Shabbat - On The Way Out

Eliyahu the prophet,
Eliyahu the Tishbite, Eliyahu the Giladite –
May he come to us quickly,
ushering Mashaich, the son of David.

Bondage, in modern-day context, has yet to be abolished. Throughout the week we are bound to the material world and subjugated by its numerous demands and pressures. In short, we are slaves: slaves to our occupations and careers; slaves to our commitments and creditors; slaves to our need to provide for ourselves and for those who depend on us. Through asserting our control over the world – through stamping our mark on society – we are in fact enslaved: our bodies by our drive for achievement, our time by our race for success.

Jewish tradition teaches that the prophet Eliyahu will present himself at the time of the Final Redemption, to herald the arrival of Mashiach. Since the laws that prohibit travel on Shabbat prevent Mashiach from coming on the seventh day, the first possible time in the week when Eliyahu can come to announce the arrival of God’s “anointed one” (mashiach) is on the night after Shabbat. It is for this reason that we praise Eliyahu’s name in song at that time, calling on him to “come to us quickly, ushering Mashaich, the son of David.”

The prophet Eliyahu personifies the awareness we hope to achieve when Shabbat is behind us and a new week begins. As Scripture relates, Eliyahu ascended to heaven alive. His perception of God had reached such an exalted plane that his soul did not need to separate from his body before ascending to a higher dimension. He entered the realm of “beyond-time” still garbed in his physical form.

Eliyahu is thus associated with the night that follows Shabbat. Through the relaxed atmosphere of Shabbat, we gain an inkling of what it is like to be beyond time; through refraining from the creative labor forbidden on the holy day, we enjoy a modicum of freedom from the bondage of materialism and corporeality. Now, with the week about to begin anew – as the weekday obligations, which we had set aside when Shabbat began, begin to reemerge and our workaday concerns are about to return – we would do well to employ this beyond-time consciousness to help us let go of the day-to-day concerns that rule our lives and impinge on our freedom.

In singing the praise of the prophet Eliyahu, we hope to draw inspiration from his example; as Eliyahu freed himself from the constrictions of time and matter, we dare hope that we, too, might liberate ourselves of the demands and pressures of the material world. And we pray that Eliyahu himself, as the harbinger of Redemption, might herald our personal redemption; that in the coming week we may experience spiritual, emotional, physical and practical freedom.

Time Beyond Time Shabbat is a reminder of the World to Come; it is a taste, within time, of beyond-time. Time was created through a delimiting of the infinite, as God constructed each new day through yet another abbreviation of eternity. During the week we, too, construct our days through delimiting our time, using contemporary tools such as day-planners and electronic schedulers. But on Shabbat, the day’s rites and rituals return us to the realm of the eternal, to time’s origin, which is outside the construct of time. It is then that we get a taste of beyond-time…of time beyond in the World to Come. * Fill the six weekdays with the beyond-time consciousness you obtain on Shabbat. Teach yourself to detach from the shackles time and toil, to disengage from the worldly attachments you had believed you could not possibly live without. (Likutey Halakhot, Milah 4:10, 13)

Breslov Research Institute is pleased to present this weekly excerpt from our publication, "7th Heaven -- Shabbat with Rebbe Nachman," to help you experience that taste of Shabbos during the week. Have a "good Shabbos"!