Imu Shalev: Welcome to Meaningful Judaism, where we try to answer why we do what we do in Jewish life. In this podcast, we search for meaning by diving deep into the Torah text. Meaningful Judaism is a project of Aleph Beta Labs, and I'm your host, Imu Shalev. This week's episode, we're going to focus on the meaning behind Shabbat. Now, maybe for you, Shabbos is already pretty meaningful, or maybe you're not the biggest fan of Shabbos and it can feel challenging and hard to connect to. Either way, you're in the right place, and here's why I say that. 

For most of my life, Shabbos has been, in some ways, quite meaningful and also not meaningful. Like, we can all get behind the idea of disconnecting from phones for a day each week. Or rest; who doesn't like the idea of rest? I love resting on Shabbos. Family time, Shabbos meals, all that stuff is great. It's like being in a special, magical bubble of time that's totally different from the rest of the week. And then, there's wearing a suit and tie to shul in the middle of July, or all the rules and restrictions of Shabbos. That stuff I don't like so much. So Shabbos can be confusing. Stuff that feels meaningful and stuff that doesn't. One week you're checked in, Shabbos is clicking. The next week it's gone. Shul, then meal, then shul, then meal, then a nap, then a meal, then done. Where'd the magic go? How do we tune into a sense of meaning that will actually stick with us?

For me, this episode offers a key to that sense of greater meaning, and it's an idea of Shabbos that I personally never encountered before. The scholar on this episode is the one and only Rabbi Fohrman, and I didn't exactly approach him and say, “Hey, Rabbi Fohrman, can you teach me something magical about the meaning of Shabbos?” Well, we were actually having a conversation that, at the time, I had no idea would get at the meaning of Shabbos. It was a conversation about a song that many of us know quite well: Shalom Aleichem. That's right. That song about the angels that we sing on Friday nights before the Shabbos meal.

Now you may be wondering, what on earth would that song have to teach us about the meaning of Shabbos? And I was wondering that too. But I trust Rabbi Fohrman, and it led me to a new understanding of Shabbos that was deeply moving and profound. So if you're up for it, I'm going to play that conversation for you now. Here's me and Rabbi Fohrman.

Rabbi David Fohrman: So here's this song. And this song I'm talking about is Shalom Aleichem itself, and I'm just going to read through the words of the song, Imu, and ask those listening to pretend that you've never heard the song before. If you've never heard the song before, then you're actually in good shape. But if you have heard the song before, just pretend you're listening to this song for the first time. What questions would you have about the song?

Why Do We Sing About Shabbos Angels?

Imu: Even before we get into the actual song, the fact that we should sing a song about angels…

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, right. Who says that Shabbos comes with angels? Where does this concept come from, that you can't find it anywhere in the Torah? It never says that there's angels that accompany Shabbos.But all of a sudden, here comes this song, and it's very obvious to the poet that there are these angels. So I mean, like…

Imu: I’ve had people who aren't Jewish over for a Shabbos meal, and you say, “Now we will begin the song about the angels.” You're explaining to everybody, “We're welcoming the angels,” and they look at you and they nod.

Rabbi Fohrman: They’re like, “You’re crazy.”

Imu: “Mm-hmm, okay.”

Rabbi Fohrman: That knowing look, right? So that's really question number one. So, let's read through the song and see if we can discern other questions, beside that very first question. Why would you expect angels to be in your home when Shabbos comes? 

So the song goes like this: Shalom Aleichem, Malachei Ha’Shareis - We greet you, oh service angels of God, angels of the Most High, from the King Who's the King of Kings, The Holy One, Blessed be He. And then every verse after that is a slight variation off of that first verse.

The next verse, instead of saying Shalom Aleichem, Malachei HaSha’areis comes and says: Bo’achem L’Shalom, Malachei Ha’Shalom - Come in peace, you angels of peace, you angels of the Most High, angels of the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He.

And the third verse says: Barchuni L’Shalom - You should bless me in peace, you angels of peace, you angels of the Most High, from the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He.

And the final verse says: Tzeis’chem L’Shalom, Malachei Ha’Shalom - Go in peace, you angels of peace, you angels of the Most High, from the King of Kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He. 

And that's the song. Seems like a very nice song.

Why Ask the Angels to Leave?

Rabbi Fohrman: Let's grant that there is this thing called Shabbos angels, which we have no idea where it comes from. So most of these verses make sense, sort of. But the last verse, “Go in peace, you angels of peace.” Like we're ushering them out of the house. “Be gone now, you angels.” Like, is that a nice thing to do?

Imu: It's one thing to say that they're coming, but the second they come, they're leaving? We just said, “Hello, welcome.” 

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. I mean, if these are Shabbos angels, they should stick around for the whole of Shabbos, if not Havdalah time. Why am I getting rid of them so fast? You're kicking them out of the house before Kiddush? That's a little rude. 

There's actually controversy about this song in the classical commentators. There are some who argued that we should not sing it because it's rude, for this very reason. Like, what are you doing kicking the angels out?

Imu: It's funny because, you know, sometimes you're singing that song a little faster. You're hungry, gotta get the kids to bed, so it's like, “Welcome angels. Bless me, angels. Goodbye, angels. Let's go.”

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. It's not a nice thing to do. What are we saying to these angels? It's crazy. So that's question number two. Why are we saying Tzeis’chem L’Shalom?

Imu: As soon as I heard Rabbi Fohrman ask these questions, I started wondering how I'd managed to sing this song for so many years without ever asking myself about these things before. Rabbi Fohrman wasn't done though. He had more questions about two other pieces of the song that also felt weird to him.

Shouldn’t We Ask God, Not Angels, for Blessings?

