#141: Machshavah

Seudah Shelishit is a very special time during which we try to grab onto the sparks of holiness of Shabbat for the last few moments of the day. Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik recounts the following childhood memory about Seudah Shelishit in his book “Days of Awe”:

Not far from where our family lived there was a Modzitzer shtiebel where I would occasionally go for Shalosh Seudos. The hasidim would be singing Bnei Heikhala, Hashem Ro'i Lo Ehsor, again Bnei Heikhala, again Hashem Ro'i. It occurred to me that they weren't singing because they wanted to sing, they were singing because they did not want to allow Shabbos to leave....

I remember an encounter in this shtiebel as a small child. One of the men who had been singing most enthusiastically, wearing a kapota consisting of more holes than material, approached me and asked if I recognized him. I told him that I did not, and he introduced himself as Yankel the Porter. Now during the week, I knew Yankel the Porter as someone very ordinary wearing shabby clothes walking around with a rope. I could not imagine that this individual of such regal bearing could be the same person. Yet on Shabbos he wore a kapota and shtreimel. That is because his soul wasn't Yankel the Porter, but Yankel the Prince.

After nightfall, I naively asked him, "When do we daven Ma'ariv?" He replied: "Do you miss weekdays that much that you cannot wait to daven Ma'ariv?"

May we all succeed in turning ourselves from “Yankel the Porter” to “Yankel the Prince” and make the most of the final moments of Shabbat during Seudah Shelishit.

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Dedicated by Fran Broder as a zechus for the hostages to be released safely to their families and may everlasting peace come to Eretz Yisrael in the merit of learning Hilchos Shabbos.