Rabbi Roodyn

The phrase Lecha Dodi is borrowed from the pasuk in Shir Hashirim 7:12, ‘Come my beloved and let us go out to the field, let us lodge in villages’. The most simple idea here is that this is a reference to the Gemara that talks about the various Sages who would go out and greet the Shabbos queen. This practice was made popular by the Kabbalists of Tzefat in the early 16^th Century who adopted the practice of reciting Kabbalas Shabbos in the fields to welcome in the Sabbath.

This pasuk is however laden with layers of meaning that go well beyond its simple explanation. The Malbim explains that this pasuk is making an allegorical reference to the body and the soul. He explains that when the soul departs from the body it undergoes a process of transition. The soul turns to her beloved (Hashem) and asks Him to gather her in.  Let us go out of the city (a reference to the body) and rest in the village (i.e. in a place out of the body).

The transition out of this world takes time and on the first night after death, the soul struggles to find itself and finds it hard to leave the body entirely. Therefore it goes from dwelling in the city (which has many inhabitants) to a lower level of connection to the body, referred to here as a village (which has less inhabitants). This process is described by the sefarim hakedoshim as the neshama hovering above the body, fully aware of what is happening to it, but unable to interact with it, or this world. This is the first stage of adjustment to a spiritual dimension.

Perhaps the connection to Kabbalas Shabbos is as follows, Shabbos is described as me’ein olam haba, a taste of the world to come. For one day a week we try to create a olam Haba in this world. In order to prepare ourselves for the experience of Olam Haba, we literally leave behind all the pressures and struggles of human existence for 25 hours and enter a different space.

This transition is something that demands an attitude shift, a transition of sorts. It requires us go out of our space and enter a new dimension, one where we are elevated above this world and able to turn to our Beloved as we connect to Something Higher. The bliss of delighting in Shabbos is to prepare us to be able to delight in Hashem on the yom shekulo Shabbos umenucha lechayei haolamim, the day which will completely be a Sabbath and rest day for eternal life.

The process of Kabbalas Shabbos eases us out of this world and into the headspace of the word to come. Although we are not able to leave this world completely, we are able to move from the ‘busy town’ of intense connection to this world to the more restful ‘villages’ which have a lesson pull to physicality