If you’re running a kiruv shabbaton, Havdalah is the secret weapon to fire up neshamos

Fire and Spice

The Seventh Day // Rabbi Menachem Nissel

T

here’s something enchanting about Havdalah. If you’re running a kiruv shabbaton, it’s the secret weapon to fire up neshamos.

At first glance, Havdalah completes what Friday night Kiddush began, with the addition of besamim and eish. I’d like to suggest that these ingredients present two interdependent ideas that give us a message to help us start our week.

Shabbos has taken on new meaning in the age of Galus Yishmael. Physically, Yishmael gives us six days of anxiety. Every time we switch on the news, we’re afraid of learning about a new tragedy or a new threat to our people.

Spiritually, Galus Yishmael drowns us for six days in a world of sheker. Sheker’s most powerful weapon is to trap us into wasting countless hours of our precious lives in the dimyon-fueled world of the Internet.

And then comes Shabbos. We disconnect from Galus Yishmael and connect to the World to Come. We imitate Adam Harishon who, after feeling that all was lost, entered into Shabbos and tasted the world of the future. He felt comfort, solace, and hope. He cried out, “Tov l’hodos LaHashem!”

One day in the week we bask in the warmth of a world where Galus Yishmael doesn’t exist. Then the sun sets and Shabbos is gone. Despair sets in. How can we return to such a lowly and frightening world?

Our first step is to hold on to what we still have. Until Adam and Chava sinned, we lived on a higher spiritual dimension in a perfect world. After the sin, we crashed. We were banished from the Garden and sent to a world where man was cursed. Our senses were compromised: We listened to the words of the snake, we saw, touched, and ate the forbidden fruit.

Only one sense remained intact.

The sense of smell.

It couldn’t be compromised because Hashem had just breathed His essence into Adam’s nostrils. It was a sense too elevated to be involved in sin.

As the new week begins, we restore our spirits by igniting the sense of smell, as if to say, “We’re the creation that received Hashem’s breath, we’re the creation that belongs in Gan Eden.”

Our next step is to create the right mindset to step into six days of darkness. Once again, Adam shows us the way. From the moment he was created, until the first Motzaei Shabbos, he enjoyed 36 hours of the Ohr Haganuz. Then the sun set, and he was plunged into darkness. Adam despaired, fearing that the world was coming to an end.

Hashem then gave Adam wisdom to rub two stones together and create fire. Adam said the brachah, “Borei me’orei ha’eish” and felt hope. On Motzaei Shabbos, we smell spices and remind ourselves that we belong to a world beyond Galus Yishmael’s dark reach. We then light a fire, reminding ourselves that purging the darkness is in our hands.

Rabbi Menachem Nissel is the Senior Educator of NCSY and teaches at Yeshivas Yishrei Lev and various seminaries in Yerushalayim. He is the author of  Rigshei Lev: Women and Tefillah.

In the Pit

Personal Development // Dina Schoonmaker, facilitated by Mindel Kassorla

The pasuk tells us that Reuven saved Yosef from his brothers by convincing them not to kill him, but rather to throw him into the pit — which was filled with snakes and scorpions. How, asks the Ohr HaChaim, was this considered “saving Yosef?” He explains that Yosef was in greater peril from his brothers because human beings, who have the power of free will, are more of a threat than snakes and scorpions, who don’t have this power.

Many commentaries try to explain how the Ohr HaChaim could imply that human beings can in a sense override Hashem’s Will with their choices and have a greater effect on our fate than forces of nature.

Rav Gamliel Rabinowitz answers: Nothing — and no one — is able to act against the Will of Hashem. The difference between humans and natural forces is in us. When facing the mean boss, the difficult neighbor, the school principal who won’t accept our kid, we are overcome by frustration toward the one who caused us the harm. And then we run to… find a solution. We fight, beg, bribe, flatter, sue.

A person facing a snake or a scorpion or a tsunami doesn’t get annoyed at the beast or try to bargain with the storm. He doesn’t think that his own efforts are going to ward off the danger. Instead, he relinquishes control and davens. There’s no atheist in a snake pit.

Reuven was trying to save Yosef by putting him in a situation where he wouldn’t waste his energy strategizing and would instead turn his focus to Hashem.

We can do for ourselves the favor that Reuven did for Yosef. When we “put ourselves in a pit,” we’ll feel less hurt by the humans who are “out to get us” and will view them as natural circumstances like Hurricane Helene, who has no personal vendetta. Viewing obstacles and opponents as snakes and scorpions rather than the products of human injustice will not only lower the emotional intensity of the situation, but also help us stay focused on the true Source of the challenge and the Source of the solution.

Dina Schoonmaker has been teaching in Michlalah Jerusalem College for over 30 years. She gives women’s vaadim and lectures internationally on topics of personal development.

You Get What You’re Set to Get

In Real Time // Esther Kurtz

“I always pick up extra shifts when they’re available, and Hashem works it out perfectly — it’s refuah lifnei hamakkah. My kids always manage to get sick, and I’m fine taking off because I worked that extra shift,” a shul friend told me at a kiddush one Shabbos.

I thought of biting my tongue, but I knew this woman. She has incredible depth and substance, and I knew she’d be appreciative of what I had to say.

“Actually, you can think of it as just the opposite.”

“What do you mean?”

“You need to lose the money because you weren’t meant to have it, so something comes up that makes you stay home.”

“Really?” She sounded skeptical, and I don’t blame her. I was offering a backward response, one that seemed irresponsible, and also blamed her.

I explained. The Chovos Halevavos is explicit: We’re meant to have a set amount of money, and we will get that money, and only that money. There’s no need for side hustles or the like. Hashem knows where you live. And if you think you’re beating the system, you’re just deluding yourself. You won’t get to enjoy the money, and you won’t ever really possess it, case in point with the extra shifts and sick kids.

“Interesting…” she said when I finished my explanation.

Her attitude wasn’t wrong. She was trusting in Hashem and seeing Him in her life. But there was so much more Yad Hashem she could have opened herself up to.

Imagine letting go of the pressure to make more money, to do more hishtadlus just in case “life happens.”

Now, there are different levels of bitachon, and people need to do hishtadlus appropriate to their level, but if you could reach a higher level that required less hishtadlus on your part, wouldn’t you want to?

PS She shared with me months later that she stopped taking on extra shifts!

Esther Kurtz is the creator of Emunah for Non-Rebbetzins, an audio series teaching Shaar Bitachon in 2-minute clips.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 925)