On Shabbat we include a special prayer that is recited in Birkat Hamazon recognizing the unique status of the day. We pray for rest, serenity ,and pleasure, and also that may we have no anguish, nor grief on the day of our rest.
The Hebrew words, for these types of distresses are all in the singular, an anguish, a grief.
The Baal Shem Tov, when asked for a blessing would often include the prayer, “may you have many worries.”
When asked by his puzzled students the nature of this most unusual blessing, the Rabbi answered, “When you have many worries, then things are in order. It is when you have only one worry that things are bad.”
“You see,” he explained, “life is never free of worries. Ever since Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, life has never been without problems, but these are the normal stresses of every day life.”
“If something extremely bad occurs, people forget all their usual daily worries and become totally preoccupied with this single, truly serious problem.”
“My wish is to have many worries, so that none be of such magnitude as to obscure all others.”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Shaul
