In this week’s reading, the Torah begins to discuss the holidays, but immediately takes a detour. Here it is in the text:

“Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them: ‘the festivals of G-d which you shall announce, the Holy Gatherings, these are My festivals. Six days shall you do labor, and on the seventh day, it is a Holy Sabbath, a Holy Gathering; you shall not do any labor, it is the Sabbath to G-d throughout your dwellings.’” [23:2-3]

Regarding the festivals, the Torah says “you shall announce” them, because the New Moon was proclaimed by the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Rabbinical Court in the Temple, and signals or messengers had to be sent out to announce the new month so that people would know when to celebrate the next holiday. The calendar was set by Hillel II using a very complex, mathematically-precise 19 year cycle, only when it became obvious that due to oppression the Sanhadrin would no longer be able to accept testimony and perform this function.

Shabbos, by contrast, falls every seven days — it needs no announcement. So how, then, can the Torah include it among “the festivals of G-d which you shall announce?”

In reality, Shabbos is intimately connected to the holidays, and is the foundation upon which everything else is built. Shabbos is not dependent upon human beings and the Sanhedrin’s decisions — yet this, too, is a festival.

Because the Sanhedrin announces the New Moon, and thus tells us when the holidays will fall in a given year, we might think that they are merely “ours” — holidays of commemoration, remembrance. They are much more than that. The holidays are HaShem’s, days when HaShem renews special connections between the world and aspects of Holiness. On Passover, our Sages teach that it is easier than other times to break the ties that imprison us to our evil inclination. On Shavuos, there is a special connection between the Jews and the Torah. We are not simply commemorating for millenia something that happened one year — we re-experience a spritual uplift that comes back every year at that time.

It is Shabbos, which is entirely from HaShem, that maintains our awareness that all of the holidays have these special connections to HaShem. The holiness of the Sabbath returns every week, reminding us that the holiness of each festival returns every year.

In the prayers and Kiddush for a holiday which falls on Shabbos, we praise G-d “Who Sanctifies the Sabbath, Israel and the Appointed Times.” The order of these three speaks to this distinction between Sabbath and the other holidays. HaShem sanctifies the Sabbath — He alone. He sanctifies Israel — and then He and Israel together determine when the sanctity of the holidays shall come to the world.

Every week of the year, we have the opportunity to celebrate, to rejoice, to experience the special relationship between G-d and the Jewish people. The Sabbath is certainly no less a holiday than all of the others that come but once per year, and one that speaks to the nature of all the holidays. The fact that it comes so often only means we are very fortunate — if we make the most of this opportunity!