The Holiness of Time

“And Hashem blessed the seventh day and made it holy…” Where Holiness Begins The Torah says: “Keep My Sabbaths, and hold My Holy Place in awe.” Rashi, the classic Bible commentator, draws on the Sifra, an ancient teaching of our Sages. He points out that the two commands are placed side by side to teach us something. Even though you are commanded to build the Holy Temple, if the Sabbath comes, do not push it aside for the building. In other words, the holiness of time comes before the holiness of place. It comes even before the holiness of the Holy Temple itself. Young married man, it is worth pausing here for a moment. We are human beings, and we look for places. We buy a home. We set up a corner for prayer. We dream of Jerusalem. We fight for a land. This pull has been part of us forever. We look for holiness out there, in a real place, in a spot on the map that we can touch and hold on to. There is nothing wrong with that at all. But as we will see, that is not where holiness was first born. A Question, and an Answer The first verse in the Torah where the word “holy” appears is this: “And Hashem blessed the seventh day and made it holy.” Not a mountain. Not a stone. Not a piece of land. A day. Time. The very first thing in all of creation that Hashem called holy was not a place. It was a moment. This is a big new idea. Our instinct tells us that holiness needs something physical: a frame, a building, a border you can see. But Hashem taught us that in His order of things, time came first. So we need to understand. What is the holiness of time? How is it different from the holiness of a place? Work and Rest: Awakening from Below, Awakening from Above The six weekdays are days of “awakening from below.” These are days when a person works, builds and conquers. The Torah says that the first man was placed in the Garden “to work it and to guard it.” That is our world on ordinary days. We put in effort, we produce, and we leave our stamp on the face of the earth. The holiness that comes from this effort is beautiful and needed. But it is a holiness that has passed through our own hands. The Sabbath is a completely different world. On the Sabbath a holiness comes down that does not depend at all on what we have done. It is an “awakening from above,” a stirring that starts with Hashem. It is a flow of divine blessing poured into time itself. We do not make the Sabbath. We step into it. It is already there, set and waiting, whether or not we have prepared ourselves as we should. Rabbi Shalom DovBer of Lubavitch, a great Hasidic master, writes this in his Sefer HaMaamarim 5666, a book of his Hasidic discourses. The holiness of the Sabbath does not depend on anything done below. It flows from above. A person’s task is only to prepare a vessel to receive it. A Holiness That Never Goes into Exile The holiness of a place is something we can, Heaven forbid, be exiled from. Jerusalem was destroyed. The Holy Temple was burned. Hashem’s Presence went into exile with us. But the holiness of the Sabbath? It has never gone into exile. It comes back every week, in every place, to every Jew. It comes in Vilna and in Baghdad, in New York and in Melbourne. It does not belong to one particular land. It is not tied to one particular building. Time belongs to everyone, no matter who you are and no matter where you are. A great teaching of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, is hidden here. The prophet says: “The whole earth is full of His glory.” Hashem is everywhere, and there is no place where He is absent. The holiness of the Sabbath reaches every Jew in every corner of the world. It is the clearest example you can feel of this truth. Holiness is not packed into one place. It lives in time, and time is for everyone. Closer Than You Think The Torah says: “For the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it.” The Likkutei Torah, a classic Hasidic work, explains it this way. Holiness is not across the sea, in some faraway place you have to conquer. It is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart. The Sabbath is the proof. You do not have to travel anywhere. You do not have to be worthy. You do not have to invent or produce anything. Holiness comes to you, week after week, by a power that comes from above. All that is left for us to do is to open the door and walk in.