Shabbos: The Light Within
Understanding Shabbos through the lens of Parashas Lech Lecha
Inspiration comes in different forms. Sometimes it is a sudden flash of clarity that propels us forward and other times we need to find the light within ourselves. Noach reached for the light of Shabbos, the Ohr HaGanuz, yet it slipped from his grasp; still, he was the first to live in a world that could contain its radiance. Through the ten generations from Noach to Avraham, the world learned the art of containment, the capacity to let the Ohr Ein Sof dwell within the limits of the finite.
While Noach held Malchus alone, Avraham expanded it into a philosophy of clear emunah that taught the world how to receive kedushah without breaking. He did not merely endure the light, he welcomed it, and in that welcome the nature of humanity’s relationship to the Ohr Ein Sof shifted forever.
Even though Noach did not live Shabbos in its fullness, he captured its glow, the radiance of the Ohr HaGanuz, through which we reconnect to the source of Creation and join Hashem as partners in His work.
From Above and Below
Noach searched for the hidden light both in the heavens and within the Teivah, while Avraham discovered that true tikkun does not descend from Above. To receive the Ohr HaGanuz, a person must reach toward it through inner work, for that light is concealed within the Nishmas Yisrael, waiting to be revealed1.
In a recent conversation with Joe Rogan, Dr. Rick Strassman, a leading researcher of DMT, explained that the compound appears in two forms: endogenous DMT, produced naturally within the body, and exogenous DMT, drawn from an external source such as a psychedelic substance. Strassman described spiritual vision as a top-down process, flowing from the source of the experience to the mind that receives it, whereas an experience that begins from the bottom up, triggered by an external agent, he called self-generated rather than received.
Strassman may have opened the Chumash, yet he missed a core idea. The Torah teaches two kinds of revelation: isarusa d’le-eyla, an awakening from above, and isarusa d’lesata, an awakening from below. This is neither chemistry nor altered states; it is the meeting point between the human heart that reaches upward and the Shamayim that answers. It is, in its essence, entirely spiritual.
The Unfinished Journey
Let’s step backward for a moment, to the end of Parashas Noach. Terach leads his family toward Eretz Canaan yet stops in Charan, where he remains and dies. Terach sensed the pull to journey inward, to reach his own inner Canaan, but he halted halfway.
Chazal taught: “Open for Me an opening like the eye of a needle, and I will open for you an opening like the entrance to a hall”2. Every spiritual endeavor begins with human effort, however small; Hashem meets a person when they move toward Him.
Avraham began this path with his father, yet his test demanded more. Hashem said, “Lech lecha, go for yourself,” step beyond the rest stop where Terach remained. Leave your birthplace, your father’s house, and keep walking; your destination will be unknown until you arrive, for the journey itself will reveal it.
The message was clear: reach the place your father could not. The blessing would come not from Above alone but from within Avraham himself, as he created space for the Shechinah to dwell in the world.
Lech Lecha and the Pattern of Repair
Avraham’s journey began in awareness followed by motion.
The Sfas Emes3 teaches that when Avraham looked at the world, he saw the upper realms running with perfect order while this world below seemed broken and unfinished. He wondered, could it truly be without a guide? Hashem answered, “Lech lecha, keep going.” The repair, He implied, can only happen after separation, after one leaves behind the noise and weight of the world.
Avraham’s greatness was that he didn’t settle for seeing harmony above and chaos below. He entered the disorder to uncover its purpose. That act of self-offering, of letting go beyond reason, reached higher than human wisdom ever could. Only through such surrender can real tikkun begin.
The Sfas Emes adds that this pattern repeats in every person and in every Shabbos. Lech lecha is the essence of Shabbos, a pause from creating, a return to the root. When Shabbos is entered with that mindset of letting go, it repairs more than time, it resets the mind and heart, teaching the body how to move through the mundanity of the week without losing its center.
He writes further that Hashem’s command of Lech lecha was a cry sent to all of humanity, a call for every soul to rise, to move beyond habit and comfort toward its true source. Yet only Avraham heard it. His distinction was not that he was spoken to, but rather that he was the only who was listening. .
Fragrance of Faith
It is striking that while Avraham is the father of Yitzchak and Yaakov, his brother Haran was the father of the foremothers. Terach was the father of them all.
