Blessed Is Hashem, Day by Day

“Blessed is Hashem, day by day. He carries our load; He is the Power who saves us, forever.” Opening The Talmud tells us about Shammai the Elder and Hillel, two great ancient sages. When Shammai saw a fine piece of food in the market, he would say, “This is for the Sabbath.” If he then found a better one, he took that one for the Sabbath and ate the first one during the week. All week long, Shammai lived with his eyes looking ahead, toward the seventh day. Hillel lived differently. Whatever good thing he found, he ate right away, as the verse says: “Blessed is Hashem, day by day.” In other words, every single day carries its own blessing. Stop for a moment and think. What exactly did Hillel do? Heaven forbid, he did not cancel the Sabbath. He discovered that the Sabbath is already here. Two Paths, Two Worlds Shammai stands for a path with a special greatness: the path of longing and anticipation. It is the effort that rises from below, from the person himself. A person is in the middle of the material week, busy with earning a living and with the daily routine. Yet he keeps a deep inner yearning alive: everything is for the sake of the holy Sabbath. Every purchase on Tuesday and every effort on Wednesday carries the same aim: to make the moment that is coming holy. This is real inner work. It is human effort, climbing toward holiness from below. But, my friend, there is also a certain pain here. A person who lives entirely as “getting ready” feels that the days themselves are only a hallway. Sunday: four more days. Wednesday: already three. The soul is waiting. But the present moment, the “now,” where does it get its strength from? Hillel taught a completely different approach. “Blessed is Hashem, day by day.” Not only Friday, and not only a festival, but every day. Tuesday is also full of blessing. Hillel did not wait for holiness to come to him. He lived with the feeling that holiness was already resting on him. This is the level of the awakening that comes from above. The person does not climb up to the holy. The holy has already come down and is right here. How Can You Live This Way? Here Hasidic teaching comes in with an explanation that lights up the heart. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, writes there that a person must know this: Hashem’s life-giving energy is creating him and keeping him alive at every single moment. There is no moment when Hashem is not there. Not only on the Sabbath, not only in prayer, and not only when you feel uplifted. He is there every day, inside your very existence. When you know this in the very core of your being, your days take on a completely different color. Sunday morning, with your cup of coffee, before you open the computer: Hashem is there. The drive to work, the meeting with a business partner, an evening with tired children: all of them are full of Hashem’s presence, if only you know how to see it. This is the heart of the way of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement. Do not push holiness off to some faraway place. Discover it here. The plain “day by day” becomes “Blessed is Hashem.” The Hallway That Is Itself the Grand Hall A person who waits all week for the Sabbath lives in the hallway, waiting for the grand hall. Hillel’s inner work is to discover that the hallway itself is full of light. This does not take any holiness away from the Sabbath. Instead, it lifts up the working days and draws the light into them. Rabbi Schneur Zalman wrote about this in Likkutei Torah, his Hasidic teachings on the Torah. He explains that the work of the weekdays is to draw the light of the Sabbath into them. Both paths, Shammai’s and Hillel’s, are true ways of serving Hashem. Shammai is not wrong, and there is no simple ruling here. But the hope, the direction and the goal of the Hasidic path is Hillel’s level: to live “Blessed is Hashem, day by day” as a reality, not as a slogan.