Two Minute Torah Podcast

Ki Tissa 5768 by Rabbi Allan Lehmann

The words are so familiar! Every Shabbat we sing Veshamru Venai Yisrael et Hashabbat

but it still can be a surprise each year to find those words again in the Torah, as we do this week in parashat Ki Tissa.:

Why the repetition of the word Shabbat here? Extra words in the Torah can be read as clues for deeper meanings.

Keep the Shabbat- we're reminded that the word means stopping, ceasing, shavat. After a week of striving, Shabbat is a time just for being, for remembering that we are called "human beings" not "human doings".

And yet, vshamru teaches us laasot et hashabbat, we have to MAKE Shabbat to prepare ourselves and our surroundings, to shape holy time ledorotam--for all the generations.

When we enter Shabbat we connect with those who have come before us and those who will follow. But there's another message here: ledorotam is spelled in such a way that it could look like lediratam, for their dwelling places. Shabbat connects us to past and future, but it's more than that. Shabbat is where we live, it brings us to pay attention to where we are right now, to slow down and live, shavat vayinafash.

We're invited to, just as god did in creating the world shavat, to stop what we're doing and vayinafash, from the word nefesh, soul, to be renewed.