Welcome to the Judaism community on Codidact!
Will you help us build our community of learners? Drop into our study hall, ask questions, help others with answers to their questions, share a d'var torah if you're so inclined, invite your friends, and join us in building this community together. Not an ask-the-rabbi service, just people at all levels learning together.
Why Shabbat Changes its Gender Pronouns
I have been attending Shabbat services for almost a decade and it turns out I may have been praying it wrong this whole time.
When you recite the Shabbat Amidah (aka Shemonah Esrei) the middle portion is known as Kedushas HaYom (Holiness of the Day). For each of the four times we pray (evening/maariv, morning/shacharis, extra/mussaf, and afternoon/mincha) each section is different depending on which time you pray. However, all four Kedushas Hayom sections end with the same final paragraph. Or so I thought!
The second to last sentence reads, With love and favor grant us Your holy Sabbath as a heritage, and may Israel, the sanctifies of Your Name, rest on it.
When reading the maariv prayer, “On it” in Hebrew is written, בה, vah. But when we go to the morning and mussaf prayers, there is a subtle change not noticeable in the English. בה becomes בו, voh. What’s the difference? בה, vah is “it” in the feminine conjugation while בו is masculine. Then in the mincha prayer, the pronoun in “may Israel rest on them,” becomes בם, vam. Why is Shabbat gendered as feminine at night, masculine in the morning, and plural in the afternoon? Also am I the only one who never noticed this?
Now it is quite common that Shabbat is known as a feminine essence. In Lecha Dodi, Shabbat is referred to as the kallah, bride, and before the mea,l men sing Ashish Chayal, A Woman of Valor. I’ve always understood the meaning behind this to be that it is as if we’re a chasan, a groom eagerly awaiting our bride at the chuppah. But it seems there’s a much deeper reason for these gendered qualities of our holiest day of the week.
Let’s think a little bit about the Hebrew word for bride, kallah, כַּלָה. Kallah shares the same Hebrew root as vessel, כְּלִי, kli or kelei. In Jewish thought a vessel, like a cup, is something that is meant to be filled. But a kli is more than just kitchenware, the term is also used metaphorically as anything that can be filled with potential or blessing. A kallah is literally a vessel to be filled by her husband’s contribution. She has a void (her womb) and she yearns to fulfill her potential.
When Shabbat comes in, we’re meant to shower her with attention, putting away all of our distractions of work and mundane interests, and be fully present with her. We sing to her, have a beautiful meal by candlelight, it’s sorta like a romantic date. This also may be why it’s a mitzvah for a married couple to be intimate Shabbat night.
Judaism also views binah, understanding as a feminine trait. The essence of binah is to accept information, consider it, and build or nurture that information into something practical. Keep that in mind for later.
By Shacharis, the gender switches. What does it mean that Shabbat becomes masculine? Ideally we’re at shul, with our community, we hear the Torah, listen to an insightful d’var from the Rabbi, and hopefully there’s a nice kiddush. We’ve taken on a more receiving role. Where binah is considered a feminine trait, chochmah is considered masculine.
Chochmah is often translated as wisdom, but more specifically it is information or general knowledge. In the reproductive process, a man’s role is to deposit an overabundance of DNA which the woman accepts one piece of, then builds. Information on its own doesn’t do a whole lot of good. We’ve got all of human knowledge in our pockets and it seems to be making us dumber. It takes sitting with it, considering it, breaking down the components for us to understand it. Hashem bombards us with His chochmah 24/7. Shabbat day is the time for us to receive and consider that chochmah, focus, and build it into something that can change us.
Finally we get to mincha where Shabbat is not him or her, but them. Why is Shabbat in the plural? We think of Shabbat as one day. But really, we should anticipate Shabbat the whole week. Before the days of the week were named Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc, Judaism referred to them as Hayom yom rishon b’Shabbos, Hayom yom sheini b’Shabbos… Today is the first day of Shabbos, Today is the second day of Shabbos, etc. To truly observe Shabbat, each day of the week has to be lived to its fullest, with the sanctity of Shabbat in mind, so that Shabbat can be most meaningful. In this sense, the start of Shabbat isn’t at candle lighting on Friday, it’s technically at dusk on Saturday night.
In Judaism we don’t actually know when the new day begins. It is somewhere between sundown and the emergence of three stars. The evening time is a mixture of day and night. In fact, the Hebrew word for evening, erev, means mixing. So the final hour of Shabbat would be a mixture of the Shabbat we’re in and the beginning of the Shabbat of the following week. It’s literally two Shabbats. But how does this inform our gendering of Shabbat?
“On them” refers to Shabbat and us, together. We’ve spent the day switching roles, but at mincha Shabbat and the Jewish people have merged. The final hours of Shabbat have a profound sense of unity. After mincha, seudas shlishis, the third meal is eaten. It is usually a small, modest meal of bread, maybe some dips, some salad. It has a quiet intimacy that is free of the pomp and circumstance of the other meals. It is a place to just be one with the Shabbos spouse for the final sweet moments.
Imagine leaving your spouse at the train station on a months-long journey. Are they tearfully waving to you and blowing kisses? Or are they texting on their iPhone as the train departs?
If we’ve observed Shabbat correctly, the chochmah (knowledge) has been developed through binah (understanding) into da’as (physical experience). That tangible experience of Shabbat should change us, both mentally and our behavior. In that sense, Shabbat doesn’t leave us, we truly have merged with it, and it can stay with us the entire week. But we can only get there if the goal of the week is to get to Shabbat. If the goal of Shabbat is to get back to the week, then those final precious moments are spent anticipating turning our phones back on, wanting to check the sports scores, or getting back to someone on a business deal. The intimacy has been wasted, the unity has been abandoned, and it is no wonder I’ve read the same prayer literally hundreds of times and didn’t notice the subtle difference which should have clued me in to the profound shifting quality of my Shabbat soul mate.
This post came from my blog, www.sixdegreesofkosherbacon.com
0 comment threads