Shabbat 133 – Exalt G-d – with Beauty and Emulation

A complete, but elegant, aside from the main text (about circumcision).

This is my G-d, and I will exalt him (Ex. 15:2) – from Song of the Sea:

exalt yourself before Him in [the fulfillment of] precepts. [Thus:] make a beautiful sukkah before Him, a beautiful lulav, a beautiful shofar, beautiful fringes, and a beautiful Scroll of the Law,

and write [the scroll] with fine ink, a fine reed [-pen], and a skilled penman, and wrap it with beautiful silks.

Thus we have the idea of “hiddur mitzvah” to beautify a required act shows praise to G-d.

Reading the text slightly differently – to mean not “exalt”(anveyhu) but “emulate” (ani v’hu – lit. “me and Him”):

Abba Saul interpreted . . . be like Him: just as G-d is gracious and compassionate, so you be gracious and compassionate.

We exalt (others read "adorn") G-d by creating beauty and by beautiful and compassionate actions.

(note: sorry for the male pronoun – it’s the only way to make Abba Saul’s pun work).