The Transformative Power of Holy Time

On Shabbat, the world around us becomes still—all the demands and the heaviness that we carry are released. They will return soon enough, but on Shabbat we are able to step back, to look at our lives from a protected distance, from the warm interior of sacred time. It is the twilight glimmer of the sun in descent—the otherworldly texture of a time that is neither day nor night. The ancient Rabbis called this moment “bein ha-shemashot”—literally, “between the suns”—an instant that stands both within the arc of earthly time and decidedly beyond it. Masters of legal precision, these Sages sought to achieve unequivocal clarity as to when the sixth day (Friday) ends and the Sabbath begins. Beyond a carefully defined limit, the candles may no longer be lit, the food may no longer be cooked, words no longer written. But they were also well aware of that in-between time that we sense in our passage from the ordinary to the sacred, from ḥol to kodesh. 

It is a time that whispers of mystery and redemption, a corridor within the hours that transports us to a new level of feeling and thought. All at once we are aware of the majesty that surrounds us like the cloth of a heavenly tallit; we are wrapped within a blanket of colors that reveals the entire spectrum in the blink of an eye. It is fullness and nothingness at one and the same moment; the world is created yet again, and all is at rest, in tranquility. It is the stillness of Jerusalem just before the siren sounds to announce the arrival of the Sabbath; when the heat of the day falls and the cool of evening approaches; when the cars are silent, and the walkers make their way in sublime quiet to their places of prayer. Meals are waiting to be shared in fellowship and love—until the door opens and it is all peace and joy, a Sabbath of peace. 

The Sages of old spoke of Shabbat as a glimpse of the world to come—a gift to us human beings from the hidden treasure-house of God. It is a time when we touch the realm of souls—that spiritual place both far beyond and deep within—when our lives are revealed as a pilgrimage, a quest for the heart of existence, the center and root in a sometimes rootless world. 

On Friday night, as I place my open hands on the heads of my children, I am aware of the blessings given to me by my mother and my father each week of my childhood. I bless them and I can feel the unbounded energy of the countless generations that came before me—the organic bond of a people and an ancestry. 

Shalom ‘aleikhem, malakhei ha-shareit, malakhei ‘elyon—Peace unto you, ministering angels of God, angels from above! You shining spirits from the divine world—dancing with the candle flames, present in the radiant faces of the children, washed and ready to receive the joy of Shabbat! 

Ve-khulhon mit‘atrin be-nishmatin ḥadetin—Then all Jews are crowned with new souls—be-nehiru de-’anpin—with faces shining with light from above. 

This is how the Zohar describes the power of receiving Shabbat: we are, each and every one of us, infused with a new spiritual vitality, a new measure of soul. We are given the chance to be reborn each and every Friday eve—the universe opens to us with the gift of mystery and loving embrace, we are absorbed into the indescribable wonder of a world on fire with the love of God and the love of our fellow human beings. 

On Shabbat we feel more alive than ever, more in tune with the immense beauties of ordinary living, with the glow born of true compassion and kindness, with the melody that sings at the heart of existence, that binds us to the great unbroken song of Being that has always been there—discovered again and again in each generation and in each new moment of genuine learning and hearing. With heart and soul opened to the One who breathes at the center of all life, we say the Kiddush—the blessing over the wine that seeks to gather all of our manifold blessings, scattered as they are in the dark terrain of our wanderings. And we gather them up into the kos shel berakhah, “the cup of blessing,” the vessel that holds all of our hopes and yearnings for true renewal and transformation. 

For as we recall the holiness that God emanated onto the seventh day—the sanctity of primordial Creation—we are also reminded of our own need to send the flow of blessing and holiness into this otherworldly day. So much depends upon us and our intention. All of those intentions, and all of those gathered dreams, fill the cup to overflowing—they are the moments of brokenness and pain that we bring from the week that has passed; they are the labors unfinished and the relationships unresolved. They are gathered into the cup of blessing, and they are lifted up in the moment of Kiddush—raised toward the redemption of the seventh day. 