Rabbi Fohrman: We ask the angels to bless us. Like, why do we do that? You found some angels, you might as well ask for a blessing? Like, what's that about?

Imu: What I hear Rabbi Fohrman saying is that it just feels kind of random to ask the angels to bless us. What exactly are we asking for? These angels, they should make good things happen for us somehow? They should make sure our business interests are successful that year? They should help our kids get married? Is that what we believe? That these Shabbos angels are in charge of all of that? That they are the bestowers of blessing? God's the Bestower of blessing! There’s even something heretical about this notion, that instead of turning to God with this kind of request you're appealing to angels. So to say, “Bless us, oh angels,” it might sound poetic and sort of vaguely religious, but when you really look at it, it's problematic. 

Why Do the Angels Get a Name Change?

Rabbi Fohrman: Finally, the question that just struck me is, the name for the angels changes. The first time we meet those angels, they're called Malachei Ha’Shareis, angels of service. And they're never called that again. In the next three stanzas, we refer to them as Malachei Ha’Shalom, these angels of peace. How come first they’re Malachei Ha’Shareis, and then they've changed, and all of a sudden they're Malachei Ha’Shalom. What are we supposed to make out of that?

Imu: So we've got these four questions: Number One, what makes us think that there are any Shabbos angels in the first place? Two, why do we welcome them in and then turn around and kick them out? Three, why do we ask them for a blessing? And Number Four, why does their name change? Rabbi Fohrman is going to start by tackling the first question, which is, why do we have a song about welcoming angels on Shabbos as if we all know that Shabbos has something to do with angels? Where are we getting that from? Certainly not anywhere in the Biblical text. The Torah doesn't say, “Shabbos is a day of rest. Don't do any work, and make sure to welcome the angels.”

Now, Shalom Aleichem is a poem that was written, we don't know when exactly, maybe the 16th or 17th century. So I would've thought that maybe those angels are just a nice poetic notion. But Rabbi Fohrman thought that the author of this poem was picking up on much older ideas, and he wanted to look a bit deeper for the sources.

Shabbos Angels in the Talmud

Rabbi Fohrman: The question we've been asking, sort of, is where did they get this from in the Bible? But there actually is a Rabbinic source in the Talmud that seems to be the basis for this song. In other words, if you would've asked the author of the song, “How do you know there are these angels that you meet when you come home?” he may well have pointed you to this beraita, to Tractate Shabbos in the Babylonian Talmud, kuf yud tes, amud beis (page 119b), which says the following: 

In the beraisa, Rav Yosi, the son of Yehuda, says there are two service angels of God that actually accompany you home from shul on Friday night. One of them is a nice angel and one of them's a mean angel, and as you come to your house, the two angels sort of make an inspection. If they find that you've lit the candles for Shabbos, and the table is set nicely, and the bed is made nicely, and basically you've cleaned up before Shabbos, then the good angel says, “Ah, it should just be like this next Shabbos,” and the not-so-nice angel has to say amen. But if you’ve got a messy house, if you didn't bother making that bed, if you didn't bother setting the table, the malach ra, the not-so-nice angel says, “Ha, the next Shabbos, it should be just like this.” And the other angel is forced against his will to answer amen.

And that's sort of the colorful story which is the basis for this song. So now, does it all make sense? Because we've got Shabbos kuf yud tes, amud beis to to rely on, but where did the Gemara in Shabbos know that angels come home from shul with you? They just made it up? Rav Yosi bar Yehudah just pulled that out of his hat one day? Like, where did he get that from? So instead of asking the question about the poet of the song, you could ask the question about the author of that beraita in Shabbos kuf yud tes, amud beis. You're allowed to ask that question. Where is this tradition that there are these angels that come home with you? Where does it come from?

And also, if you think about it, Imu, I feel like Shabbos kuf yud tes, amud beis is sort of disturbing. If you were a newly-observant person, I’d put my arm around you one day. I’d say, “Imu, you know, when you get home, there's going to be these angels that greet you. And I just need to let you know that they're going to be making an inspection of your home. They really want to see how well you prepared for Shabbos, and I need to let you know that one of these angels is not so nice and, you know, has a propensity for finding problems. How do you feel about letting these angels into your house as you come home?”

Imu: Oh, it's terrifying. I actually remember this in kindergarten, them telling us this story and feeling the heebie-jeebies. Like, when I'm walking home, there are these two angels, one of them who's a bad guy. Like, he's looking to curse me. And it changes the nature of how you sing Shalom Aleichem. Shalom Aleichem goes from being a jaunty song to sort of being like a terrifying… 

Rabbi Fohrman: It is terrifying. I would say, like, “Look, I have certain rights as a homeowner. Why do you get to search my home and see how prepared I am for Shabbos? Maybe I don't want you in my home.”

Imu: It almost feels like a beraisa made up by homemakers who wanted to scare their children into making the bed before Shabbos. That's what it feels like. I better make that bed or the mean malach is going to get you.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. It sounds like real grist for nightmares. So the question is like, what in the world is going on with this beraita?

Angels in the Torah

Imu: We found what seems like a source for Shalom Aleichem in the Gemara, but it left us with an additional question about why these two judgy angels would be inspecting our homes. Plus, we still didn't know where the idea of Shabbos angels came from in the first place, but Rabbi Fohrman had a theory about that. The Torah doesn't refer to angels in connection with Shabbos, but there are other places where it talks about angels. Rabbi Fohrman's idea was that if we looked at the angels that are mentioned in the Torah, we might get that link to Shabbos.

Rabbi Fohrman: I might say to you, was there ever a human being in the Torah itself that found himself essentially standing face to face with two angels? Is that something that ever happened?