Chazal tell us that Haran also walked into the fire of Nimrod, just as Avraham did. Haran understood what he was doing, yet he was only mirroring his brother. His courage was borrowed, not born. Because his choice was based on outward influences and did not rise from within, he succumbed to the flames.
We see the same pattern later. Avraham gathered a great following in Charan, many drawn to his light and his words. Yet the Torah is silent about them afterward; they fade into the background of history. They were inspired by Avraham but did not awaken the light within themselves. You can witness truth in another, but you only receive it when it begins to move inside you, when you come to it yourself.
The Midrash4 compares Avraham to a flask of fragrant oil sealed in a corner. When the flask was moved, its scent spread through the world. Hashem said to Avraham, “Move yourself from place to place, and your name will grow great.” Avraham’s journey released the hidden fragrance of faith; once he began to move, the light within him reached the world.
Avivah Zornberg, in The Murmuring Deep, notes that fragrance must be experienced to be known. You can admire an idea secondhand, but you can only sense a scent by breathing it in yourself. Avraham shared the fragrance; others had to inhale it, to let it mingle with their own breath, for it to become theirs.
As Zornberg writes, “Abraham, as perfume, then, suggests the unconscious pathways by which his teaching affects others. The effect is that they think their own thoughts. In this sense, he brings the glance of God into their worlds.”
The fragrance of Avraham stirred people for a moment, but it faded. Inspiration that is borrowed cannot last. Only what rises from within has the strength to remain.
The Blessing That Rises From Below
The Torah tells us:
“I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.”5
Rashi explains that from this point onward, the power of berachah was entrusted to Avraham. Until that moment, only Hashem had blessed, Adam after his creation, Noach after the flood, but now the capacity to bestow blessing was placed in human hands6.
The Seforno deepens the idea: a true berachah comes when Hashem takes delight in the deeds of His creations. It is not a formula of words but the joy of Heaven meeting the goodness of earth. The Talmud7 tells of Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, the Kohen Gadol, who once saw the angel Katriel standing before Hashem. He heard the words, “Yishmael, My son, bless Me.” Rabbi Yishmael answered, “May Your mercy overcome Your anger, and may You act toward Your children with compassion.” The angel placed his hand upon him, affirming that a human berachah, spoken upward toward Heaven, can be real and holy.
Through this, Avraham’s mission comes into focus. He was chosen to receive blessing and to draw it into the world through tangible acts of goodness, turning the awareness of Hashem into daily life. To recognize the Elokus within creation is itself to bless and recognize its Source, what the Ramak in Tomer Devorah describes as seeing ourselves as a reflection of God, and therefore bound to mirror His compassion in our own deeds.
The Targum Yonasan adds that Hashem promised to bless the Kohanim who would one day lift their hands in prayer and bless Avraham’s children. The Kohanim were teachers, showing Klal Yisrael how to find the flow of berachah within and draw it outward into life.
The thread running through it all is simple but radical: Blessing does not descend from Above; it rises from below. It is the moment His presence is revealed within us. When the human heart aligns with the will of Heaven, berachah is released into the world. Our task is not to contain the blessing, as Noach did in the Teivah, but to carry it outward, from Charan across Canaan, until the whole world is touched by its light.
From Concealment to Clarity
The Beis Yaakov writes that Shabbos is innately holy, even without human action, yet its purpose is that we feel that holiness. He calls Avraham “the light from the east,” because Avraham’s path was to draw the hidden light from concealment into perception. Lech Lecha, then, is the lifelong work of revealing the Shabbos-light within the weekdays, of finding holiness in ordinary ground.
Rav Moshe David Valle8 deepens this movement. Avraham’s journey, he explains, was a transition from concealment to clarity that occurred over the geographical journey. In Ur Kasdim, surrounded by impurity, Avraham could not yet perceive the full pattern of Hashem’s guidance. Hashem told him, Lech lecha, go for yourself, to the land where the veils would lift. There he would see the land and the truth he had been searching for all along.
According to Rav Moshe David Valle, that vision revealed something about Avraham himself. It revealed that his essence was the middah of Chesed, divine kindness in human form, and that only in the chosen land could that kindness flow without obstruction. When Hashem said, “I will make you a great nation, I will bless you,” it meant that Avraham’s soul would become a channel of berachah. This blessing is rooted in Binah, the supernal source of compassion. The added heh in his name joined him to that higher world, allowing its light to pass through him into creation.
