In this week’s Torah portion, Beshalach, people of Israel encountered the Shabbat for first time. It was about a month after the exodus from Egypt, when the Israelites had been walking in the desert and the food, they had taken with them had run out. They turned to Moses and Aaron, complaining desperately about their situation.

All of a sudden, the suffering and the slavery in Egypt seemed to them like a sweet history. “There was at least food there, but here in the wilderness there was nothing – why did you bring us out of Egypt into the wilderness,”,they cried out to Moses and Aaron. “Is it so that we will all die of hunger here?” God’s answer to Moses came immediately. Indeed, this is a justified complaint. I brought them out of Egypt, and I am obligated to provide for them in the wilderness, but this will be subject to two reservations.

God will rain bread from heaven for them, which will be called ‘Mann’. On the other hand, the fall of the mann will give to the people of Israel a double trial: a daily trial. Every day the people of Israel will go out and gather ‘mann’ from the wilderness, but they will not be able to provide for themselves for tomorrow. The mann will not be kept from one day to the next. The second trial is the opposite: Every Friday of the week, they will gather a ‘mishnah’, double the amount of mann, and prepare the food for the next day, the Shabbat.

In the rest of the story, we read about the difficulty of these two trials. There were people who tried to save some of the mann for the next day, and the mann turned sour and spoiled; and there were those who, despite God’s command, went out on Shabbat morning to gather mann from the desert, even though they were told to prepare the Shabbat food on Friday. Remembering that double amount of food that the Israelites gathered for Shabbat, we do this at Shabbat meals when we place on the table ‘Lechem Mishnah’, two entire loaves of bread, a symbol of the prosperity and abundance that we were privileged to receive.

The first encounter with Shabbat was when the Israelites were instructed to prepare Shabbat food on Friday. To this day, one of the most prominent experiences among Shabbat-observing Jews is preparing food on Friday and not preparing food on Shabbat. In many homes, Friday is dedicated to cooking and baking, sometimes in large quantities with guests or those in need in mind; whereas on Shabbat, the experience is that food seems to exist as if it were self-evident. On Shabbat, the kitchen is not an arena of activity other than arranging and serving the food to the table.

The emphasis on preparation leads us to observe the goodness. A well-known Hasidic proverb says that “preparations for a mitzvah are greater than the mitzvah.” This is of course an exaggeration, but it expresses a profound point. When we bother and prepare for an event, we invest attention in it, cherish the goal for which we are preparing and connect to it emotionally.

Preparations for Shabbat are not a technical matter that stems from the prohibition of cooking and baking on Shabbat. They have a purpose in themselves.

When we strive for the light of Shabbat to shine on all days of the week, for the holiness of Shabbat to influence the other days; we can realize this through quality preparation for Shabbat. Thinking about Shabbat and working hard to honor it brings the aromas of Shabbat to the weekdays, the sanctity of Shabbat and the joy of Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Refael Cohen