Melave Malka - 002 A New Meal

Why We Have A New Meal on Motzei Shabbos

Melave Malke is called the “meal of the king, Moshiach” (“Seudasa D’Malka Meshicha”).

The Gemara (Shabbos 119a) says that a person should set his table on Motzei Shabbos again anew, even if he won’t end up eating more than a kezayis (size of an olive). The Gemara also says that a hot drink hot on Motzoei Shabbos is beneficial for health.

The Maharsha explains that a person is supposed to eat new foods on Motzei Shabbos (l’chatchilah). This is the simple understanding of Melave Malka – that we honor Shabbos by having a new meal after Shabbos.

However, the Ohr Zarua writes that a person can fulfill Melave Malke with Shalosh Seudos if extends Shalosh Seudos into nighttime. In these words are contained a different understanding of Melave Malka, as we will soon see.

On one hand, Melave Malke is a meal on its own, as the Maharsha writes, but on the other hand, it can also be seen as an extension of Shalosh Seudos – the last meal of Shabbos.

In order to know how this applies to us, we need to understand the following.

Chazal say that in the future, the resurrection of the dead will begin with the luz bone, which is the bone in the body that enjoys the Melave Malke meal. The luz bone is the bone that never sins; when a person sins, his luz bone doesn’t get any enjoyment from the sin. It gets its chiyus entirely from Melave Malke. That is why our chiyus will come back to us in the future starting from the luz bone.

A person might experience much spiritual elation on Shabbos, but what happens afterward? We go back to routine. We lose our neshamah yesairoh (extra spirituality) after Shabbos, and we fall from our spiritual high. On Motzei Shabbos, our soul has left us – and the more a person feels his neshamah yesairoh, the more he feels how it is lost on Motzei Shabbos. He can feel that all the inspiration is gone.

What does a person do when he realizes that his inspiration is gone? Nu, he will have no choice but to look forward to the next Shabbos. But the inner perspective is that for this reason, we have Melave Malka. The meal we eat on Melave Malke is to console our soul that it has lost its extra dose of spirituality it had on Shabbos.

That is really why on Motzei Shabbos, a person should have hot drinks; it is because the soul feels ill at its loss, and we need to heal it. The way to heal our soul is through having a new meal on Shabbos – new bread, and new drinks. The meal symbolizes a renewal we are trying to give our soul, because we want to heal our ill soul over its loss.

“Hamechadesh  b’tuvo b’chol yom tamid, maaseh Beraishis”, “He renews, in His goodness, every day constantly, the act of Creation.” Hashem renews Creation every day; why must He renew it every day? Why doesn’t He just continue Creation the way it always was? There are many reasons, but the reason that pertains to our discussion is that Hashem makes us into a new being every second, so that we in our own souls can attain the power of renewal and become a berya chashah, a “new creation”, and thus start again anew. (This is the depth behind teshuvah, in which a person becomes a berya chadasha, a “new creation”, after he repents).

When Shabbos ends, we go and set the table again anew. It reflects how Hashem is constantly renewing Creation – and the lesson we learn from this is that we have a power to constantly renew ourselves.

Dovid HaMelech was really destined to die young, but Adam gave him 70 years of his life. Initially, Dovid was not supposed to live. Dovid is also is also called bar nafli – a “stillborn.” This was because he was really supposed to die right after being born. Yet, Dovid gained special chiyus to live, and using his borrowed time, he became as great as the Avos; he is the fourth leg in Hashem’s Throne, with the Avos being the other three legs in the Throne. That is why Melave Malka is called the meal of Dovid HaMelech, and the meal of Moshiach – it is a meal which symbolizes a renewal to our life.

Melave Malka teaches us a lesson about our whole life. There is no person who doesn’t have highs and lows in his spirituality. We all have failures from our level, but we also have the power to renew ourselves and give ourselves a new chance. That is what Melave Malke symbolizes: we have a new meal, to show us that our soul has the power to renew itself and thus transcend all our past spiritual failings.

Chazal say that in the future, the resurrection of the dead will start from a bone in the body called the “luz” bone.  The luz bone never gets any enjoyment from a sin, while the other parts of the body enjoy a sin and gain negative vitality from sins. The luz bone, however, only gets its vitality from the Melave Malka meal. The depth of this is that Melave Malka can give a person renewed vitality. The luz bone is the one aspect in our life that is always pure, in spite of all the darkness and impurity in the world. The luz bone always remains pure – and this shows us that no matter how many failures in spirituality a person goes through, he always has the luz bone – he always has the power to renew himself.

The power of constant renewal is also known as the power of tikvah, hope.[1] We can always hope, and thus there is no reason to despair – because we can always renew ourselves.

That is one way to understand the Melave Malke meal. This is the depth behind the Maharsha’s words, that the Melava Malke meal requires new food, and new hot drinks. It is because Melave Malke symbolizes our power of renewal. All of this was coming to explain the first way to understand Melave Malke, which is that it is a new meal that stands by itself.

