Objectified Simcha in Mitzvos (A Perspective on Kiddush)

I wanted to share an embarrassingly simple perspective on the role of Kiddush Leil Shabbos. But first, before we come to the dvarim peshutim, first a little bit of a hakdama. One of the recurring motifs in the Rav's Machshava writings is how the Torah is distrustful of religious subjectivism. The Torah doesn't rely on our knowing how to express and or sustain religious feeling, emotion and experience. And it's because of that that the Torah provides norms, the Torah provides normative behavior, i.e., mitzvos, issurim, to objectify religious feeling, emotion and experience. So even those mitzvos where the ikkar of the mitzvah is kiyum she'baleiv. So the Torah doesn't just mandate that kiyum she'baleiv, but it's objectified. Mitzvas simcha is translated by the Torah into objective norms how to express, elicit the simcha. Even mitzvas t'filla, the ultimate kiyum she'baleiv, avoda she'baleiv, also the religious experience is one that the halachic norms objectify how that experience should be objectified and expressed. And the Rav says the Torah didn't trust us as it were to sustain the authentic, again, religious feeling, emotions and experiences without the objectification of it which Torah provides. The Rav discussed this in very broad terms. The Rambam has the same idea, but the Rambam focuses it more narrowly, not talking about the whole gamut of religious experience, but the Rambam talks specifically about basic emunos, basic ikkarei hadas.

יודע אתה מתוך דברי שדעות שאין להן מעשים המשרשים אותם המפרסמים אותם והמנציחים אותם בציבור אינן בנות קיומן.

Beliefs which don't have actions to entrench and publicize and perpetuate the beliefs, the beliefs will inevitably get lost. לכן ציווה עלינו לכבד את היום הזה. And that's the Rambam explains why Shabbos, the Rambam says after the mitzvah of Anochi and after issur avoda zara, so Shabbos is the most basic mitzvah because without, again, that objective. expression and reflection and reinforcement of the belief. So the belief won't be retained, it won't be sustained. Now this approach, obviously, ירידת הדורות סוף דעתו של אדם, which is necessary, also generates a challenge that we need to be aware of. In solving the problem again of the unreliability of subjectivism, it creates a challenge that we can become so focused on the objective norm and objective expression that we neglect the again whether in some of the Rav's examples, the Kiyum Shebelev, the religious experience which is supposed to permeate, or in the Rambam's examples, the core belief which is supposed to be reinforced. A person can eat basar v'yayin with geshmak and be oblivious to the Kiyum Shebelev of simcha. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Rachmana litzlan, a person can be nizhar on the yud aleph dapim of aveilus and also be inwardly unaffected in terms of what the Kiyum Shebelev of aveilus is supposed to be. So there's a challenge, maybe tension is the right word, which results from the need to objectify, be it religious emotion and experience, be it the need to objectify belief. If the mitzvah would be spend one day a week thinking about chiddush ha'olam, thinking about creation and its implications. Okay, so either a person would or would not be mikayem the mitzvah. The Rambam tells us that ירידת הדורות סוף דעתו של אדם that we wouldn't, too many of us wouldn't. But when the Torah again gives us Shabbos and objectifies it and says don't do melacha, there is a challenge which comes along with that solution. It becomes too easy to again just focus on the external expression and lose the internal component which really underlies and animates the mitzvah. It's possible to fast the daled ta'aniyos and to miss the point because the point really is that fasting is a nihug of teshuvah. And kehena v'kehena. And it's possible to be medakdek b'kala u'vachamura in terms of issur melacha on Shabbos and to not even spend a moment thinking about what the issur melacha is intended to focus our thoughts on. And again that challenge is the challenge which is endemic to halacha, to the with its vital stress on objectification, comes that challenge that that should not, that that should be to protect and to ensure the belief, the subjective, not to distract us from that, but it's up to us to see that that happens. Obviously in general what that means is that Kiyum HaMitzvos is something that has to be done reflectively, not just reflexively. And it's here where we come to the again embarrassingly simple perspective on Kiddush Friday night. Kiddush Friday night is so crucial in that if we're mindful of what we're saying, if we're mindful of why we're saying the psukim of Vayechulu, and we're mindful of the Zikaron L’ma’aseh Bereishis, it's something which is intended to frame and interpret the entire day. And the same way משל למה הדבר דומה, whether it's d’oraissa, whether it's d’rabonon, the psukim of Malchiyos, Zichronos, and Shofaros, they frame and they interpret the tekias shofar. So Kiddush Friday night is so pivotal, is so crucial. It's a time to set the tone for what the shmiras Shabbos represents. And if we would take a moment before Kiddush Friday night, just to think about what the substance of what we're saying and why we're saying it, it would resolve that tension. It would prevent us from becoming so focused on the necessary objective expression that we lose sight of what's supposed to be the accompanying inner core of the observance.