This is why the Friday night Kiddush speaks of two kinds of memory, two markers of who we are. These are zeikher le-ma‘aseh bereishit—a remembrance of the act of Creation—and zeikher le-yetzi’at Mitzrayim—a remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. For on Shabbat we are aware of the mystery and wonder of Divinity that brings this world into being anew each and every day, the beauty that reminds us of the divine Source and our never-ending capacity for spiritual renewal and rebirth. And we are also always aware of how our experience of Shabbat is a yetzi‘at Mitzrayim, an exodus from Egypt. For on Shabbat we are liberated from our enslavement to our physical selves—to our greed, our pride, our lust. On Shabbat we are reminded that deep down we are soul and spirit, the breath of divine speech, the song of divine yearning. And we must lift these two dimensions—renewal and freedom—to the gaze of a mind transformed, an awareness of the divine anchor that gives meaning and substance to our all too ephemeral time in this world. 

Such is the way several hasidic masters read the words of Psalm 142:8: O God, please “liberate me from the imprisonment of my soul [hotzi’ah mi-masger nafshi]!” The Sefat ’Emet in particular [Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, d. 1904] understands this verse as a statement about the redemptive power of the Sabbath: the seventh day is a time of otherworldly freedom in which we are able to break free of the walls that constrain us during the six days of the week. In holy time we step outside of ourselves, beyond the ‘anokhiyut—the selfhood—of ordinary life, and we are able to experience the ultimate freedom of consciousness. This, the hasidic masters teach us, is the deeper meaning of Abraham’s commanded journey in the book of Genesis: Leikh leikha mei-’artzekha, Go forth from your land (Genesis 12:1). What is this ’artzekha of which the text speaks? In hasidic rhetoric, the ’artziyut—literally, “the earthiness,” or “the mundane”—is a term for the coarse physicality that keeps us from encountering the pure light of the sacred. And so, the journey of leikh leikha mei-’artzekha is a going forth from the limiting place of ’artziyut—a liberation from the imprisoning forces of mundane concern and superficial obsession. Shabbat enables a new exodus for each and every one of us, stimulating our memory of the collective exodus from Egypt (zeikher le-yetzi’at Mitzrayim), and still making it present and personal. Go forth from the superficialities that enslave you, from the ’artziyut that obstructs your ability to perceive the sacred all around. The soul’s liberation coincides with the influx of the new Sabbath soul that descends from the upper realm on Friday eve. The soul of the workweek is transformed; the gates that imprison it are opened, and the restorative energy of the Sabbath soul is welcomed in. 

Stepping out of our everyday physicality, we set out on a pilgrimage inspired by the journey of Abraham. The goal of this quest is the land that God will show you [ha-’aretz ’asher ’ar’eka] (Genesis 12:1)—in our adaptation, the holy Sabbath day, the redemption as it may be found and seen in this world. Entering into the sacred is a transformation of the terrain beneath our feet; we arrive in a new land of divine promise, a realm of time in which our sight has been elevated from the “eye of the body [‘ein ha-basar]” to the “eye of the heart [‘ein ha-lev].” We now see with a spiritual sight, with a mode of perception lifted beyond the bounds of earthly experience, into the magical realm of an enlightened mind. 

As we set out on our Sabbath walk to shul on Friday evening, let this be our kavvanah, our intention. With each step, wrapped within the wondrous shifting of day to night, the quiet of the week released into rest and holiness, we reenact the pilgrimage of Abraham our father—moving out of labor’s thought with the conscious gesture of mindful walking, entering into the pathways of the eternal. The Sabbath walk is indeed our own pilgrimage to the center of Being, to the place where the rivers of divine light converge and emanate their vitality to all of existence. Such a physical journey is a highly spiritual practice: walking becomes an essential preparation for our approach to the divine presence, to stand before the Source of All with wonder, to open our mouths in prayer before the Life of the worlds. [ . . . ]