Melave Malke As A Continuation of Shabbos: The Power of Temimus\Childlike Purity

However, before, we brought the words of the Ohr Zarua, who states that we can fulfill Melave Malke with Shalosh Seudos. According to this approach, Melave Malke is really an extension of Shabbos. This shows us a different facet about Melave Malke, which we will now explain.

According to the second approach, Shalosh Seudos and Melave Malke are interrelated. What is the connection between these two meals? Shalosh Seudos is called “raava d’raavon”, “desire of desires” – it hints to the primary and deepest ratzon in Creation, which is our inner will to do Hashem’s will.

When a person falls in spirituality, there are two methods to recover. Either he can use the power of renewal, which we discussed above. But there is another method one can use, and it is called the power of temimus.

What is temimus? When a person is a young child, he possesses temimus – an earnestness, a childlike innocence. When he gets older, he becomes a bar daas; he begins to think, analyze and intellectualize. But he often loses his temimus in the process. When a person gets older, he finds himself succumbing to his evil inclinations – and it’s really all because of his daas. Since he has daas, he has bechirah (free will), and thus he chooses to sin sometimes.

But if he would access his old power of temimus that he used to have when he was a child, he would transcend his bechirah, and he wouldn’t see evil as an option!

The older a person grows, the more his temimus gets covered over by so many layers. But temimus never goes away; it never disappears. It is always there in us; it is just hidden away.

Whenever a person is failing in spirituality, he can use the power of temimus and return to his original purity. He can realize that he is in essence pure, just as when he was a child. If someone reveals his temimus from within himself, he realizes that he’s not gaining a new ability called temimus, but rather, he’s revealing something that was always inside him all along.

When we reveal our temimus, we have constant happiness – we will feel next to Hashem all the time, just like how a child is always near his mother, in his utter temimus.

There is a deep place in our soul which we can never be separated from. Can a person ever run away from himself? No matter where he goes, a person can never separate from himself. He can separate from his house, or even from his body – but not from himself. Temimus is the power that shows a person that he cannot run away from his true self, which is to be near Hashem – just like how a child doesn’t run away from his house.

Our power of daas tells us that we can choose between good or evil. Our daas is when we make various cheshbonos (devious calculations). But our temimus tells us that there are no questions, that there are no obstacles.

Someone told me recently that he had fallen ill, and he had temporarily lost his mind. He remembered bits and pieces of what he felt like as he was hospitalized. He felt that he had no more stress, and that he had no more illnesses. After he recovered from his illness, much of his other stresses actually went away! This helps us understand what the concept of temimus is – to transcend our daas, and instead enter a world in where we see no challenges. Of course, we do not mean that one needs to become mentally ill in order to leave his daas and discover his temimus. What we mean is that we can get to our temimus without having to become mentally ill – we can get there in a normal way.

We need to return to our luz bone, which never enjoyed a sin. The luz bone didn’t get contaminated from Adam’s sin, because it never enjoys a sin. This is the place we need to reveal from within ourselves – our “luz” bone, our power of temimus.

The Melave Malke meal comes precisely because Shabbos is gone, because we have fallen from the high spirituality of Shabbos. But the deeper understanding is that because we have to continue Shalosh Seudos – that we need to continue our raava d’raavon, our deepest desire, which is the desire of our soul to fulfill the ratzon of Hashem. Melave Malke continues Shalosh Seudos – in other words, we need to continue accessing our power to remain with our temimus.

It is written, “And you will live by them” [by the Torah’s words]. We need to gain our chiyus from the Torah – in other words, we need to gain our chiyus from our inner point, represented by our luz bone. The Torah which we learned using the rest of the body is not the Torah we receive our vitality from; the Torah which we learn using our luz bone is the Torah that remains with us forever, the Torah that we truly gain chiyus from.

Chazal say that if a person merits, the Torah becomes the elixir of life to him, but if he doesn’t merit it, the Torah becomes to him like deadly poison. The depth of this matter is that if a person doesn’t access the power of his luz bone, the Torah he is learning is simply being learned through his daas, and such Torah will not last. Our daas can choose evil; the Torah a person learns using his daas won’t provide him with eternal chiyus.

But the Torah a person learns using his luz bone – his power of temimus – such Torah learning will remain with him forever and give him chiyus, just as the luz bone provides eternal chiyus.

When someone merits to learn Torah using his temimus, then of him it can be said, “The Torah of Hashem is perfect, it settles the soul.” A person will only merit the settling of his soul through Torah is he learns Torah with temimus.

Every person has the power to choose what kind of Torah he wants to have – a Torah of just daas, or a Torah of temimus.

The Torah we have nowadays either gives life to a person, or it is poison to him – depending on how he learns it. If he learns it through just his daas and he has no temimus, then his Torah learning turns into poison for him. If he learns it through temimus, the Torah learning becomes an elixir of life. In the future, Moshiach will reveal a Torah to the world which only gives life.

However, we still have the choice nowadays to what kind of Torah we want to connect to. If we want to connect to Hashem through the Torah, then we touch our innermost depths of our soul – and then we will merit the Torah of temimus. This is the perfect level of Torah we can reach.

May Hashem merit all of us to attain an inner connection to our luz bone – to the Toras Hashem Temimah, which is reached when we learn the Torah with temimus.