Weekly Message

5 February 2026

The fourth of the Ten Commandments, which we read in this week’s parashah, begins: “Six days you shall labor and do all of your work, but the seventh day is Shabbat for YHWH your God.” The authors of an ancient midrash focused on the word “all.” They asked, how is it possible to do all of our work in six days? Isn’t there always more to do?

What the Torah meant, according to that midrash, is that we should rest on Shabbat as if all of our work were done.

On the surface, that answer seems strange. Were the rabbis asking us to turn Shabbat into a game of make-believe, to act as if something were true when we know that it is not?

There is another possibility. Perhaps what they meant is that, on Shabbat, we are to look at the world in a different way – not to deny reality, but to pay attention to a different aspect of it. We are to focus, not on the things that are lacking in the world – even glaringly lacking – but on the things that are already whole and complete, even if they may be harder to see. Instead of looking with anxiety at all the things about the world that are in need of fixing, we are to look with gratitude at the blessings that are already here in front of us, and which no amount of human effort could improve upon. When we do that, we feel as if our work is done. That renews our spirits, so that we can go back to the work of fixing what is broken when Shabbat is over.

On this Shabbat, and every Shabbat, may we aspire to that kind of rest.