There's not a lot of angels in the Torah. We find angels here and there, but interestingly, the Torah is usually pretty coy about angels. Sometimes there's people who look like Man; you're not quite sure if there's angels.

Imu: Joshua meets someone that he thinks is a soldier or someone with a sword, and he's like, “Are you on our side? Are you on their side?”

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, when the man says: אֲנִי שַׂר־צְבָא־יְקוָה - I am the reigning officer of God's army (Joshua 5:14). So it's like, okay, that's an angel, but it wasn't really announced as an angel. He was an ish (a man). Similarly, when Jacob wrestles with that man that we all say is the angel of Esav, it’s not described as an angel. It’s just described as an ish, a man that was struggling with him. Even when Abraham encounters these angels, they're שְׁלֹשָׁה אֲנָשִׁים, they're these three men (Genesis 18:2), and he kind of figures out eventually from context that they're not regular men. So it's always sort of ambiguous. 

Similarly, the Hebrew word for angels, malachim, even when it is used, you're not even really sure if it's angels. So for example, Yaakov sends messengers to his brother Esav (Genesis 32:4). You've got that ambiguous word which sometimes doubles for angels, but seemingly those were just messengers. They weren't angels. So the Torah is quite coy about it. Sometimes we'll use the word for angels; doesn't really mean angels, it means men. Sometimes you use the word men, but it doesn't really mean men. It's really angels. 

Angels Outside Eden

But there is a particular time in the Torah where the Torah's unambiguous that, no, that is actually an angel, boys and girls. And that time is back in the Garden of Eden. Back in the Garden of Eden, the last glimpse we ever get of that garden is as Adam and Eve are banished from the garden. God sets up אֶת־הַכְּרֻבִים, these angels, seemingly two angels, with their double edged sword to guard the way back to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24). And this is this moment where they encounter angels. The question that I began to sort of play with in my mind is, this Shalom Aleichem song, this tradition about these two angels, might it go back in some way to these two kruvim that guard the way back to the Tree of Life?

So what I’d actually like to do with you, Imu, is, I'd like to play a little bit of what might it be like to be Adam and Eve at that moment. What would it feel like to be expelled from Eden and to see those two angels there with their fiery sword? 

Imu: Um, I feel shame. Um, despondent, I guess. Like, if I'm relating to the angels also, I'd feel intimidated. Like there's these angelic beings who have a fiery sword who are between me and where I came from. I feel banished; banished from home.

Rabbi Fohrman: Is it just banished from home? Or is it worse than just being banished from any old generic home? Why is this home even worse to be banished from?

Imu: It's God's home. 

Rabbi Fohrman: God’s home! You were able to hang out with God there, And you aren't going to have that anymore. That angel's keeping you from connection and you're kind of angry about it and you're anguished. And it's like, what could I do to ever get back here? And also this dazed feeling of like, what could I do to ever get back here? I want to come home, but I can’t get past that angel. It almost feels like my mission is to somehow come home, but how in the world am I going to get past that angel?

Angels and God’s Mission for Humankind

Imu: Rabbi Fohrman was asking me to contemplate the experience of Adam and Eve looking at those angels because he wanted to show me some really interesting things he discovered, things that eventually are going to show us the link between the Shabbos  angels and the angels in Eden. But, paradoxically, it's a link we can only see by not looking for it directly right now. If I were to give you an analogy, I'd say, you know those  “Magic Eye” books where they have this weird looking pattern printed on the page but there's this 3D image that's supposed to pop out at you? These optical illusions that were really popular when I was growing up? And there was something simultaneously frustrating about them but also kind of cool. The more you looked for the secret 3D image, the less likely you were to actually see it. You sort of needed to relax your focus and not stare too closely, and when you're least expecting it, bam, that's when you'd see a dinosaur or whatever cool 3D image was hidden. 

That’s what Rabbi Fohrman is going to prompt us to do next. Instead of staring directly at the angels to find answers, we're going to relax our focus. Hang out in Eden, take a look around, and see what pops out. Hopefully not a dinosaur. Rabbi Fohrman wants me to look at not only the angels in Eden, but the people there and their experience, and that will take us on a journey that will veer away from angels and Shabbos for a bit. But in the end, I promise, it will take us back to Shabbos and answer all of our questions.

To begin with, we are seeing that angels are a barrier keeping us away from our home, and it feels like our mission for the future is to figure out how to get back. But there's actually something more profound that Rabbi Fohrman wanted to show me, and it has to do with the mission that we had in the garden, even before we got kicked out. To show me what that mission was, Rabbi Fohrman asked me to take a close look, two verses before the angels in Eden, at God's words about the reason for expelling Adam and Eve.

Rabbi Fohrman: To fill out this picture a little bit more, take a look with me for a moment at Genesis 3:22: וַיֹּאמֶר יְקוָה אֱלֹקים - And the Lord God said, “Look, they've already eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I'm worried lest they stretch forth their hand and eat also from the Tree of Life. I can't have that. I've got to get Man out of the garden.”

It's interesting because that phrase, “lest he stretch forth his hand,” you're going to find that later on in the Book of Exodus with the laws of shomrim, the laws of watchmen. It turns out that if you are a custodian of someone else's object, if they've given you something to watch, and then you claim that that item was lost or it was stolen, or that the animal died, in most cases you are forced by the Torah to swear to the veracity of your claim. You need to look the person who gave you that object in the eye and say, “I didn't commit any malfeasance here.” And the word for that in Hebrew is אִם־לֹא שָׁלַח יָדוֹ בִּמְלֶאכֶת רֵעֵהוּ - You have to swear that you did not stretch forth your hand to illegitimately take what wasn't yours (Exodus 22:7).

