T17 (Tinyana) PNC - Tzarich LeHizaher Le'Heyot B'Simchah B'Shabbos (One Must Be Joyful on Shabbos)

One must be very careful to be joyful and good-hearted on Shabbos, for the virtues and holiness of Shabbos are great and precious — as brought in Reishis Chochmah, Sha'ar HaKedushah, end of chapter 2. Shabbos joy is not a recommendation but a load-bearing avodah. The day's whole structure rests on the kavanah of being b'simchah; sad Shabbos is a damaged Shabbos.

On Shabbos, da'as is complete; on weekdays, the fear can be mixed with foolishness — 'Is not your fear your foolishness?' (Iyov 4:6). The main foolishness is because of the servitude of weekday-work — through avodah of weekday, da'as is incomplete; therefore yir'ah on weekday is also imperfect. Shabbos liberates da'as from its weekday entanglements; the yir'ah of Shabbos is therefore yir'ah without foolishness.

Through Shabbos one raises the fallen fears — that is, fears one sometimes has of officials and the like — for through da'as one knows that there is no power but HaShem's, and the fears of secondary causes (a king, a bureaucrat, a financial threat) collapse into the singular fear of Heaven. The Shabbos joy redistributes one's fears: lifting them from earthly authorities into their proper destination.

All the more so it is forbidden for a person to look at his fellow with evil eye — to find in him precisely what is not good and to search for defects in his service. On the contrary, one is obligated to look only on the good — and through this looking on the good, the person is judged on the scale of merit and is brought to teshuvah. The Tanchuma teaches (Re'eh 1) that what one searches for in others is what one finds; the eye is a creator of what it seeks.