“You shall be a blessing” was not a title or a mission for Avraham to bless others, it was a state of being. Avraham was to become the blessing itself, the living conduit through which unity above would find expression below.
He was to become godly, not an intermediary for God. In that, he taught us that we are human, yet we are capable of acting in God’s image, bringing His light into the world through the way we live.
Beyond Reason, Beyond Earning
Rav Moshe Shapiro9, quotes the Ramban who asks why Lech Lecha opens without an intro about Avraham’s character or worthiness. The Torah doesn’t tell us anything about his kindness, faith, or strength before Hashem speaks to him. The Maharal10 explains that this silence is deliberate. Noach was chosen because he was righteous, he was a tamim and a tzadik. Hashem’s favor towards Noach was bound to his deeds. The favor that Hashem had for Avraham was not conditional.
Hashem’s choice of Avraham came from a place deeper than reason. It was not a reward for virtue or intellect, but an act of pure ratzon, the will that simply loves without condition. Some connections exist because they are. When love is true, it does not require a cause and attempting to state one, misses the point.
The foundation of the bris between Hashem and Bnei Yisrael is not conditional or transactional. Our relationship with Hashem is essential. We are called banim, children of God, regardless if we behave as such. A parent’s love for a child isn’t based on achievement; the bond exists before any act, before success or failure.
Avraham embodied that truth. Hashem chose him before he left Ur Kasdim, before he passed any test or revealed any greatness. Everything that followed, his faith, courage, and kindness, grew out of that first moment of unconditional choosing. He was a new beginning, a creation born of pure ratzon Hashem. That is why he is called an Av, the father of faith, the root of a new way of being.
Shabbos and the Root of Being
Even so, the Torah reminds us of his father, Terach, who began the journey to Canaan but stopped in Charan. Avraham continued what his father only began. Terach reached toward God through intermediaries; Avraham reached God Himself.
Rav Moshe Shapiro links this to the secret of Shabbos. The pasuk says, Sheshet yamim asa Hashem, “Six days Hashem made the heavens and the earth”, not b’sheshet yamim, “in six days.” The Maharal explains that this phrasing includes the seventh day within Creation itself. On that day, menuchah, rest, was created. Shabbos was not the cessation of melacha, rather it is purpose of the melacha.
Just as Avraham revealed that the bond between humanity and Hashem begins beyond reason, Shabbos reveals that the world rests not because there is nothing left to do, but because the point of doing is to reach being. Both are expressions of ratzon Hashem entering the finite, shaping the world through being.
Avraham as Vessel of Shabbos
Rav Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin11 writes that all the Avos kept the entire Torah before it was given, and surely Shabbos was among those mitzvos. They had already risen beyond the category of Bnei Noach, who are forbidden to rest completely. The Avos merited the beracha of bakol, mikol, kol, a fullness that mirrors the holiness of Shabbos, which draws its flow from the middah of Kol, the channel through which all beracha enters the world.
Avraham did not merely observe Shabbos; he became its vessel. He embodied the flow of shefa that descends through Yesod, allowing Shabbos, the completeness of creation, to rest within him. His menuchah was not withdrawal but alignment, a stillness through which the world’s purpose could move.
Avraham searched deep within himself, and there he found the Ohr. It is like the story of the pauper who dreamed of treasure buried beneath a bridge. When he arrived, someone told him they had dreamed of treasure hidden under a pauper’s house. He went home, dug beneath his own kitchen floor, and found it. The treasure had been there all along. The search ended where it began, within the self that had seemed most ordinary.
Reflections of Hashem
The Bas Ayin12 adds another layer. Before Avraham, no one had called Hashem “Adon,” Master. Kingship only exists where there is likeness between ruler and ruled; Hashem cannot truly be called King over those who bear no resemblance to Him. Avraham changed that. By detaching from materiality and cleaving to Hashem through chesed, he became domeh la’Elyon, a reflection of holiness itself.
That is why Hashem said to him, Lech lecha, go to the land that mirrors your own essence. Eretz Yisrael and Shabbos share this same nature: both are states of resemblance to the Divine. When a Jew rests on Shabbos, setting aside the physical and turning thought toward kedushah, he mirrors the Creator who rested. That likeness is what allows Hashem to be called our King.
