Nothing Else Matters

Sitting on a Seed 

We don’t have to venture beyond our dinner table to understand what we are celebrating when we honor Shabbat.  

We don’t even have to get out of our chairs.  The chair started out a seed the size of your fingernail. Hashem gave it rain. He gave it sunlight. Hashem transformed the seed into the size of a building.  The lumberjack cuts the tree trunk, and then hauls it to the sawmill. The sawmill cuts the tree trunk into multiple sections, then shaves off the bark. It slices off the curvy edges leaving a square piece of wood.  That square piece of wood is manufactured into what you are sitting on.  

The seed became the chair.  It wasn’t even a seed in the first place. Hashem created the seed from nothing.  

That is what we celebrate every Shabbat. Hashem created the entire world from nothing.   

Winning a Silver Medal   

How about the utensils you use to scoop up cholent? What about your kiddish cup? 

Hashem made a trillion trillion pounds of rock in His world. Inside these rocks is ore. It can be iron ore for making steel, aluminum ore, or silver ore for your Kiddish cup.  These rocks are mined, heated at extreme temperatures, and melted to extract the ore embedded inside the stones. Once in liquid form, the ore is poured into different molds. It can be reshaped as car parts, steel foundations for homes and buildings, or your fork, knife, and Kiddish Cup.  

The Torah begins with, “In the beginning of G-d’s creation of the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1).  This is what He created in a single utterance. Three billion trillion tons of rock for us to walk on, build homes, and eat our Shabbat meal.  

Before creation, none of this existed. The initial state of your fork is nothing. 

  
 
ברוך אתה, ה’, אל-קנו מלך העולם, שהכל נהיה בדברו 

 Blessed are you, Hashem, that everything is by Your Word.  

It’s so easy to get distracted when we say this blessing over a chocolate bar. We can get misguided into focusing on how Hashem made this chocolate bar, overlooking how in the same Divine utterance, he created all the trees that made the nuts, the cows that made the milk, and the earth that made the tools necessary to produce it.  

From nothing, Hashem creates a world that enables us to form instruments like a Kiddish Cup and Candlesticks to serve Hashem every seventh day.  

The Glass is Always Full  

After we make Kiddush, what about the Diet Coke?  

To imbibe, we use tall glass cups.  Where does the glass come from? Sand.  Hashem makes 7.5 billion trillion grains of sand for us to package, melt, and remold into windows, eye ware, smartphone screens, and placeholders for our Shabbat beverage of choice.  

Silicon is the essential element used to make computer chips and semiconductors. These two components make up the brains and heart of every computer, tablet, smartphone, spaceship, Fitbit device, and anything else that you have to charge up or turn on.  Silicon is also made from sand.  

All of the wonders of the digital age we live in come from Hashem Who creates 25% of the world in this form. We form our digital universe from sand. Hashem forms the entire universe from nothing.  

When we look at the clear vessel holding some Coke inside, it’s a great chance to reflect on how the glass, and all the digital marvels that come from the same substance, can’t exist without Hashem creating it.  

This is why we stand up during Kiddush on Friday night. We must stand to bear witness to the end of the sixth day when God finished fashioning the heavens and the earth, and rested on the Seventh day. On the earthly and heavenly witness stand, we are raising our right hand to swear that Hashem creates the world and everything in it.  

It’s all His.   

You Are What You Eat  

The challah started as tiny seeds. Hashem gave them rain, sunlight, and blessing to become bread. Ever see a wheat field? It’s golden. The entire area is covered in gold.  The wheat from the challah is one of the seven blessings of the Land of Israel. When you celebrate Shabbat in Eretz Yisrael, after you say 

ברוך אתה, ה’, אל-קנו מלך העולם, המוציא לחם מן הארץ. 

Blessed are You, Hashem, our God, King of the Universe, Who brings bread from the land.  

and you eat the processed wheat that grew in Israel, you are consuming the Land of Israel.  

Hashem creates the world. He can do with His world as He pleases. If He wishes to give Eretz Yisrael to the Canaanites, He can. If He desires to give Eretz Yisrael to us, He can.  

Man didn’t make this world. Man doesn’t guide his destiny. The prophet Isaiah calls the nations of the world a speck of dust on a scale. Hashem controls the fate of His world and the people He creates upon it.  

Shabbat gives us a chance to reflect on something very important:  Instead of thinking about how to drop those three trillion trillion pounds of rock on the UN or the EU, we can reflect on how worldly matters are pointless.  

Hashem owns His world. He has a plan for it. He gives us instructions on how to conduct ourselves in it. As long as we do, our future is guaranteed.  

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his wife and children. Since moving to Israel in 2002, David has discovered Torah, writing hi-tech, hiking, coding ReactJS Apps, and hearing stories about the Land of Israel from anyone excited to tell them. Check him out on Highway 60 or email him your favorite Israel story at:   david.ben.horin@spreadyourenthusiasm.com.