Imu: Two things that are really interesting there: One is shlichus yad, that idea of outstretching your hand is something that the Torah sees as related to guardianship. Almost like, Mankind could have been the guardian of, I don't know, the garden, I guess. God is worried that they would violate the garden or the tree in some way.  

Our Mission: To Work and To Guard

Rabbi Fohrman: What was our job? Our job was to watch over that garden and to make sure that the two special trees in the garden were treated appropriately. If you go back to our mission in the garden, it turns out that we weren't just placed in paradise to hang out and have a good time. We are actually placed in paradise on a mission, and that mission earlier on is described in the following way. Here's the verse: וַיִּקַּח יְקוָה אֱלֹקים אֶת־הָאָדָם - God took Mankind, וַיַּנִּחֵהוּ בְגַן־עֵדֶן - and placed him in the Garden of Eden, לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ - to work the garden and also to guard over it. We had a double-edged mission: To serve and to protect, to work and to guard over. That's what we were doing in the garden. 

And what's happened is that, in the wake of our eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God makes a judgment about how well we've done as guardians. And in essence, when He says, “Look, they've already eaten from one tree. What happens if they’re yishlach yado, if they illegitimately stretch forth their hand?” The crime of eating from the tree is not just that they shouldn't be eating from the tree. It's that their job was to protect the tree. The very protector is going to become the invader.

Imu: That makes it much worse. Like, what’s worse than crooked cops, right? The cops are the ones who are supposed to figure out who is harming the community. But when the people who are charged with keeping the justice are the ones who are actually perverting justice, it's just very, very hard to root that out.

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly, and that's why we were kicked out of the garden. We weren't just kicked out of the garden because maybe we might eat from the Tree of Life. We were kicked out of the garden because we didn't do our mission, because the shomer, the watchman, couldn't be trusted to watch. So it's like God has to make sure that this Tree of Life is guarded. You’ve got to get someone else to guard him. So I'm forced to replace you. So who am I going to replace you with? 

Read the verses that describe the advent of the kruvim. Immediately after, in chapter three, God says, “I’ve got to kick these guys out, lest they stretch out their hand and eat from the Tree of Life.” You're going to hear the words לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ, from our mission when we went into the garden, one more time. Listen to these verses.

We Were Replaced As Guardians

So God cast us out of the Garden of Eden, לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר לֻקַּח מִשָּׁם - to serve the land from which we were taken (Genesis 3:23). He set up, east of Eden, these angels with their fiery sword. Why? לִשְׁמֹר אֶת־דֶּרֶךְ עֵץ הַחַיִּים - To guard the way back to the Tree of Life. In those two verses, I'm hearing about Man's mission one more time. And what just happened to Man's mission?

Imu: It got broken up.

Rabbi Fohrman: It got broken up. Interestingly, part of the mission is taken over by angels, the part of the mission that had to do with protecting the garden. Man's not going to be around to protect it anymore. Man couldn't be trusted anyway. So God says, “I got some angels I think I can trust. They're going to take over the job, לִשְׁמֹר אֶת־דֶּרֶךְ עֵץ הַחַיִּים.”

Imu: So when Adam and Eve were facing those two angels, they weren't just feeling shame at having sinned and being expelled, the way I thought at first. They're also ashamed because they were replaced; because the angels are now doing a job that was originally entrusted to them, and that God had to take away because they weren't good guardians.

Rabbi Fohrman: But what about the other thing the Man was supposed to do? לְעׇבְדָהּ, to work the land? Well, it turns out that those words also appear, but the angels don't take that over. God sends forth Man from the garden לַעֲבֹד אֶת־הָאֲדָמָה. Man will continue to work, but unfortunately for him, it's no longer Eden that he will work. He's going to work the land from which he was taken. 

Now, if you remember, early on, Man wasn't created in the Garden of Eden. He was taken from outside the garden and placed in the garden. Man as a creature came from regular mundane earth: וַיִּקַּח יְקוָה אֱלֹקים אֶת־הָאָדָם - And God took man from that mundane place, וַיַּנִּחֵהוּ בְגַן־עֵדֶן - and placed him in the garden (Genesis 2:15). Why? Because he had a mission, לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ. But now, as that mission is being broken up, as the angels take over part of it, Man is cast out of the garden to the land from which he was taken.

Imu: It's almost like he gets to work and guard when he's in Eden, but afterwards, when he violates the garden, or we're worried that he's going to violate the Tree of Life, then Man is sent to go work and the angels have to pick up the role of guarding.

The Curse: Work Becomes Toil

Rabbi Fohrman: Yes. In other words, Man, by nature, is a worker. He's always going to work. The only question is, what is he going to work and what's he going to do in addition to work? If you're in “mundane world,” so that's where you work. If you're in God's garden, well then that's what you work. And it struck me that once you see things in that prism, that Man is always a worker, but the question is where you work, you might have a new insight into the curse, “by the sweat of your brow, you will eat bread.” עַד שׁוּבְךָ אֶל־הָאֲדָמָה כִּי מִמֶּנָּה לֻקָּחְתָּ - Until you return to the ground from which you were taken (Genesis 3:19). Those words, “from which you were taken,” find their echo when man is forced out of Eden to work the land from which he was taken. What's going to happen when he works that land from which he was taken? Well, he's going to feel like a slave. He's going to be working by the sweat of his brow to wrest bread from an unwilling earth.

