Friends – I learned something nice this week in Rav Daniel's class, I wanted to share it with you. It seems that when the Talmud wants to discuss the number of melachot (creative activities) forbidden on Shabbat, it uses the phrase, "forty minus one," which, as most first-graders could tell you, is thirty-nine. Also, when someone (God forbid) receives lashes in Torah law, they receive "forty-minus-one" lashes, according to the Talmud. Why does Jewish legal terminology beat around the bush like this - why not just say "thirty-nine?"
According to Rav Daniel, the Maharal of Prague tells us that the number 40 alludes to the very havayah (totality) of the Sabbath, and the very havayah of a person. The totality of the Sabbath, in the halachic sense, consists of 39 negative commandments (i.e. please don't do these creative activities) and one positive commandment (i.e. please REST YOURSELF), which equal 40. When someone commits a sin punishable by lashes, they might actually DESERVE 40 lashes according to the law… but, according to the Maharal, we only give that person 39 lashes because we don't want to nullify his very existence. 40 lashes would spiritually, if not physically, annihilate him completely.
And why does the number 40 represent a person's existence? According to the laws of biology (and to anyone posessing a powerful-enough microscope), 40 days after the conception of a new human life, the zygote (pre-embryotic mass which is composed almost entirely of water) becomes a full-fledged embryo with discernible form, limbs, and sexual assignment. A new person, as it were, emerges from its primal birthing waters 40 days after its conception, with a brand new set of relationships to itself, its environment and its former.
It's interesting that only after 40-days of the primeval Flood water could the earth and humankind take on their true mantle as participants with God in building His creation. It's also interesting that this month, Cheshvan, during which the Flood took place, also happens to be the month during which King Solomon completed his work on the first Holy Temple. According to the Maharal, the building of the Holy Temple represents the climax and purpose of the Flood, and the direction unto which Noach was to set the new world at its inception.
We should be blessed this and every Shabbat to look at the world as Noach did, with great fear hand-in-hand with great excitement, with great faith in the potential imbedded in the world for creativity, diversity, kindness and mercy, and with a great desire to bring the world to its completeness and totality through our rest -
Jerry Silverman
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Jerry Silverman is a former student of Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He is working in new media, designing and managing media projects. He lives in Riverdale, NY with his wife Sarah and their two children. |