Great Sabbath

lovely to be here.

I am honored to be able to speak on one of the two days a year that rabbis are always encouraged to give a message, Shabbat Shuvah and Shabbat Hagadol.

which is the Shabbat of Pesach.

So if you didn't speak any other time of the year, you had to speak those two days.

Baal HaMor said all the paytonim made a mistake.

We spoke about it on Shabbos HaGadol.

Baal HaMor says, Hevi Odeah, that all the paytonim made a mistake and there were no payosot on Yom Kippur because the HaGadol had to do everything from A to Z.

So there's nothing to have a payis about.

And the Ramban says, the Ramban usually speaks with respect on the Baal HaMor.

They're big sermons.

One is the Shabbat before Passover called Shabbat Hagadol, and the other one is the Shabbat before Yom Kippur, which is called Shabbat Shuvah.

I was actually talking to this rabbi on Friday, and he was telling me that he has a two-hour sermon today.

And another rabbi was telling me that actually they have a tradition in their synagogue that he doesn't do the sermon in the morning.

The kapara that, of the zman of Asayas Meit Shuvah.

He, We have to see why he says, the Mat HaMoshe, why he says the reason for the Shabbos HaGadol.

He'd probably then go to what the Magan Avram says.

He would say, no, it's then, it's Halachic.

The truth is though, forget here, how many Shabbos HaGadol drushas are purely Halachic these days? There are a few places.

I've been to them.

You've been to Har

Shabbos HaGadol too?

They didn't survive outside the Geniza.

Um, we do have one karovav his [coughs] that was said, uh, on Shabbat HaGadol.

That's not in this season, in, in the spring before Pesach.

And, uh, and one piece, uh, from this karovav, uh, entered the Haggadah.

For us, of course, a great deal culminates with Christ on the cross, but the work which he began there isn't completed until the resurrection.

You know, this is why, you know, the Saturday between Great and Holy Friday and Pascha or Easter Sunday in our hymnography is called the Great Sabbath, because on that day, Christ rests from all the work that he'd been doing, from all of the work of salvation in preaching and healing, you know, and preparing and dying for our sins, he rests.

And that's what the Old Testament Sabbath was about anyway.

That was a sign, a symbol, a, a, a type of the real rest that God would do when he rested in the tomb, you know, on the sixth day there, and then waiting to be resurrected on this, on the Great, on Great and Holy Pascha on Sunday morning.

Great Sabbath is such a mystery, I think, to Protestants and myself.

You know, what was actually happening? Because, you know, is the scene of Jesus going down into Hades, I know we talk about it, but do we actually have it in the Gospels of him coming up, walking out of the tomb? Th-that's not depicted in the Gospels, is it?

No. No. No.

And so that-

This is in eighteen eighty-eight in the Almeilits.

Um, and it wasn't a Shabbos Shuvah or Shabbos HaGadol, and everyone was fascinated, and he, and he spoke, and it was very down-to-earth, the speech.

So now the truth is, looking through, um, the Meshech Chochmah, there are many pieces that I do believe were probably parts of speeches that he gave over time.

Obviously not the ones in depth with the Yerushalmis or maybe Kabbalah and stuff like that, but, but there's plenty of pieces that he probably was, um, said them over and, yeah.

Rab the Siman Taf Lamed.

Seif Alef Zog the Mechaber, Shabbos Shelifnei HaPesach Korein Osah Shabbos HaGadol.

The Shabbos prior to Pesach, we call it Shabbos HaGadol.

The Shabbos has a name, Shabbos HaGadol.

Why? Mipnei HaNes SheNasa Bo.

What was the Nes? The Meshech Chochmah brings down that the year that Klal Yisroel left Mitzrayim, Yetzias Mitzrayim was on a Thursday, and Shabbos was Yud Nissan.

So that was a tremendous Nes that the Mitzrim didn't kill them then and there for taking their Avodah Zara and planning to kill it.

So because of that, they were Kaveya that every year, the Shabbos before Pesach, just like that year, this Nes took place the Shabbos before Pesach, before Yetzias Mitzrayim.