Imu: What Rabbi Fohrman is doing here is, he's noticing that the word la’avod (to work) can mean two different things. On the one hand, it can mean “to serve,” and on the other hand, it can mean “to be a slave.” In Eden, were there to לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ, to work the garden, or to serve it and to protect it. There's no suggestion that we were somehow slaves to the garden. But after the expulsion, when Adam is cursed, Adam needs to work the land, to sweat and to toil in order to make it yield its food. That avoda, that work, is more like a kind of slavery.

Rabbi Fohrman: What if you looked at the curse of man, not so much that all of a sudden magically – poof, in a big puff of orange smoke – the earth is going to make it so much more difficult for Man to work. What if there was no real difference before Eden or after Eden in terms of the amount of work that he had to actually put into farming? The only difference is, where are you working and for what reason? 

You see, if you're in God's garden, you've got this magnificent job description. You're in the Creator's garden, and you're entrusted with this job of actually taking this sacred place on Earth and making it as wonderful as it possibly can be. And every morning, you wake up at the crack of dawn, and every night you come home. But what was your day like in the garden?

Imu: It was amazing. I saw these gorgeous oranges and I took them off the tree, like in the orange juice commercials and…

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right.

Imu: …and I stuck a straw in.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. And it was gorgeous. And I got to be a part of that gorgeousness and I was making it a delightful place for me and God. And I had this idea that if we created this pond over here and moved these fish over here, that it could be even more wonderful. And me and God, we took our walk there. And all of it is wonderful. But, Imu, aren't you tired at the end of the day?

Imu: I am, but it's rich and it's rewarding. It's great work.

Work Without Transcendent Meaning

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. But then, if you're cast out of the garden, you no longer have a job description of something magnificent and wonderful that you're doing. You no longer have this job of לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ. Instead, you have this curse that you're going to be in this mundane world, you're going to be working day and night for that bread. What if I wasn't even working any harder than before? It's just, look at the context for my work. I've been stripped of meaning for my work.

In other words, if I'm working but it's a job for some sort of end that feels meaningful – I'm cultivating God's garden, I'm making this wonderful place for me and God in the world – then no amount of labor feels like slavery. It's like the greatest privilege possible. And once the mission of cultivating that special world is stripped of me, then I'm just living to eat and I'm eating to live, and I'm spending my whole day making my bread. Why? So I can have enough energy to get up in the morning and spend my whole day making bread.

The first slave driver becomes the land itself, even before there's any other human. Just the land, when I'm stripped from that sense of exalted mission, becomes my very first slave driver. It wasn't like, all of a sudden, it got so much harder to farm. No, it was just a function of the expulsion. Once you expel me, then of course it's cursed. Once you take the meaning out of it, all of a sudden, work that could be sacred just feels like toil, and that feels like slavery. And you do that over and over again until you finally expire and go back to this land from which you were taken. That's what slavery is, no rest. But part of it is the lack of an exalted mission that makes life feel like it's worth it. Whereas, back when I was in the garden, it was like, no, I got to hang out with God, too. There was those moments that transcended just work that made it all worthwhile.

Imu: It's my job now, right? Like, people ask me, how's work? And I say, I have a dream job. And the reason it's a dream job is because I enjoy almost every aspect of my job. I get to hang out with Rabbi Fohrman and learn with him. It's work. I'm tired at the end of the day, but I'm hanging out with one of my closest friends. I'm talking Torah. 

So I imagine when you're toiling in God's garden and you're with God all day and it's a beautiful setting, there might be toil, but because it's part of a relationship and for the sake of a relationship and, you know, it's glorious at the same time, therefore there's no stress because every moment is where you want to be. Slavery is all the work without the relationship and without the inherent meaning of the reward.

Imu insert: So just a confession: At this point in my conversation with Rabbi Fohrman, I was excited, but also kind of lost. Had he forgotten that we were talking about Shalom Aleichem at one point? Or how the angels can help give us a key to understanding Shabbos? Turns out he hadn't. Shabbat is just around the bend, but I didn't know that at the time, and so in my exasperation, I asked Rabbi Fohrman: Remind me again why we're talking about Mankind's descent into slavery?

Rabbi Fohrman: So, Imu, why are we here? What I'm trying to do is give you context for the question I asked you a little while ago: What is it like to be Man now? So let me come back and ask you that question one more time. Here you are, staring at those two angels. They're banishing you from the garden. And we've taken a little trip, and we've seen how history develops after that moment, how that's the beginning of this whole cascade of slavery. 

And the first whispers of that are this notion that you're going to be working this land over and over incessantly. Now you're taking your first steps into that world. What are your deepest longings? What are your deepest regrets as you start walking away from that angel? 

How Can We Get Back to Eden?

Imu: Based on what we just said, originally they had this thing called avodah, which was service, and shemirah, which was guarding the garden. But now when we leave, avodah sort of, like, spins out and turns from work to subjugation to slavery. Purposeless existence is a form of slavery. It's just a way of living life where you're merely surviving, but without purpose. It just feels soul-crushing. So leaving the garden is a really tragic experience. 

Rabbi Fohrman: It is. And as you look back on those two angels, I want you to get in touch with that dark part of you that sees in those angels what you could have been. What do you think when you take a look at those angels? That little sense of hopelessness, welling up inside of you. What's that saying?

Imu: That should have been me.

Rabbi Fohrman: Should have been me.

Imu: Yeah, you're in my spot.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right? And how can I get back to a world of meaning, where I can be in God's world once again and commune with God in that world? I don't see a path back. And that's the sense of hopelessness. I'm forced into a world where the avodah that I used to have, that seemed so wonderful, now seems like slavery. A world where I can never have shemirah again of God's garden. And how can I ever make it back?