Avraham’s journey toward Eretz Yisrael was also a journey toward that inner Shabbos, a movement toward the state where malchus is fully revealed. In Avraham, Eretz Yisrael, Shabbos, and Malchus converged, the place where being itself becomes avodah, where existence turns into service.
Light Through Darkness
The Pri Tzadik13 points out that in Lech Lecha we find the same secret that lives in Shabbos. Avraham once feared that the time he had spent serving avodah zarah had stained him beyond repair, but Hashem told him, “Your dew of youth is yours.” That dew, Tal Da’Atika, the primordial light that revives the dead, taught him that even darkness has a place in the greater design: ein ohr ela m’toch hachoshech, there is no light except that which rises from within darkness. His hidden, formative years became like the night before dawn, necessary for the fullness of day to appear.
Rav Tzadok teaches that on Shabbos that same dew descends again, especially at the midday meal, the Seudata d’Atika. Whoever enters Shabbos with openness can, like Avraham, see their own past not as failure but as soil from which berachah grows. The Tal Da’Atika turns what once felt broken into the shimmer of renewal.
The Call Within
Rav Kook, in Orot HaKodesh 14, writes that the true essence of every soul, and of humanity itself, can only be revealed when it is joined to holiness and purity. Our distance from that essence began with Adam, who lost touch with his real self when he listened to the serpent. When Hashem asked, “Ayeka, Where are you?” Adam could not answer. He no longer knew. Since then, we have often tried to fill that emptiness with surface learning, polished words, and borrowed inspiration. But when there is no “I,” there can be no “You.” Without self-knowledge, even devotion becomes hollow.
Rav Kook teaches that redemption begins with rediscovering the self, the part of us that has never drifted from God. It is the moment a person turns inward to the root of their neshamah and, in doing so, returns to Hashem, the Soul of all souls.
When Hashem said “Lech Lecha,” He was answering Adam’s “Ayeka.” Go inward. Find who you are. Only by knowing his inner self could Avraham make room for humility and for the Shechinah to dwell within him. True chesed grows from that place. Avraham’s kindness rose from inner stillness, from a wholeness that recognized the worth in every other soul, rather than out of habit or natural character.
Return and Rest
Avraham came to restore the world’s lost sense of self, showing that before distortion entered creation, everything was inherently good. Hashem made Adam yashar, straight, aligned, true to himself. Rashi explains that yashar means doing what is right in one’s own eyes, not out of obligation but from pure desire.15
From that same inner clarity, Avraham touched the hidden light of Shabbos. The Ohr HaGanuz would not be fully revealed until Hashem gave it to Moshe as a matanah, a gift, but Avraham glimpsed it early and lived with it, not only on Shabbos, but through the days between. His life itself became an echo of rest within motion.
In the end, the answer to Ayeka is Lech Lecha. To find where we are, we must walk inward. Each act of awareness, each choice made with integrity, becomes a step toward the Elokus within. This is the legacy of Avraham and the calling of Yisrael, to live from that hidden light, to let it rise through us, and in doing so, bring the world nearer to shleimus and geulah.
Chazal teach that one who keeps Shabbos is forgiven for all sin, even if he worshipped idols like the generation of Enosh. This reveals the essence of Shabbos itself. Avraham reached that level. He repaired what the earlier generations broke. The generation of Enosh turned to intermediaries, seeking holiness from outside themselves. Avraham went further. He found the Source within. That is the secret of Shabbos, the moment when creation turns inward, when the world no longer waits for light to descend but draws it up from its own root.
Through Avraham, isarusa d’lesata entered the human story, the awakening from below, the realization that connection to Hashem is not triggered by Heaven but invited by the heart. Shabbos is the rhythm of that same truth: when we quiet the noise of the week and listen inward, the Ohr HaGanuz rises naturally from the soul. Avraham showed that the truest light is not sought in the heavens or in altered states of mind; it begins in awareness itself, in the steady return to who we already are.
Ya’alas Chen, p. 272
Shir HaShirim Rabbah 5:2
Lech Lecha 5636
Bereishis Rabbah 39:2
Bereishis 12:2
Bereishis Rabbah 39:11
Berachos 7a
Ohr Olam, Lech Lecha
Shuvi V’nechzeh, Shabbos maamar 2
Netzach Yisrael 11
Kedushas Shabbos 3
Lech Lecha 1
Lech Lecha 7
3:97
Devarim 12:8
Beautiful!
Thank you for this!!!