When is the right time to start preparing for Shabbos? For many people the answer would range from Wednesday to Friday. But the Tzaddikim teach us that the best time to start preparing for Shabbos is the moment Shabbos is over! The Tzaddikim teach us that the focus on Motzoei Shabbos, and its halachos and minhagim, are not about ending Shabbos, but rather about bringing the spiritual energy of the Shabbos that we just experienced into our week and preparing for the next Shabbos.
On Shabbos Kodesh our neshamah yesaira gives us an extra spiritual capacity to feel the presence of Hashem, which is often concealed by the distractions and fast-paced rhythm of the week. As Shabbos concludes, the departure of our neshamah yesaira often leaves us feeling a spiritual void as the holiness of Shabbos fades away. This is why we often feel katnus, or spiritual disconnection, on Motzoei Shabbos. Can you relate to feeling ichy/blah/not in the mood on Motzoei Shabbos, where you just want to sit around and do nothing productive (or worse…)? Now you know the pnimius of that common Motzoei Shabbos experience!
The antidote to this katnus is to try to flip our perspective and start to look at Motzoei Shabbos, not as a time of spiritual departure, but as an exciting spiritual beginning. We just finished a holy Shabbos: let’s start preparing for the next one! Let’s live our lives as Shabbos Yidden, and connect one Shabbos with the next with holy preparation!
Let’s explain this using the terminology of ‘pnimius’. A fundamental concept in pnimius is the avodah of building ‘keilim’ in order to fill them up with ‘ohr.’ A very simplified understanding of this avodah is that we need to exert ourselves spiritually, which often entails pushing ourselves to serve Hashem when we find it difficult to do so, in order to build a kli. This kli, or vessel, is the creation of an inner capacity to receive and feel ohr. In this simplified context, the meaning of ohr is: “a tangible feeling of closeness of your neshamah with Hashem.” To sum this all up – we need to push ourselves out of our spiritual comfort zone for the sake of Hashem (we build the kli), and then Hashem rewards us with the greatest human experience and highest pleasure in the world – feeling close to Hashem (Hashem fills our kli with ohr). The more we push ourselves, the greater the ‘size’ of our kli is, and the more ohr we can then receive.
When it comes to Shabbos, the light of Shabbos, and the neshamah-pleasure of true oneg Shabbos is so awesome, that it is worth every bit of kli-building we can do during the week. When Hashem sees we care about experiencing a genuinely holy Shabbos Kodesh, to the extent that Shabbos is something we prepare for and think about during the week, He sees us as worthy recipients of the ohr of the heiligeh Shabbos.
With this perspective, it can be easier to get through a spiritually challenging Motzoei Shabbos, and use the opportunity to start preparing for the incredible Shabbos that is coming in 6 short days!
There are two avodas of Motzoei Shabbos: One is to preserve the closeness to Hashem we merited to receive on Shabbos, and “take it to go” into the week ahead of us. The other is to start our preparations for the next Shabbos, paving the way to an even higher level of closeness and connection next week.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 16.