And here, I believe, is where the Torah gives us an immense surprise about how Man can make it back to that world. And it has to do with this verse that we've been talking about that describes man's original mission in the garden: וַיִּקַּח יְקוָה אֱלֹקים אֶת־הָאָדָם - And God took Mankind, He placed him in the garden, לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ - to work it and to watch over it. If you think about that sentence, that sentence has four parts to it. What occurred to me is that there is another time in the Torah that we encounter all four of these elements, and, interestingly, we encounter all four of the elements in the same order, but backwards.

Imu: All four elements in the same order and backwards.

Rabbi Fohrman: In other words, in the same consecutive order, ABCD. But instead of being ABCD, it's DCBA. Almost as if there's a chiasm.  

Imu: This is why I said you have a beautiful mind, because I don’t think anyone would be able to answer, “Oh, all four elements, but backwards.”  

Rabbi Fohrman: So let's play it out though. Let's start with the backwards. The very last element here, if we had to divide this into four elements, is the last part of man's job, לְשׇׁמְרָהּ, to watch over. Element three is לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ, not just to watch over, but to serve, to work. So element number three is to work. Before that, we have  וַיַּנִּחֵהוּ בְגַן־עֵדֶן, to be placed in a special place. Yanach, l’haniach, to be placed; element two. And element one is the very first clause in the verse: וַיִּקַּח יְקוָה אֱלֹקים אֶת־הָאָדָם - God takes Man from some mundane place for the purpose of bringing him to some beautiful place. 

If we think about those four elements: Taking man from some mundane place into a beautiful place, followed by the word l’haniach, “to place someone,” followed by לְעׇבְדָהּ, “to serve,” followed by לְשׇׁמְרָהּ, “to guard over.” If we do it backwards, we would say: “To guard over,” followed by “to serve”, followed by the word l’haniach, followed by the idea of God taking me from a mundane place and bringing me to a beautiful place. Whoever's listening can write in and get a free Coke from Aleph Beta if you got the correct answer.

Imu: While supplies last.

Rabbi Fohrman: We've only got a six-pack guys, so supplies are going to go pretty quickly. And that is, where's the other time where we got all four of those elements backwards? Where we start with shmirah, then we have avodah, then we have l’haniach, then we have God taking you from a mundane place and bringing you to a more wonderful place.

Our Mission Echoed in Shabbos

The other time that we have this is in the Ten Commandments, the description of the Sabbath itself. Shemirah; where do we get that idea of Shemirah, Imu? It is...?

Imu: Shamor.

Rabbi Fohrman: שָׁמוֹר אֶת־יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת לְקַדְּשׁוֹ - Guard, watch over the Sabbath Day, לְקַדְּשׁוֹ - to consecrate it, to make it holy (Deuteronomy 5:12). Which, by the way, is very fascinating, Imu, because our shemirah actually does something that's more than shemirah you would think could do. You would think all a watchman could possibly do is watch. But look what we do by watching: שָׁמוֹר אֶת־יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת לְקַדְּשׁוֹ. We, by watching over the Sabbath day, by simply observing the Sabbath day, by simply not doing any melacha (forbidden acts) on that day, we actually sanctify that day. That day changes because of how we relate to it, because of not doing anything on that day.

Imu: That's actually strange, like the psychological experience of Shabbos is that it really does feel like a different – different than a Tuesday. It just does. It feels different.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah. You normally think, what do I have to do to make something feel different? I have to do all these things. And the Shabbos comes and surprises you and says, you know what you should do to make it feel different? It's the not-doing that makes it feel different. The not-doing makes it different. You'll bring holiness into the world by not doing. Crazy, crazy stuff.

שָׁמוֹר אֶת־יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת לְקַדְּשׁוֹ; element number one. And now let's get to the next element: שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תַּעֲבֹד וְעָשִׂיתָ כׇּל־מְלַאכְתֶּךָ - Six days a week shall you work and do all of your melacha. 

Imu: Oh, so you have the shemirah and you have the avodah. And they’re broken up.

Rabbi Fohrman: Oh, fascinating; they’re broken up, but now they’re broken up in time. I work for six days, and I rest, I'm shomer, on the seventh day, and all of a sudden I'm hearing these echoes of Man's original mission, almost as if that's part of my mission too. My mission isn't just to keep Shabbos. My mission is to work for these six days. This mundane thing that I'm doing is actually part of my mission, too. Crazy! 

But let's keep on going. The next element we had, back in our original verse, was וַיִּקַּח יְקוָה אֱלֹקים אֶת־הָאָדָם וַיַּנִּחֵהוּ בְגַן־עֵדֶן לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ. What about that word, וַיַּנִּחֵהוּ, “to be placed in,” or “to be at rest?” The Man was at rest in the garden of Eden. Where does that word appear? Well, it appears in the Ten Commandments, after shemirah and avodah. If you read a little bit further, God says, “On this Sabbath day, you know what you have to do? You have to let everybody rest. Your family has to rest. Your animals need to rest. Your servants need to rest.” You know why? לְמַעַן יָנוּחַ עַבְדְּךָ וַאֲמָתְךָ כָּמוֹךָ. And there's that word: yud, nun, chet, “to be at rest.” The same word as וַיַּנִּחֵהוּ בְגַן־עֵדֶן. Everyone needs to be at rest.

And coming back to the very first element in that verse that describes Man coming into the garden -- וַיִּקַּח יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָאָדָם וַיַּנִּחֵהוּ, taking Man from a mundane place and putting him into a more beautiful place -- comes at the end of the Ten Commandments: וַיֹּצִאֲךָ יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ מִשָּׁם - You used to be slaves in Egypt. God took you from the mundane place of work in Egypt and brought you to an exalted place where you could hang out with Him. So in the Ten Commandments, we have this mysterious echo, backwards, of God taking Man from a mundane place and placing him into the Garden of Eden with his mission of לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ.

