ספר שמות

Exodus 31,16. “the Children of Israel are to observe the ‎Sabbath, etc.;” this verse helps us understand a statement ‎by the Talmud in Shabbat< 118 according to which “if the ‎Jewish people were only to observe two Sabbaths the Messiah ‎would already have come.” When an Israelite observes the ‎Sabbath properly, the spiritual uplift derived from that ‎experience will leave its mark during the six weekdays following, ‎so that in effect he has observed two Sabbaths, i.e. on the day ‎that G’d had sanctified at the end of His creative activity, and the ‎one to which His creatures, have given sanctity during the days ‎following. Not only that; if one has served G’d during the six ‎working days, “observing” the negative commandments of the ‎Sabbath on the following Sabbath becomes very much easier. As a ‎result, he will almost automatically observe every Sabbath in the ‎future also and be looking forward to it.‎When we keep these considerations in mind we will also have ‎less difficulty in answering a question posed in the Jerusalem ‎Talmud Taanit 1,1 that even the observance by the Jewish ‎people of a single Sabbath is sufficient to usher in the messianic ‎age. [The question raised by the reader of this statement is ‎if the Jerusalem Talmud disagrees with the Babylonian Talmud in ‎‎Shabbat 118 that we quoted previously. Ed.] What ‎the Jerusalem Talmud means is simply that once the first ‎Sabbath has been observed optimally, observing the next Sabbath ‎is so easy that it represents no additional achievement in terms of ‎overcoming Satan’s attempts to deflect us from our purpose. At ‎any rate, essentially it is the collective observance by the Jewish ‎people of a single Sabbath which will result in the messiah ‎coming shortly thereafter. This is the meaning of the words: ‎ושמרו בני ישראל את השבת לעשות את השבת‎, “the Children of Israel ‎are to observe the Sabbath to ‘“make it into a Sabbath.’”‎