 min read

“For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day shall be holy, Shabbos shabbason to Hashem…”

Once the Mishkan and its vessels had been outlined, it had come time to begin to assemble this glorious dwelling place for the Shechina. Before the construction to actualize the divine blueprint began, Moshe Rabbeinu reminded the Jewish nation that no work was to be performed on Shabbos. “Sheishes yamim tei’aseh melacha, uv’yom hashvi’i yihyeh lachem kodesh, Shabbos Shabbason la’Shem” – “On the six days of the week, work may be done, but the seventh day shall be holy; Shabbos shabbason to Hashem.”

The tzaddikim point out that in expressing the allowance for work to be done during the six days of the week, the Torah uses an interesting word: “Tei’aseh”. This particular form of the word “Asah”, “made”, implies passive labor, work that is done on its own. The verse may rightfully be read, “On the six days of the week, work will be done on its own, but the seventh day shall be holy etc.” Additionally, the redundancy of “Shabbos shabbason” also stands out. Wouldn’t it have been enough for the Torah to merely state, “But the seventh day shall be holy, Shabbos to Hashem”?  What is the Torah teaching us with these two textual anomalies?

The Lubavitcher Rebbe zy”a answers with a beautiful idea. The Chassidic masters teach that Hashem placed us in this world for the purpose of revealing the extent of His goodness, unity, and love. When we allow our souls to utilize the physical component of our identity and the world around us for a holy purpose, remaining ever-focused on our ultimate mission and cognizant of Hashem’s presence in all of our ways, we create a dwelling place for Hashem within the lowly, corporeal world. When this happens, the ultimate extent of His unity and loving imminence is revealed in the deepest manner. When a Jew lives life in this way, although his external component may be occupied in physical or mental labor, his heart and mind are elsewhere – bound to the inner spiritual essence of life. As the Ba’al Shem Tov taught, “A Jew is where his mind is.” While, from the perspective of his physical body, this person is dutifully tending to his labor, his inner essence, far removed from the mundane act, sees the work as being done passively, as if on its own. When a Jew sees the world through spiritual lenses, he regards physical processes as secondary to the point that, although he engages with them as necessary, it is as if their completion takes place in a different realm that is removed from his reality.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe writes that this is what our verse is teaching us: “Sheishes yamim tei’aseh melacha”: A Jew should identify so strongly with his soul and the spiritual counterpart of this physical world that even while involved in his effort to make a living, it is considered “tei’aseh melacha”: as it the work is being done passively, on its own. When this happens, “Shabbos Shabbason”: A double-Shabbos is produced: In addition to one’s Shabbos kodesh being sanctified with the holiness of spirit; his weekdays are similarly imbued with the spiritual quality of Shabbos as well. When a Jew lives life on such a level, the faith, joy, and spirituality of Shabbos kodesh spills out of the seventh day to imbue his entire week with an elevated awareness of Hashem’s presence.