Imu: So just to recap, the Torah uses four terms to describe God placing Man in the garden, and it uses the very same terms, just in the reverse order, to teach us about Shabbos. In the garden, it says וּלְשׇׁמְרָֽהּ, to guard it. Man was supposed to take care of the garden, and that gets expressed in Shabbos as שָׁמוֹר אֶת־יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת - guard the Sabbath day. In the garden, it says לְעׇבְדָהּ. Man was supposed to work the garden to serve it, and that gets expressed in Shabbos as שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תַּעֲבֹד - for six days, you will work. Back in the garden, it says וַיַּנִּחֵהוּ בְגַן־עֵדֶן - God placed Man in the garden. The garden was a resting place for Man. That gets expressed in Shabbos as לְמַעַן יָנוּחַ עַבְדְּךָ וַאֲמָתְךָ כָּמוֹךָ - you have to let everybody rest; your family, your animals, your servants. And finally, in the garden, וַיִּקַּח יְקוָה אֱלֹקים אֶת־הָאָדָם. When God plucked up Man from outside of the garden, He was bringing him from a mundane place to an exalted, Godly place, and that gets expressed in Shabbos thematically: וַיֹּצִאֲךָ יְקוָה אֱלֹקיךָ מִשָּׁם - God took us out of Egypt and brought us close to Him.

How Is Shabbos Connected to Eden?

Rabbi Fohrman: Now the question is, what in the world might that mean? If it's really true that the language of the Sabbath in the Ten Commandments is lifting and mirroring the language of Man coming into the Garden of Eden for the very first time and getting his mission, what do we make of that parallel? What are the implications of that?

I think the most basic implication is that the Sabbath and Eden are very similar, almost as if the Sabbath is a version of Eden. This text in the Ten Commandments is almost, like, narrating our entrance into the world of Sabbath. 

Here's this new idea called Sabbath, and it mimics our entrance into Eden. There must be some fundamental commonality between Eden and Sabbath. And the question is, what is that? It could be that what Eden is in the world of space, the Sabbath is in the world of time. What was so special about Eden in the world of space? It wasn't just that it was a beautiful place. It was a place that you could hang out with the Master of the universe, that's what made it exalted. It was a consecrated place, a place where you could experience connection with God. That's what was so wonderful about it. It was home, but a home that I could share with God.

You know, God comes from a world beyond space and time. Space and time are not native to Him. You would think that a God like that could never really even exist in a world of space and time. But God says, “You know what? Human beings, they matter to me so much. I'm going to come into their world of space and time to some extent, to whatever extent I can. And I'm going to bring them to sort of the edge of space and time, and I'm going to come to the edge, and we're going to, like, press our hands together through the glass. We're going to commune as much as we can together.” And Eden was that place almost at the edge of space that God can bring us to and say, “I can come here, and you can come here, and we can commune together. This is going to be My summer home in the world of space.” And suddenly there's this other summer home in the world of time. That's what the Sabbath is. 

But once you begin to see the Sabbath as a summer home for God in the world of time, a whole new dimension of the meaning of Sabbath opens up to you. The Sabbath isn't just a respite from slavery. It's not just some time off so we aren't working incessantly. It gets to the other thing that makes slavery so awful, which is the lack of a sense of transcendent purpose. And the original transcendent purpose was to be able to just be home with God, to be able to cultivate the place that I could commune with God and to watch over that place that I can commune with God.

Bringing Meaning Back

And Imu, if I could take you back to that interview that I had with you – the Adam who has just been banished and thinks he can never come back – what if I told you that later on, just after you've experienced the worst slavery of your life, four hundred years of slavery in Egypt, I come to you and I say, “There's a way back to this exalted place. There's a way back to Eden, to God's world, but it's not the way you think. You think that you have to find the way back to Eden in space. You can't do that, because there's these angels that keep you back from there. But I got news for you. There is another world that you can have access to.”

It's not God's world in space, but you can commune with God in time, and when you do, you can take over your original mission in God's world of לְעׇבְדָהּ וּלְשׇׁמְרָהּ. And you know how you do it? שָׁמוֹר אֶת־יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת לְקַדְּשׁוֹ, שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תַּעֲבֹד. Here's what you do: In the world you are exiled to, the world that you thought that there was no way out, that there's no way of creating meaning because all you're doing is eating to live and living to eat...do that, but only do it for six days. Stop for a single day, and you know what you do on that single day? You say, “Well, what can I do? How do I build a world for God? I can't make Eden.” Guess what? You don't have to do anything. Just stop.

That act of stopping brings another element into what you're doing. You're not just being oved anymore, you're being shomer. On the seventh day that you don't work, suddenly you've consecrated those six days of work. All of the things you're doing, the six days that you're doing, you're also doing for God because on the seventh day you rest. And suddenly, you have your job back again.

Shabbos Angels and the Return to Eden

Imu: If Shabbos is going back into Eden, and if on our way out of Eden we encountered angels, then maybe on our way back in…

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. We encounter angels too. So of course, if you're going to encounter God's world again, albeit a world in time, who are you going to encounter there? The same angels that God placed to keep his world in space safe. He's going to have to keep his world-in-time safe. So you're going to encounter them.

Imu: One of the special parts and the rich parts of this piece is the backwards idea. You said, “Oh, what are the four elements?” and do them backwards. And this backwards-forwards element makes a lot of sense because we were just kicked out of the garden. If we're being let back in, it makes sense that all the elements are backwards. It makes sense that we're encountering the angels, which were the last things that we saw when we were let out of the garden.

