The Sabbath

Preparation for a holy day, my father often said, was as important as the day itself.

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“The Sabbath comes like a caress, wiping away fear, sorrow and somber memories.”

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He insisted that the Sabbath is not about psychology or sociology; it doesn’t serve to make us calmer or to hold the family together. Nor does the Sabbath represent a rejection of modernity or the secular world—for him, the Sabbath was a complement to building civilization, not a withdrawal from it. In contrast to more recent approaches to the Sabbath, my father did not emphasize the importance of “ritual” (he believed that the words “customs” and “ceremonies” should be eradicated from the Jewish vocabulary), nor did he view the Sabbath as a vehicle for solidifying Jewish continuity.

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He writes that we need the Sabbath in order to survive civilization: “Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man must fight for inner liberty” to remain independent of the enslavement of the material world. “Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things. This is our constant problem—how to live with people and remain free, how to live with things and remain independent.”

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Creating holiness in time requires a different sensibility than building a cathedral in space: “We must conquer space in order to sanctify time.”

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It is not in space but in time, he writes, that we find God’s likeness.

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How do we bring about the elusive atmosphere that is the Sabbath? Sanctity is a quality, my father emphasized, that we create. We know what to do with space, but how do we shape sacred time? Six days a week we live with a fury of acquisitiveness, he writes; Shabbat renews the soul and we rediscover who we are. “The Sabbath is the presence of God in the world, open to the soul of man.” God is not in things of space, but in moments of time. How do we perceive God’s presence? There are some helpful Sabbath laws—those that require shutting off secular demands and refraining from work.

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Observing the Sabbath is not only about refraining from work, but about creating menuha, a restfulness that is also a celebration. The Sabbath is a day for body as well as soul. It is a sin to be sad on the Sabbath, a lesson my father often repeated and always observed.

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The Sabbath is a metaphor for paradise and a testimony to God’s presence; in our prayers, we anticipate a messianic era that will be a Sabbath, and each Shabbat prepares us for that experience: “Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath … one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.” It was on the seventh day that God gave the world a soul, and “[the world’s] survival depends upon the holiness of the seventh day.” The task, he writes, becomes how to convert time into eternity, how to fill our time with spirit: “Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.”

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In Jewish tradition, dying in one’s sleep is called a kiss of God, and dying on the Sabbath is a gift that is merited by piety.

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For the pious person, my father once wrote, it is a privilege to die.

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Technical civilization is man’s conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective. Yet to have more does not mean to be more. The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time. But time is the heart of existence.1

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There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.

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We have often suffered from degradation by poverty, now we are threatened with degradation through power.

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Many hearts and pitchers are broken at the fountain of profit.

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Selling himself into slavery to things, man becomes a utensil that is broken at the fountain.

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To retain the holy, to perpetuate the presence of god, his image is fashioned. Yet a god who can be fashioned, a god who can be confined, is but a shadow of man.

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Time to us is sarcasm, a slick treacherous monster with a jaw like a furnace incinerating every moment of our lives. Shrinking, therefore, from facing time, we escape for shelter to things of space. The intentions we are unable to carry out we deposit in space; possessions become the symbols of our repressions, jubilees of frustrations. But things of space are not fireproof; they only add fuel to the flames. Is the joy of possession an antidote to the terror of time which grows to be a dread of inevitable death? Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness, they are a threat to our very lives; we are more harassed than supported by the Frankensteins of spatial things.

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It is impossible for man to shirk the problem of time. The more we think the more we realize: we cannot conquer time through space. We can only master time in time.

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The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments. In a religious experience, for example, it is not a thing that imposes itself on man but a spiritual presence.

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A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time. Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.

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We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things.

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To understand the teaching of the Bible, one must accept its premise that time has a meaning for life which is at least equal to that of space; that time has a significance and sovereignty of its own.

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Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, qualitiless, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.

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The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

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Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.

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According to the Stagirite, “we need relaxation, because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end”; it is “for the sake of activity,” for the sake of gaining strength for new efforts.2 To the biblical mind, however, labor is the means toward an end, and the Sabbath as a day of rest, as a day of abstaining from toil, is not for the purpose of recovering one’s lost strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labor. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work.

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The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath.5 It is not an interlude but the climax of living.

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Labor is a craft, but perfect rest is an art. It is the result of an accord of body, mind and imagination. To attain a degree of excellence in art, one must accept its discipline, one must adjure slothfulness. The seventh day is a palace in time which we build. It is made of soul, of joy and reticence. In its atmosphere, a discipline is a reminder of adjacency to eternity. Indeed, the splendor of the day is expressed in terms of abstentions, just as the mystery of God is more adequately conveyed via negationis, in the categories of negative theology which claims that we can never say what He is, we can only say what He is not.

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As in the chivalric poetry of the Middle Ages, the “underlying principle was that love should always be absolute, and that the lover’s every thought and act should on all occasions correspond with the most extreme feelings or sentiments or fancies possible for a lover.”