Concluding Meditations

[ . . . ] Shabbat shalom! What is the meaning of this “peace” that we associate with the Sabbath? As the hasidic mystics teach, we should not think of peace as merely the absence of violence, discord, and conflict. It is that, to be sure, but it is first and foremost a positive force in and of itself. Shalom is a flux of energy, a pulse of divine being that courses through the rivulets of life and time. Peace is a blessing that is bestowed, an overflow of divine emanation that blankets all reality with tranquility and centeredness. When we receive the gift of shalom, we are reconnected to our deepest anchor, to the orienting ground of our existence. And this peace—this sheltering—is the cosmic force of Shabbat. For just as there is Shabbat in this world, so too is there the dimension of Shabbat within the divine Self. It is the ultimate register of calm and perfection. Its entrance into our time on the seventh day offers us a glimpse of what is possible in a world redeemed. 

The challenge of the spiritual quest is to release the turmoil of maḥloket (discord, contention) within ourselves, and to open ourselves up to receive the gift of peace from above. The peace we speak of is not just the resolution of interpersonal and international conflict. It is those things too, but the guiding state of shalom must begin in the inner regions of our own selves, in our hearts and in our minds. We must learn to let go of the competitions and the bitterness that eat away at our emotional and physical health. We must allow ourselves release from the tight grip of egoism and pride, from grudges and anger, from obsessions with pettiness and selfishness that keep us locked in the prison of an inner violence, resentment, and anger. The peace that comes to dwell within us on Shabbat is a vision of the equilibrium that we seek throughout the six days of ordinary time. 

The calming energy of Sabbath peace fills the world at sundown on Friday, and it is this tranquility that we hope to retain through one last inhalation of the spices during Havdalah on Saturday night. But even the Sabbath cannot fill our hearts with peace if we keep them stubbornly guarded and obstructed! This is the true meaning of kabbalat Shabbat, the reception of the Sabbath on Friday evening. We must open our hearts to the flow that streams from the Source of all blessing and all holiness. We must face the luminous presence of Shabbat with souls turned open to the serenity of the hour. Likrat Shabbat lekhu ve-neilekhah, ki hi mekor ha-berakhah, “Toward the Sabbath let us go forth, for she is the source of blessing!” Penei Shabbat nekabbelah, “Let us receive the face of the Sabbath!” 


Shabbat is the time when the barriers of perception fall away, when the shalom of Shabbat bestows a vision of sheleimut, the oneness and wholeness of all Being. Shema! Hear, O Israel, our God is the sublime Oneness of all that is! This is the ultimate moment of prayer, the experience upon which all devotion is based: to be at one with the organic force of all life, to be opened to the presence of God so completely that all divisions disappear, and it is only the blessed name forever and ever (barukh shem kevod malkhuto le-olam va-‘ed). This climactic moment is expressed in the subsequent paragraph of the Shema as well: to love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength is to break open the walls that enclose your fragile heart and soul, keeping it far from the brilliance of the world outside. To be fully present to God is to pour out your heart, to free it of all the pent-up resentments and regrets that fester inside like incubating toxins. Then the Shema is the long exhalation of deep meditative release. We send the breath out, emptying our minds and our souls of all that keeps us from the restorative light of the sacred. In the Shema, our breath becomes one with the Source. 

The human being is a microcosm for the very nature of Being. Our bodies are composed of many different parts and elements, but all are interdependent pieces of a single organism. For even though we may speak of limbs or organs as individual entities, can they really be defined apart from the whole? The soul is the divine force that animates this physical self, uniting it as a living being. So, too, in the created universe. Though it may appear that this world is composed of separate, independent elements, the deeper truth is that it is all one and inseparable from the life-force of Divinity. We need only wake ourselves up to this fundamental realization, this theological awareness that the seeming manifold character of the world is but a mask for the secret of oneness. The Shema is the devotional call to this awakening. It is the cry at the heart of the spiritual life that opens our eyes to the truth that God is Being; Divinity is the All, and we are but the outer marks of particularity inscribed in the complete circle of divine unity.