Where Will You Be on the Eighth Day?

This week’s Parsha is called Shemini, literally the number 8. It is the full circle of the prior Parshiot explaining how to construct the Mishkan, the recounting of the actual activity of building it, and the 8^th day is Rosh Chodesh Nissan, the day of its inauguration. Why the number 8? What is the significance of the number 8?  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z’’l suggests we go back to Creation where day by day God creates another aspect of the universe, until the 7^th day, on which God rested. He explains that this daily organization was meant to teach us about boundaries; everything that was created has its proper place, time, and purpose. As Rabbi Sacks says, “holiness consists in respecting boundaries and honoring the natural order.” Israel is instructed that it has 6 days to interact with God’s world, 6 days to toil and make use of what God made. Rabbi Sacks explains that Shabbat re-emphasizes the concept of boundaries. We are separate from the world around us, from the mundane nature of life, and on the 7^th day focus as much as possible on our spiritual selves rather than our physical selves. The 7^th day separates us humans from creating, from impacting nature in any meaningful way and instructs us to simply be, to exist in the world that’s already been created, a world that is already enough, a world that will continue to exist without us.

The key to this, I believe, is that the 7^th day is only one day. We have one day of rest, and then we are supposed to move on. Saturday night we conduct the Havdalah ceremony, which means separation, and we remind ourselves about those boundaries between every other day of the week and the Shabbat as we recite “Baruch Hamavdil ben kodesh l’chol.”  The next day is the 8^th day; what happens on the day after you’ve rested and taken it easy? Are you going to get stuck in a state of perpetual relaxation? No. The 8^th day is the day we inaugurate the Mishkan, it is the day where all the preparations that came before, all the work we did the previous week, along with our recharging of our spiritual batteries on the 7^th day, come together so we can take action on the 8^th day.

In our lives we can look at this 8^th day metaphorically. This month I have been on call at Mount Sinai Medical Center of Miami Beach. I saw a fifty something year-old able bodied homeless man as a patient because he had neglected to take his thyroid medication for the last few months. When I met him and started taking his history, I did something an attending in medical school had taught me and I went to the difficult question that no one really wants to get into as I asked; “Why are you homeless? What did you do before? What are you doing now?” His answer was disconcerting; “I used to work in construction and then I got sick of it, I got tired, and now I’m old so why should I keep working? It’s my time to relax so that’s what I’m doing. I’m doing nothing.” This man had gotten sucked down a spiral of a never-ending 7^th day, he had no 8^th day in sight. We cannot be that person.

In 2023 on Simchat Torah, on Shabbat, on October 7^th, Israel was invaded and attacked in the most horrific of ways. More than 1,100 Israelis were murdered on October 7^th itself. Since the war began, Israel has named more than 800 Israeli soldiers who have died protecting our homeland, and more than 5,000 Israelis have been wounded. But what did Israel do? They have used every ounce of willpower to rebuild, on October 8^th, and 9^th, and 10^th and so on. Here is only one of thousands of such stories of resilience:  Yuval Raphael, a 24-year-old young lady was at the Nova festival with her friends when she ran into a bomb shelter with 50 other people to seek shelter. She was 1 of 11 people who survived after hiding under dead bodies for 8 hours. Yuval testified before the Knesset and the United Nations; “I was surrounded by bodies everywhere. There was one specific body I hid beneath every time terrorists came. It was riddled with bullets, bleeding on me from every direction. I lifted her head, pressed her cheek against mine—that’s how I shielded myself.” Yuval has dedicated herself to advocacy worldwide on behalf of Israel. With her great love and tremendous talent for music she will represent Israel at the Eurovision contest in Switzerland this year. She is living her 8^th day as fully as possible.

When we read Parshat Shemini let us focus on what that 8^th day means. Let us be inspired to keep moving forward, to take our holy precious day of rest on Shabbat, and then wake up the next day and propel ourselves back into action that day, and the day after that.