Dear Community,
BringThemHome – Day 496
בְּזֹאת אֲנִי בוֹטֵחַ – “Be’Zot Ani Bote’ach” – “Of this I am sure…” (Psalm 27:3)
Numerical Value = 496
Greetings from Jerusalem!
Coming back to Israel feels wonderfully familiar, and yet immensely emotional. You can feel an entire nation waiting and praying for better days ahead. I feel that this week’s theme is “déjà vu” – the sense that something is not new; that we have experienced it before, somehow.
The scientific literature is awash with theories about how déjà vu comes about. One study used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 21 participants as they experienced a kind of lab-induced déjà vu. Interestingly, the areas of the brain involved in memory, like the hippocampus, were not triggered as we would suspect if the feeling was linked to a false memory. Instead, the researchers found the active areas of the brain were those involved in decision making.
In other words, our brain checks through our memories like a rolodex looking for any conflict between what we think we’ve experienced versus what actually happened to us.
A beautiful Midrash (Tanchuma, Pekudei 3) teaches that an angel called Lailah lights a candle and allows the soul to see from one end of the earth to the other. She then teaches the entire Torah to each child “in utero” and when the child is born, the angel touches the mid upper-lip, and the child forgets everything. This leads to the idea that we can learn the entire Torah, if we apply ourselves because, in a sense, we’ve already learned it.
The same is true of Shabbat – the fourth of the Aseret HaDibrot (The Ten Commandments, although they are actually fourteen!).
Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, in his wonderful commentary on the Torah (Ex. 20:8), explains that Shabbat has two functions: “Zachor” – to remember it intellectually, and “Shamor” – to keep it practically. These are the two words that are used to respectively commence the 4th commandment: to Keep Shabbat.
Rav Hirsch says that, “The first institution of Shabbat for mankind, only established it as a spiritual commemoration for ‘remembrance’; to ‘keep it in mind’. But as such, it became entirely lost to mankind. To bring Shabbat back and to preserve it, Israel was given the command of “Sh’mirah”, the concrete, physically noticeable keeping of Shabbat.”
In Rav Hirsch’s words, Shabbat observance should be a déjà vu experience. We know, deep down, that it makes sense. But it is only in the practical observance of the aspects of Shabbat – lighting candles, making Kiddush, saying prayers, eating bread, etc., that we reconnect with that inherent feeling again.
Shabbat shalom uMevorach, in every active sense!