I am in the midst of reading Seven Gates of Righteous Knowledge by Rabbi Moshe Weiner and Dr. Michael Schulman.

Yesterday morning I read something about the Shabbat that I had not thought of and found it very thought provoking.

In Chapter 2 ‘Contemplation Of The Noahide Commandments and Lessons from the Hebrew Bible’

The author restates that we Bnei Noach are not commanded to observe the Shabbat but there are beneficial lessons that we can learn from it at its creation. He goes to show that Yom Shabbat teaches us that there is an order and purpose of things, “…all the actions of God are done with intention and forethought and are not spontaneous, and they accomplish the purpose that God intended.” 

The lesson we learn from the creation of the Shabbat is that it is a good thing at the end of one’s week to take time to reflect and evaluate your actions and deeds for the past week. “But then God reached the point when He (so to speak) refrained from His “work” of creation, and withdrew from that overall process and contemplated the overall results of His deeds, and He evaluated whether they were good and correct in totality.”

The author continues: “The Shabbat day is also the source for the concept of repentance. For the first step of repentance occurs when a person takes time to objectively and truthfully examine the deeds he has done, and the appropriateness and quality of what has resulted from them.”

So in a nutshell the Shabbat for the Noahide (child of Noah) is a great time for personal reflection on the past week’s activities. The Torah states that the Creator blessed Yom Shabbat, so in my observation, what better day could there be to stop and take some time to reflect on the past weeks actions good and bad, taking time to communicate with the Creator about them and seeking help in fixing what we did wrong that week.

Anyway, I thought this was very insightful and thought provoking approach to the Shabbat that I had not seen before.

Terry W. Hayes
ben Noach
8/2017