Why Is It Forbidden To Work On The Sabbath?

The Torah, “Numbers,” 15:32 – 15:36: When the children were in the desert, they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood presented him before Moses and Aaron and before the entire congregation. They put him under guard, since it was not specified what was done to him. The Lord said to Moses, “The man shall surely be put to death; the entire congregation shall pelt him with stones outside the camp.” So the entire congregation took him outside the camp, and they pelted him to death with stones, as the Lord had commanded Moses.”

A person who has risen to a level in which the Sabbath exists for him is not an ordinary person. And to gather sticks is to search within yourself for characteristics that can be used as fuel. This means that it is a conscious sin against the highest level of unity, the Sabbath. And so the correction of the person is in killing his beastly state on the level of the still through stones.

This is the stony heart (Lev HaEven) that must be killed. But in the next incarnation he will overcome this state and correct it. That is what is written in the Torah, that a person must kill himself through his stony heart. On the other hand, “Even” (stone) is derived from the word, “Havnah,” (understanding, awareness). So stoning with stones is greater consciousness, without which he could not approach spiritual actions.

Gathering sticks on the Sabbath is a desire of the person to find fuel so that he will have warmth and Light, (the right and left lines). But because he wants to rise to the level of the Sabbath with prohibited acts, he is put to “death.” And if he wants, he could ascend as he should on Shabbat (the Sabbath), by nullifying himself. The idea is that throughout the week a person prepares fuel, sticks, firewrood, oil for lamps for warmth, and after that uses them on Shabbat. But if he kindles the sticks within him, meaning that he creates something on Shabbat, with this he detaches from the Creator who works for him on this day.

The Sabbath is the last day of the week when the partnership of Malchut is revealed.Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, and Yesod are the six Sefirot with which we work for six days. The last Sefira Malchut doesn’t do anything by itself. It only activates the previous six Sefirot that act with its help, and on the Sabbath it receives what was revealed in them.

If a person wants to work on the Sabbath as he did on the previous days, with this he limits his ascent. He cannot receive anything from the first six Sefirot and move to the next level, to the next week. And so in the next week he is like someone who died. The six days of the week are six states in which we correct the characteristic of Malchut to resemble the six higher characteristics: Hesed, Gevura, Tifferet, Netzah, Hod, andYesod. And then on the seventh day, on the Sabbath, they all connect together and ennoble Malchut through correction. The person no longer participates in this; he cannot work with Malchut but only higher than it, above it, in the six upper Sefirot.

So work is forbidden on the Sabbath. It is said that someone who worked before the Sabbath harvests the fruit of his labor on the Sabbath. For when the first six Sefirot are integrated together and illuminate Malchut, the person is then elevated and feels the flow of the Creator, His revelation to him. And if not, then for the entire week there is no meaning for him. Through his heart of stone he kills himself and “kills” his soul, meaning the possibility of adhesion with the Creator on the Sabbath.

So his correction is in killing that level to which he could not ascend, killing it through that stony heart and starting all over. There is nothing terrible here; this is one of those ordinary crimes that we sometimes commit on the spiritual path.
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From KabTV’s “Secrets of the Eternal Book” 13/5/15