"To Honor and Delight in the Shabbat"

The two major positive obligations concerning Shabbat are called "Kavod" (honor) and "Oneg" (delight or pleasure). These two categories are derived from the same verse in Isaiah (54,13-14), "If you turn your foot away from Shabbat, from doing your purpose on my holy day, and " Call Shabbat a Delight, The Holy Of G-d Honorable", then you shall delight yourself in G-d,
and I shall mount you on the high places of the earth, and feed you the legacy of Jacob your father, for the mouth of G-d has spoken."

What is honor? [Kavod] - The honor of Shabbat, included, that one wear a clean garment. One should arrange the table and the house in order to honor it at its commencement, for all of these are part of the honor of Shabbat. One honors the Shabbat by getting ready for it, by making special efforts in the personal sphere to greet it. It is also an honor to have special Shabbat
dishes ready for the commencement apart from the weekday food. The tablecloth and all the finery should be placed on the table waiting to greet our Shabbos Queen.

It must be noted that "honor" is not accorded to every significant time or object in Judaism. You do not [Halakhically] have to dress up for a wedding, even your own. There is no such mitzva for a festival. The two other examples in the halakha of a mitzva of "honor" are regarding parents [not so much to obey, as is often thought, but to "honor your father and mother"] and the Torah.

The honor, of Shabbat, is that it is not something which we do, like most other mitzvot, but something which we experience. The Torah, and the Sages, many times speak of Shabbat as a gift -"See that I have given you the Shabbat, "G-d said to Moshe: I have a precious gift in my treasury, Shabbat is its name, and I wish to give it to Israel" (Shabbat 10b). We honor the Shabbat to ensure that we not exploit it - the power of Shabbat is that it is rooted in the infinite holiness of G-d and man's potential to
reach great heights on Shabbat. On the practical level, we have to show that Shabbat is an honored guest in our homes.

Why do we need to express the Shabbat honor by our clothing, cleanliness, candles, table sitting and waiting? Why should we look different when the Shabbat Queen comes to visit? By honoring the Shabbat, in this fashion, we are really saying that we believe that we should be different, that we are raised to a higher level by the visit. The visit of the Queen ennobles me,
and I have to honor her with all my Glory for I am in the presence of G-d.

The second positive mitzvah concerning Shabbat is "Oneg" enjoyment, delight. This is even more singular. There is no other case where such a reaction is mandated. "Simcha" [joy] is the mandated reaction to festivals, but halakhically it is questionable if it is part of Shabbat. Oneg, a mitzvah to enjoy ourselves, is found only here. Only Shabbat has a commandment - you
must enjoy yourself.

What is Delight? This is what the Sages said: That one should prepare an especially rich cooked food, and an especially spiced beverage for Shabbat, each according to his wealth. The more one spends on Shabbat, and in preparing the foods, is commendable. If he cannot afford it, then even if he prepares only one cooked vegetable or the like in honor of Shabbat, that is
Oneg Shabbat. One is obligated to eat three meals on Shabbat, each meal with wine and two loaves. Eating meat and drinking wine on Shabbat is Oneg, if he can afford it.

What does it mean to delight in Shabbat, and especially to delight in G-d? Obviously, food is only the external means for inner enjoyment?

But why is there a mitzvah to have a good time, and why
specifically on Shabbat?

The answer, I think, is found in the reverse side of what we said about Kavod "honor." Shabbat is a gift, greater than me, which gives me something for myself. For that reason I honor it. But Shabbat does not give me something new, something from above. It opens me up to experience the boundless depth
and height that is within me, that I have spent the week in developing. The halakha (law) call on us to find the delight in that experience, for otherwise the point will be lost.

What is the deeper meaning of delight? It is the recognition that this boundless depth is in me, that I can experience it, cherish it, be one with it. If you only rest on Shabbat, recuperate from a week of toil, you miss out on the inner message - that you, within you, contain the light of creation.

One has to open one's eyes to see the obvious. One has to make an effort to ensure that the experience of the infinite is grasped and internalized. The way to do that, is not by trying hard, but by enjoyment, by opening oneself to let the experience sparkle and delight us. Then "You shall delight yourself in G-d, and I shall mount you on the high places of the earth, and feed you the legacy of Jacob your father, for the mouth of G-d has spoken."

No other mitzvah has Oneg, for all other mitzvot add to man from outside himself. If he enjoys that, good, and if not, also good, Shabbat adds nothing if you do not enjoy it, because it is not new, or rather it is a new dimension of yourself. Its only value is in the recognition that it is there, in the sudden realization how much value resides in the soul of a creative human being. That realization is delight.