Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

On every Friday night Jews around the world gather with their family and friends around the dinner table to inaugurate the Sabbath with a prayer called “The Kiddush”. This prayer notes that the Sabbath is both “a memorial to the days of Creation” and a “remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt”. In fact, the Torah gives two different reasons for observing the Shabbat and the Kiddush incorporates both reasons in its text. In Ten Commandments in Exodus the reason for observing the Sabbath is given as:

For in six days God made heaven and earth and sea—and all that is in them—and then rested on the seventh day; therefore God blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8)

In the Book of Deuteronomy the reason for observing the Sabbath is given as:

Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12)

In his commentary to the Torah, Ma-Or VaShamesh, Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Halevi Epstein (d. 1825 Krakow, Poland)  connects the remembrance of Egypt to the story of Creation and shows us how what appear to be two different reasons are in fact one and the same. He notes that the   the “signs and wonders” that God visited upon the Egyptians were themselves reminders that God created the world and could intervene in it at His Will – that the creation of the plagues was a testament to God’s ongoing oversight of and involvement in, the world. He writes, “The Kiddush on Sabbath….. testifies to the divinity of God who created his world in six days and rested on the seventh; it testifies to the continuous and ongoing renewal of the world each day.  What better evidence is there for this ongoing act of Creation than the signs and wonders at the time of the Exodus from Egypt?  Therefore we remember the Exodus from Egypt as well as the six days of creation when we recite Kiddush to inaugurate the Sabbath.”

Shabbat Shalom.