Rabbi Fohrman: And what are you going to say to them when you encounter them? Well, what are those angels? They're service angels. What's their job? To keep you away because you weren't a good watchman, because you couldn't be trusted to watch. But you're a good watchman now, you're keeping Sabbath. And now, you go right up to those angels, and you know what you say to those Malachei Ha’Shareis? You say shalom aleichem. Shalom aleichem to angels with a fiery sword. What are you saying when you wish “peace?”

Imu: “Hey, put the sword down. I'm here to take over.” 

From Service Angels to Angels of Peace

Rabbi Fohrman: “I’m here to take over.” This is the changing of the guard. It's when you become the angels. What happens when you change the guard? Even in the United States Navy, there's a ceremony with a changing of the guard on a ship. You have to salute the captain. And you have to say, “You are relieved.” And then that has to be acknowledged by the previous captain, who says, “I am relieved.” And that is the experience of shalom. “Put down your sword. You're no longer a service angel. You no longer have a job to do. I'm the one doing the job. My avodah and shemirah.”

And so the Malachei Ha’Shareit, the angels of service, they changed their name after the first stanza. They are Malachei Ha’Shalom now, angels of peace. They no longer have service to perform. We are here to take over for them. 

Asking the Angels to Call Us Blessed

And so we ask these angels to bless us. Why do we ask these angels to bless us? Perhaps it's because these angels have seen our curse. And so the last thing we say to them is, “The curse wasn't really a curse. All it was was a function of our no longer being in this special place with a transcendent meaning. Nothing changed. We just...we're in a different place. But now that we're coming back and we're in this special place in time, please acknowledge that as you leave.” The last thing you do is acknowledge that I can be blessed and not cursed.

Imu: I love what Rabbi Fohrman is saying here, that it's not heresy. We're not beeching the angels for their blessing. Angels were part and parcel of our curse. It was an expression of them coming to replace us, and now they're seeing us and sort of acknowledging and declaring that we are not cursed anymore. We're the opposite of cursed. We're blessed. 

I now understood why we say Tzeis’chem L’Shalom, Go in peace; why we welcome in the angels and then kick them out right away. This is a changing of the guard, we're taking over for them in Eden. We're saying, “Hello, it's nice to see you, but now it's up to us. You can go now.”

Rabbi Fohrman, this is beautiful. This is really amazing. There is one question, I think, that we haven't answered yet, which is the question on the beraisa. This whole idea of the angels, the ones that are following you home from shul so they can check and see, did you set everything up the right way. What is that about? 

Rabbi Fohrman: Because if you are an angel who's there to keep out anybody who wouldn't be a good watchman, if you're going to come and relieve me, I need to make sure you're a good watchman.

Imu: What‘s interesting is what they inspect is, did you work purposefully, almost, right? Like, you’re working for six days, but was that purposeful? Did you set up everything you needed to set up for this dedicated space in time to be with God? 

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. 

Imu: That’s really cool. You know what that is? That doesn't just tell us the meaning behind Shabbos and why Shabbos is so meaningful. It elevates all of our existence, actually. It basically says that our work is meaningful because we're doing it for something. 

A Portal to Transcendence

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. So it's not just the seventh day that's meaningful, but Shabbos grants us transcendent meaning to our work. And all of a sudden, here you have Man who is banished in a world that he thought that there was no way out, just a mundane world, and all of a sudden there's this portal that opens up in that world and says, “There is a way to transcendence, but it's not the way that you think. It's not transcendence in space. It's transcendence in time that you can have access to.”

And yes, there will come a time and you'll try to build something in space, and you'll build a Tabernacle and you'll eventually build a Beit HaMikdash. But even if you don't have a Beit HaMikdash, even though we don't have a place in space where you can commune with God, you can have a world in time.

Imu: Beautiful. Thank you so much for doing this with me. This was really lovely. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Thank you, Imu. Bye-bye.

Imu: So that’s my conversation with Rabbi Fohrman. And I just want to unpack for a moment what it all means to me personally. What is the meaning of Shabbos?

On an emotional level, there’s something really meaningful about understanding that Shabbos is a portal in time to Eden. And I can tell you, understanding this has totally changed my experience of singing Shalom Aleichem. Now, when I sing, I get the chills sometimes. There’s a changing of the guard, and Mankind – I – have somehow been deemed worthy of coming back to Eden.

Eden, the place, was all about a dedicated relationship with God. It was God’s summer home in this world, a place for us to enjoy this world together with God. Without the garden, and presumably without Shabbos, Man can fall prey to working in utilitarian fashion. Work to survive, work to advance my own career, work to retire. Shabbos becomes a portal to Eden because it elevates our work, and it gives it meaning again. 

Shabbos, for me, isn’t a cholent of things I enjoy and things I enjoy less. It’s become a meditation on doing and being, a way to elevate my avodah of the 6 days of the week by ensuring that my work has a purpose. My work serves my relationships; with God, with my loved ones, with myself. There are moments in my life where my “Eden in time” looks like deep Torah study and prayer. There are moments where my Shabbat is dedicated to my wife, my kids, or my community. There are moments where I kick back with a good book and a cold glass of lemonade on a lawn chair. 

I wonder what the return to Eden looks like for you.

Credits

This episode was recorded by Rabbi David Fohrman and me, Imu Shalev. 

The scholar for this episode was Rabbi David Fohrman. 

The senior editor was Sarah Penso, with additional editing by Beth Lesch. 

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Our managing producer is Adina Blaustein.

Meaningful Judaism's editorial director is me, Imu Shalev. 

Thank you so much for listening.