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In this shiur on preparing for Shabbat, Rav Dov Ber Cohen explores the deeper meaning of Malbushei Shabbat, the special clothes worn for Shabbat. Drawing from the Arizal, Rabbeinu Chaim Vital, and Kab
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So we're continuing our series on Shabbat. We're getting ready for Shabbat Kodesh. And as we said, Shabbat is Tachlis Maasei Shema Yimbaratz. It's the whole purpose of life to reach this state of presence. To reach a state of immense physical, emotional, mental and spiritual presence. And just to be. To be. As we said, most people are human doings or human thinkings, but we're meant to be human beings. We're meant to just be able to be fully present. And Shabbat is the time where we've arrived. There's nowhere to go, nothing to do. We're just being completely there. And most people never get to experience just being. We're always thinking, hoping, dreaming, doubting, worrying, fearing, doing something, even good things. But very rarely are we able to just be because if we have no distractions, then the mind takes over and it destroys us, our ability to just be. So we want to have Yishuv Adas, we want to settle our mind. Menucha Taneh Fesh, have inner well-being and just experience the immense bliss and beauty and sweetness of presence. That's what we're going to do. So we said Shabbat is basically a meditation retreat once a week. We have a once a week meditation retreat. I used to go on 10-day silent meditation retreats. They were great. Judaism says every single week we have one day where we turn off distractions and we become very, very deeply present. And then we take that back into the week. We said every bracha we make and every shachas, mincha and marev and every mezuzah and every mitzvah and everything we do, we want to bring Shabbat into the week and to be present. So I gave the example last time that when I'm praying shachas, mincha and marev, I don't have any mukse in my pockets. Now halachically you're allowed to, but I just want to feel that I'm being present. I'm in Shabbat, I just don't want that. So I pray at the Kotel, mincha sometimes. I leave my phone and my money and my key, I'll leave them here so I'm just fresh and focused. Fresh and focused. I like it. So now we've been talking about preparing for Shabbat and we're now on Perek Bet of Biyam Da Kecha, talking about getting ready for Shabbat. Malbushei Shabbat. So we said really that the whole week is preparation for Shabbat. Really the first three days of the week are integration of the Shabbat that came before. And the next three days are preparation for the Shabbat that's going to come. Today is Yom Rivi'i. Wednesday morning is the first day of preparing for Shabbat. As you said this morning, if you said the Song of the Day this morning, you said L'chun HaRanana, which is the beginning of Kabbalat Shabbat. And it's really when we receive the beginning of a higher spiritual consciousness. So there are really three levels of the soul, Nefesh Ruach and Neshama. And we're receiving, we're creating a vessel to receive a higher level of Nefesh today. That's what we're doing. So we said there are two main things on Shabbat. There's Oneg Shabbat and Kavod Shabbat. Oneg Shabbat means nicer food really, in general. Nice food. That's why lots of people, they save some food only to eat on Shabbat. And usually it's your favorite food. I'm going to save this for Shabbat. I do most food actually. I save for Shabbat. But that's Oneg Shabbat. Kavod Shabbat are things like tidying the house and better, nicer clothes. So we're going to read and learn together. It says in the Shulchan Aruch. Yishtadel she yey lo begadim naim le Shabbat. You should really make sure that you have extra special clothes for Shabbat. And there are many people who don't wear any clothes that they wear during the week on Shabbat. They have special, really, Shabbat underwear. Shabbat kippah, Shabbat talis, Shabbat everything. Shabbat socks, Shabbat shoes, Shabbat everything. This is my Shabbat clothes. Now why is that? Because it makes you feel that I'm getting dressed up. If you're going to the prom, you wear your prom dress. So when you wear nicer clothes, not only are you honoring Shabbat itself, but you're getting yourself excited. You're getting in the mood. So I don't have anything. And then if I wear anything during the week, it now becomes weekday clothes. So this is what I do. I buy a new shirt. Or I buy a new pair of tzitzit, and that becomes my Shabbat shirt, my Shabbat tzitzit. And after however long, a month, two months, three months, whatever it is, then that gets relegated to weekday. And then I'll buy a new Shabbat shirt, new Shabbat tzitzit. And so it's actually the weekday clothes that I'm wearing are from Shabbat even. So now this shirt used to be a Shabbat shirt. Now it's a weekday shirt, but it still has, it was bought as a Shabbat shirt. So even my weekday clothes now in general, they have Shabbat energy to them. So this is what we're trying to do. But Arizal katav, she tzareech le'achliv et kol begadim le'chvod Shabbat. Arizal