From the Head of Jewish Life
7th Heaven
7th Heaven was the most watched TV series ever on the Warner Brothers Network. Analysts suggest that it was the wholesomeness achieved by one family in the challenging circumstances of everyday living that enticed its audience to tune in to this hoped for heaven.
Our Jewish tradition proffers a 7th Heaven as well, which is a central focus of last week’s and this week’s Torah reading.
Parashat Emor, spoke of the Omer count, “sheva shabbatot”-seven sabbaths, meaning seven times seven days. This week’s parashah, BeHar, which follows Emor, likewise focuses on seven and shabbat.
After speaking about the Sabbatical year (“shana hashevi’it, shabbat shabbaton”), which is the Shabbat of the seventh year, reflective of the Shabbat of the seventh day, BeHar, echoing Emor, says you shall count “sheva shabbatot shanim”, seven sabbatical years, bringing us to the Jubilee, upon the conclusion of the forty-ninth year.
Shabbat and seven are intertwined. They both spiral together from the seventh day, to the seventh year, to the forty-ninth year. Each connotes rest, for humans, animals and the land upon/ by means of which we live. A 7th heaven on earth.
The Sabbath, the Sabbatical, the Jubilee are all described with words connoting restoration and returning, (veshavta, veshavtem, tashuvu) which are linked to the word shabbat.
Shabbat and sheva conjure, completeness and fullness. Thus, Shabbat is called Kadosh, holy in the sense of wholeness. Likewise, completion of the seventh cycle of shabbatot, “is the Jubilee, Kadosh/holy, shall it be to you”.
Today, many of our students take a “gap year”, a “sabbatical”. This is often a time to recalibrate,to reclaim oneself, to seek a more profound and expansive perspective as to how one might want to journey on in life.
Our Bible reminds us of the importance of these times of self-reflection and reclamation.
The Hasidic tradition tells tales of individuals seeking to expand the Shabbat into the weekdays, perhaps reminding us of the ultimate shabbat for which we strive, which is not only a gap day or even year but realising the fullness of living throughout each day of our lives.
On Shabbat we pray for “yom she-kulo shabbat”- a day that is fully shabbat. The Rabbinic tradition associates this “day” with the Messianic period- a time of wholeness of our being and our earth.
The Midrash teaches that the wholeness of divine being once present within the Primordial world has progressively become estranged from us and now resides in the 7th heaven.
The sole work not only permitted but prescribed for shabbat-every seventh day, every seventh year and upon the culmination of every seventh seven year cycle is this lifetime endeavour of creating/recovering and experiencing a longed-for wholeness. Shabbat, alone, should we seek to make it so, is a “taste of the world to come”-where seventh heaven and earth become one (again).