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“Love, with the troubadours and their ladies, was a source of joy. Its commands and exigencies made life’s supreme law. Love was knighthood’s service; it was loyalty and devotion; it was the noblest human giving. It was also the spring of excellence, the inspiration of high deeds.” 6 Chivalric culture created a romantic conception of adoration and love that to this day dominates in its combination of myth and passion the

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What is so luminous about a day? What is so precious to captivate the hearts? It is because the seventh day is a mine where spirit’s precious metal can be found with which to construct the palace in time, a dimension in which the human is at home with the divine; a dimension in which man aspires to approach the likeness of the divine.

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This is what the ancient rabbis felt: the Sabbath demands all of man’s attention, the service and single-minded devotion of total love. The logic of such a conception compelled them to enlarge constantly the system of laws and rules of observance. They sought to ennoble human nature and make it worthy of being in the presence of the royal day.

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Yet law and love, discipline and delight, were not always fused. In their illustrious fear of desecrating the spirit of the day, the ancient rabbis established a level of observance which is within the reach of exalted souls but not infrequently beyond the grasp of ordinary men.

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“There is nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life … Even when there is the slightest possibility that a life may be at stake one may disregard every prohibition of the law.”9 One must sacrifice mitzvot for the sake of man rather than sacrifice man “for the sake of mitzvot.” The purpose of the Torah is “to bring life to Israel, in this world and in the world to come.” 10

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It must always be remembered that the Sabbath is not an occasion for diversion or frivolity; not a day to shoot fireworks or to turn somersaults, but an opportunity to mend our tattered lives; to collect rather than to dissipate time. Labor without dignity is the cause of misery; rest without spirit the source of depravity. Indeed, the prohibitions have succeeded in preventing the vulgarization of the grandeur of the day.

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Two things the people of Rome anxiously desired—bread and circus games.11 But man does not live by bread and circus games alone. Who will teach him how to desire anxiously the spirit of a sacred day?

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“The Sabbath is a reminder of the two worlds—this world and the world to come; it is an example of both worlds. For the Sabbath is joy, holiness, and rest; joy is part of this world; holiness and rest are something of the world to come.”16

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Time is like a wasteland. It has grandeur but no beauty. Its strange, frightful power is always feared but rarely cheered.

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Technical civilization is the product of labor, of man’s exertion of power for the sake of gain, for the sake of producing goods. It begins when man, dissatisfied with what is available in nature, becomes engaged in a struggle with the forces of nature in order to enhance his safety and to increase his comfort. To use the language of the Bible, the task of civilization is to subdue the earth, to have dominion over the beast.

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Yet our victories have come to resemble defeats. In spite of our triumphs, we have fallen victims to the work of our hands; it is as if the forces we had conquered have conquered us.

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Is civilization essentially evil, to be rejected and condemned? The faith of the Jew is not a way out of this world, but a way of being within and above this world; not to reject but to surpass civilization.

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Labor is a blessing, toil is the misery of man.

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The solution of mankind’s most vexing problem will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence of it.

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“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work (Exodus 20:8). Is it possible for a human being to do all his work in six days? Does not our work always remain incomplete? What the verse means to convey is: Rest on the Sabbath as if all your work were done. Another interpretation: Rest even from the thought of labor.” 13

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A pious man once took a stroll in his vineyard on the Sabbath. He saw a breach in the fence, and then determined to mend it when the Sabbath would be over. At the expiration of the Sabbath he decided: since the thought of repairing the fence occurred to me on the Sabbath I shall never repair it.14

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To Rabbi Shimeon eternity was not attained by those who bartered time for space but by those who knew how to fill their time with spirit.

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the great problem was time rather than space; the task was how to convert time into eternity rather than how to fill space with buildings, bridges and roads; and the solution of the problem lay in study and prayer rather than in geometry and engineering.

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Yet his advice to others was that the ideal path lay midway. Life is likened unto two roads: one of fire and one of ice. “If you walk in the one, you will be burned, and if in the other, you will be frozen. What shall one do? Walk in the middle.” 3

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Rabbi Shimeon’s doctrine was: There is only heaven and nothing else; but heaven contradicted him and said: There is heaven and everything else. His martial anger was sharply broken by the Voice: Have ye emerged to destroy my World? What Rabbi Shimeon decried, the Voice endorsed.

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The myrtle was, in ancient times, the symbol of love, the plant of the bride. When going out to invite his friends to the wedding, the groom would carry myrtle sprigs in his hands.6 At the wedding ceremony it was customary in some places to recite the blessing over the myrtle.7 An overhead awning of myrtle was erected for the bride,8 while the groom wore a garland of roses or myrtles.9 It was customary to perform a dance with myrtle branches before the bride. Rabbi Judah ben Ilai, the colleague of Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai, known to us from his part in the debate about Rome, was praised for his efforts in bringing joy to every bride. He would take myrtle twigs to a wedding, dance before the bride and exclaim: Beautiful and graceful bride! 10 The “old man” who was running at twilight to welcome the Sabbath, holding two bundles of myrtle in his hands,11 personified the idea of Israel welcoming the Sabbath as a bride.12

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This, then, is the answer to the problem of civilization: not to flee from the realm of space; to work with things of space but to be in love with eternity. Things are our tools; eternity, the Sabbath, is our mate. Israel is engaged to eternity. Even if they dedicate six days of the week to worldly pursuits, their soul is claimed by the seventh day.

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The Hebrew word le-kadesh, to sanctify, means, in the language of the Talmud, to consecrate a woman, to betroth.

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