said you have to change all your clothes for Shabbat. You should not wear any weekday clothes on Shabbat. Shum min malbosh k'yotzei bo mi'chol ma'a she levashe ha'adam bi'mei chol, ein ra'ui le'levosho b'yom ha'Shabbat. Anything that you wear during the week is not fitting to be worn for Shabbat. Shabbat is very special. Now once again, don't freak out by this. You're okay. But it's something to think about and something to maybe work towards. But don't get uptight about these things. But there's this lovely idea that I'm new begadim. And we're going to obviously learn the deeper Kabbalah behind all of this. We know that the neshama, the Shabbat is called the Yom HaDenishmata, the day of the neshama. And we know that the neshama has clothes. Did you know the neshama has clothes? Levushim. The levushim of the neshama. What are the neshama's clothes? It has three pairs of clothes. Thoughts, speech, and action. Beautiful. Thoughts, speech, and action. The clothing, the levushim of the neshama, machshava, dibor, maaseh. Because the neshama itself, when it's in shamayim, it doesn't have thoughts, speech, and action. It's just experiencing God, bliss, consciousness. Would you like to sit down? Would you like me to bring the chair over there for you to sit down on? There's a chair. So the neshama doesn't think, it doesn't speak, it doesn't have a mouth, and it doesn't act, it doesn't have a body. So once the neshama comes into the body, and the body is really the most physical clothing of the neshama. We said that the body isn't you at all, doesn't represent you at all. The body is literally a car for the soul whilst it's in this world. But you have thoughts, speech, and action. It's called the clothing of the soul. So in one way, what we want to do is we want to put on new thoughts, speech, and action for Shabbat. You want to be thinking higher things. You want to be saying higher things. You want to be doing higher things on Shabbat. You want to be engaging in thoughts, speech, and action on a much, much more conscious and high and spiritual level on Shabbat. You want to be thinking higher things.
Gam yesh inyan al piyah kabalah. The kabalah teaches lilbosh begadim levanim. There's an idea that you should wear white clothes on Shabbat. All white. And you see some mukubalim, some kabbalists, especially in Sfat or whatever, they wear completely white clothes. Once again, white represents purity and spirituality and Hashem.
V'komosh ha'katav rabbeinu Chaim Vital. Rabbeinu Chaim Vital says, Gam tzarich ha'adam lilbosh begdei lavan. V'loshal tzivayim achirim. You should not wear any other colors, only white clothes. So nowadays, people say that if you're walking around with completely white clothes and you're not completely spiritually pure, it's actually called yuhara, which means spiritual arrogance. So nowadays we say you shouldn't, unless you are a morgenstern, you shouldn't be wearing completely white clothes, but at least four pairs. Here we go. V'da ki ein lefakhod midaled begdei lavan. You should wear four white things. So if you've got a white kippah, a white shirt, white tzitzit, and a white undershirt, something like that, and a shirt, so you can actually do that. Why four? Every time you hear four, that's Hashem's name. So we're wanting to purify ourselves. Yom ha'denishmata, white is pure spirituality. V'heim ha'malbash
Can you make it that my main kavana is the 10%? Because that's what I really wish my kavana was. And Hashem says yes, that's cool, as long as you're being honest with me. And then as you get older and you meditate more and you pray more and you refine yourself more, then it will be 20% you are actually doing it for the right reason. And you just keep saying to Hashem, I wish that this was my primary conscious motivation for what I'm doing was just completely in your honor. It's not yet, but I wish it was. And through doing that over many, many, many years, it comes to the point where it really does become 90% for the right reason and 10% for the wrong. That's fair. And though it goes in all of our vodas, I gave the example the other day of giving tzedakah. Why do you give tzedakah? Because you feel guilty if you don't and you feel good if you do. And you actually care about the person and it's a mitzvah and you're going to get a reward for it. So there's low, we are multi-kavanated people. We have multi-kavanas, multi-motivated people. So I get this from my Rebbe Belvavi, he says, if you say to Hashem, I wish that this was my main kavana, Hashem takes that as your main kavana and it eventually becomes that. And also just a side point, very important to mention, that if you get pleasure from something, it doesn't mean you were doing it for the wrong reason. People say there's no such thing as a completely altruistic act because any time you do something good, you get pleasure from it. Therefore you're also doing it for yourself. So Rav Desler says that's not true because if your main motivation is for the right reason, it's not your fault you got pleasure from it. That was a bonus, that was a prize. Hashem gave you, and you should feel good about