Embrace Shabbat

Making the Shabbat Guest Comfortable

Published: November 18, 2022
Duration: 03:04

Welcome to Embrace Shabbat.

Rav Yitzchak Palagi, son of Rav Chaim Palagi, brings down an interesting thought about the Seudot of Shabbat in his sefer, Yafei Lalev.

He notes the differences between the three Shabbat meals. The Friday night meal is the most gala; the food is still warm, there is a variety of delicious dishes, and there is a lot of opulence. The Shabbat day meal is also a nice meal, where there may be leftover warm food on the fire and some new cold food and salads. Seudat Shlishit is usually a much lighter meal, typically of a little bit of tuna fish and some egg salad. It doesn’t have the same opulence as the first two seudot, simply because a person is already full by their third meal of Shabbat.

Rav Palagi explains the depth of this seemingly mundane routine:

The Midrash Rabba teaches in Parshat Pinchas (when discussing the routine of decreasing the amount of animals brought each day of Sukkot) that this diminishing teaches Derech Eretz. When a person visits his friend’s house as a guest, he is often served a tremendously opulent meal for his first meal. His next meal is often a little less extravagant and the following meal even less. Finally, his last meal consists of some vegetables or beans.

Shabbat is like a guest that visits a person’s home. As a guest spends more time in his host’s home, the meals become increasingly simple. At first glance, this doesn’t sound very positive! What is the derech eretz in treating a guest well at the beginning of his trip and almost ignoring him by the end?

Rav Wolbe explains that initially, a guest truly feels like a “guest.” He is served special meals and is given memorable treatment. However, he doesn’t want to feel like a guest! He wants to feel like family, where it is not a big deal every time he comes. The more time he stays there, the more accepted he becomes- and the meals reflect this. This is an even higher level of invitation, where the guest is treated like a regular member of the family and is part of the routine.

So too, as the Shabbat meals continue, we no longer are treating it like something strange to us. The holiness of Shabbat becomes familiar and accepted and therefore, we slowly dwindle down the opulence of our meal. We don’t have to put on a show and therefore, we end with the highest, yet simplest, meal- Seudat Shlishit.

Have a wonderful day and a Shabbat Shalom.