yourself for doing good things. But if you're doing it for the pleasure, that's a problem. So if you're doing what you're doing because I want pleasure, that's not a good motivation. But if you're doing it because it's the right thing to do and I happen to get pleasure, that's okay. You're allowed to get pleasure. Getting pleasure from something doesn't take away the purity of the act. Especially if you can say to yourself, would I do this if I didn't get any pleasure from it? And you've got to be honest with yourself. Would I? So I feel most of the time I would. I'd still do it if I wasn't getting pleasure from it because it's the right thing to do. We're driven by doing the right thing. So therefore you then get all dressed up and you're so into the physical world that that becomes your identity. I'm identifying with my physical world. And how good my devah Torah is. At my Shabbat table we don't have devrei Torah. So I don't want a devah Torah because this is what a devah Torah is. Everyone's sitting around talking about politics and sport. And then everyone says, okay, Chaim has a devah Torah. So Chaim says, okay, well it says in this week's parasha, blah, blah, blah, and Rashi says this, and we can learn from this, this, and then everyone's like, shkoyach. Shkoyach means shechachti, I forgot what you said because you didn't mean what you said. I didn't listen to what you said. You were just showing off to the rabbitson to try and get your shidduch. So my Shabbat table, we don't have devrei Torah, it's all Torah. It's not like, and here is the pre-prepared devah Torah that he didn't really mean. He was just showing off. It's all there, that's what we talk. We don't talk about sports and politics. We just speak about life and Shabbat and Torah. And here is my devah Torah. Everything's Torah. So therefore your malbush, your clothes start becoming your main thing, your external appearances become the main thing in your life. And they were never meant to be the main thing, they were meant to be expressing your penemias, expressing your soul in the world. So that means, even on the deeper level that we're talking about, your thought, speech and action, they're not meant to be the main thing either. There are two things you can do with clothes. You can either wash them or take them off. So on one level we want to wash our clothes, that means we want to wash our thought, speech and action. We want to have very clean, pure thoughts, very beautiful, sweet, clean, nice-smelling speech and beautiful actions. But there's something else called taking off your thought, speech and action, which we get through meditation, really. And really doing mitzvahs with great intention. And at that point, for example, just very practically, when you're meditating, you're not acting. You're sitting down still, so there's no action there. You're definitely not speaking, so you're quiet, so you've already taken off action and speech, and then really meditation is to stop thought, so that I'm not thinking so much. And I've calmed my mind to the extent that I've now removed these layers, because once again, thought, speech and action cover up your soul. They're meant to express your soul. If you can remove thought, speech and action, then you can just be sitting in a place of soul. So we get confused and we identify as our psyche. Not only do we identify as our body and our clothes and our car and what school our kids go to, we start identifying as our thoughts and our emotions and our hopes and our dreams and our memory. That's also not who we are. That's an external thing. You are a pure, perfect, connected, holy, shining, radiant, beautiful, joyful, loving being of divine light. You happens to be in a body for however many years you're going to be here, and in the body you have thought, speech and action, which is not you either. So stop misidentifying with your clothes. When you take off your shirt at the end of the day, you're not taking off yourself. And one day, by the way, you're going to take off your body. And they're going to put your body in the ground. And then you'll be really free at that point, because your body's really holding you down a lot. Your body's making you feel finite, physical craving. It's making you have a Yetzirah, bad character traits. The body's very, very difficult to deal with. Once again, that's why Eastern religions say, get away from the physical material world, because the body's very heavy. Judaism says, no, train the body. Train the body to just serve Hashem. I'm using this... I can't put on tefillin if I don't have an arm. I sometimes look at my arm and I say, why do I have an arm? It's so that I can hug my children, because children need to be hugged. And so I can put on tefillin. Why do I have eyes? So I can see other people's pain. So I can help them and I can learn Torah. And why do I have a nose? So I can smell bisamim to connect to it. So literally, sometimes... And Rabbi Nachman says you should actually speak to your body, different parts of your body. But you can just see Hashem's given you... It's basically a robot. So what are you using this amazing machine for? So the soul hates this world. The soul hates... It just can't stand this world, apart from one thing, which is mitzvahs, because you can't do mitzvahs without a body. There's no such thing. So your body is basically meant to be a mitzvah machine. That's what you should see your body as. It's like, oh my goodness, what mitzvah can I do with my legs? I can run to help someone. So your body is a mitzvah. We don't have bodies in Judaism. We have mitzvah machines. You're my mitzvah machine. What's the head for? Tefillin. How could you put on tefillin if you don't have a head? Fine. We've got a bit of time. The clothing is a physical thing. It's just there to reveal something internal. Now we're going a little bit deeper. It's awesome how deep the Torah goes. Apart from just covering up your external, and revealing the internal, it has an additional function. It's the light that surrounds the person. The light that surrounds. Now it's a little bit above your madrigah. It's a little bit above your level of spirituality, but it's there. It's basically your next spiritual step up. You have a certain expansive God consciousness, and that's called your o penimi. That's what you've grasped in spirituality. I've grasped this. Then just beyond that is your o makif. That's just about, it's like an aura. It's like your aura. It's just above you, and you haven't fully grasped it, but it's not so far away that you don't know it's there. It's there. You know it's there, and you're always yearning to grow. This is what the talis represents, by the way. When we daven, we have a talis on. The talis is the o makif. It's a surrounding light. Tefillin is the o penimi. Tefillin I can grasp. In fact, tefillin even means to bind, to connect yourself. So tefillin, I've grasped the tefillin. It's on me. It's God's name on my body. And the talis is above. It's surrounding me. So we have this light, just in case you didn't know that, by the way. And you should
and you keep raising up. And you get new ones. And this light has an immense influence on you. Because you're yearning for something higher, for something more spiritual, unless, once again, you're caught up in physical stuff. That's why we say things like sports and politics, they're not forbidden, but it's getting you very caught up in this world consciousness. It's okay, but if you really overly care about stuff like that, it means you're being dragged into this world consciousness. And we want to not do that. And then your yearning. Now, once you actually get into a positive, upward cycle, you're just yearning for it more. Because you've tasted it. It tastes nice. That's why once you've had a real Shabbat, then you're just yearning for Shabbat. It's like if you understand what Shabbat is. Shabbat in your Yerushalayim. Shabbat in Tzvaas. Shabbat in Mezhubash. Once you've really tasted Shabbat, then you want it. You can't yearn for something that you haven't tasted. You can't yearn for it. If you didn't taste it, you can't yearn for it. My favorite fruit is called a mangosteen. It's an amazing fruit in Thailand. Has anyone had a mangosteen ever? Nice, no? Anyone who hasn't had a mangosteen, do you really, really, really want to have one? Do you want to try one? You're like, yeah, I wouldn't mind. Why? I really want one. Why? Because I know what it tastes like. If you don't know what it feels like, then you wouldn't mind tasting it, but you're not yearning to taste it. So we know what true spirituality tastes like, so we start yearning for it. That's why it says, Adam was created in Gan Eden and then taken out, so he knew what it felt like to be in. Because if you don't know what it feels like to be in Gan Eden, then you can't yearn to be in Gan Eden. So he was created in there, taken out, and now the rest of our lives is yearning for Shabbat. So this light then uplifts your whole yearning, your whole thoughts and your whole actions, and everything gets uplifted. This is why I'm very, very adamant that people stop putting themselves down. If you put yourself down and you don't value yourself, then you just do things that are below who you are. The more you put yourself up and say, do you know how pure and good and holy and connected and sweet I am, the more you naturally don't want to do things that take you away from that. Once you've tasted goodness and spirituality and light, you don't want the physical, lowly, heavy pleasures of this world. So the bigger your spiritual light, the greater your yearnings. You want better things. And then you can win the game. And then spirituality and Judaism and life becomes a fun game. Because once you know how to play the game, then it's good. When you're struggling to just stay afloat, life's very difficult. But once you understand what the game is and you tap in and you've got momentum, then it's all this. It's awesome. That's what Judaism is. It's just amazing momentum. Rosh Hashanah leading into Yom Kippur, into Sukkot, into Cheshvan, into Hanukkah, into Tu B'Shvat, into Purim, into Pesach, into Sfirs Aymeh, Lag B'Aymeh, into Shavuot. It's just amazing. And every week, Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat. We're just tapping in all the time. Wow, what do people do without Shabbat? Gosh. You know some people don't keep Shabbat? What is life? I really don't get it. I didn't keep Shabbat 29 years. Oy! Hinei ha-Beged shu makif et guf ha-adam hu merkava v'kli le'or makif hazeh. So the clothing that surrounds your body, this clothing represents your or makif. Your body represents your or panim, your inner light. The clothes you wear represent this surrounds your body. u'lechayinu begedim me'od mashpiim al shivdo shel adam So your actual physical clothes have an immense impact on you. And you know that. You know that when you've put on a suit, for example, I know that. When I put on a suit, I feel different. I wear a suit, did you know that? I wear a suit on Shabbat. I wear a Shabbat suit. But it makes you feel different when you put on that nice clothes. When you go to your football team and you put on your football team jersey, your shirt, you feel different. I'm part of the tribe. So your clothes have an immense impact on your inner world and your physiology. Your external world has a big impact on your internal world. v'gam me'od mesamnimatam hu kmo sha anu ra'im b'chush We see this, we feel this, we sense this. Sha beged mashpia al r'tzoynosh nafshi shel adam. When you're wearing clothes, different clothes, that changes how you act. How you act. When I first went back to England after I was religious, and I had a kippah and a tzitzit, and my friends were like, yeah, let's go to the club, or let's do that. I was like, I can't, I just don't, that's not what I did. I'm wearing kippah and tzitzit, I don't go to the club. So I tucked in my tzitzit, put on a cap, but I was like, people who wear kippah and tzitzit, we don't go clubbing, that's it. So you know that your clothes, so that's why the Orcha Tzadikim, many people say, shalom aleichem, many people say that your, that's why we wear nice clothes basically every day, because I'm representing Hashem. I want to look good, I don't want to wear too flashy clothes, I'm not wearing Armani suits and stuff like that, because that's ego. But I'm not walking around schlumpy and dressed not okay and dirty. I'm actually doing quite well. Because we have to have the balance, I'm representing Hashem here, so we get a moderation in how we're dressing. וכם כן רואים שיש לאדם צורך פנימי עמוק This person's got a much deeper inner world. ללבוש לבושים שמתאימים ומסתכלים את דרכי החיים So your clothes represent your inner world, your values, that's why we really say that when you wear very few clothes, someone who's not covering up their body how they should be covering up their body, apart from there are many different things to do with that, but it means they're really identifying as a body more than their soul. You're saying this is, I get my sense of self based on my body, on my legs, on how ripped I am. So the more you do that, the more you identify as a body, the more physical and material you become and the less you're expressing your soul. That's why we cover up our body in order to express our self. So the clothes you wear, it reveals your inner world and that's why we wear special clothes on Shabbat. What you're going to do is on Friday you're going to take off your weekday clothes and really it's because your or makif during the week is not nearly as strong as your or makif on Shabbat. You literally have different spiritual clothes on Shabbat. Your or panim, your inner spiritual light is stronger on the Shabbat because you've got this neshama yeseira, you've got this more vibrant, pulsating, radiant neshama on Shabbat and therefore your or makif, your surrounding light on Shabbat is huge. And you can see, some people look different on Shabbat. There's some Rebbis, they say they used to look like taller on Shabbat. I forgot who it was, maybe the Maggid of Mezrich? At some point he, huh? The B'er Meir HaChayim? He was very sick. There are a few stories about, there was the Rebbe and he was very sick in bed all week. Shabbat came in, he would get out, a whole different person. I like that. Couldn't fit through the doorway. So, your or makif, which is really the surrounding light of your soul, is higher on Shabbat, so to represent that you're putting on Shabbat clothes. Big day Shabbat, because you're saying, I have greater spiritual clothes today. That's what you're actually doing. So your Shabbat suit, I wear a white kippah on Shabbat as well. Your Shabbat is saying that I'm tapping into a much, much higher spiritual level on Shabbat. Amnon, Madriges HaBegadim Ein HaShaveh. The levels of your clothes are not the same. Ki Vebeg DeYam Chol, Mizgaleh Madriges HaAdam Mechol. Your clothes during the week represent you during the week. Lefi HaOr HaMakif, SheMakif HaToh, Lefi Madriges Bechol. Because your surrounding spiritual light during the weekdays is not as strong. Ulechein Likras Shabbat, when Shabbat come in, SheHaAdam Misroimim, a person is completely exalted and uplifted. Hu Mekabel Nefesh Ruach Nesham HaYeseirah. You get these three high levels of your soul. And other people say also the Chayim, the Yechida Yese