While waiting to board the plane in Ben Gurion Airport about twelve years ago I got talking to a businessman who was standing in line in front of me. During the course of our conversation he said to me, “I want to tell you something very strange. Something I experience every week”. He continued, “Every Shabbat I feel different. I walk outside and things feel and look special, I cannot put my finger on what it is that is different but it certainly is different”.
I stood there contemplating what this man had just told me. And I recalled a Shabbat that past summer, when I ended up home alone. Nothing had been prepared for Shabbat; the white tablecloths weren’t spread over the tables and the candlesticks weren’t out, the Muktze things weren’t put away. I remembered waking up in the morning, coming downstairs, and seeing the newspapers lying on the doormat. It was like a regular Sunday. No special shabbos feelings at all.
As I was thinking these thoughts I realised that whilst I had to have a tablecloth and candlesticks in order for a Saturday to feel like Shabbat, this man felt it without any artificial intervention. I told the man he must have a very lofty soul because he experienced Shabbat in the truest sense.
What’s the difference between our Shabbat and the universal Sunday?
However, let’s explore, what is Shabbat? Why do we celebrate it every week? Furthermore, what is this special feeling that this man was experiencing; maybe he was suffering from a psychiatric problem and having illusions, or perhaps I should respect him as being privileged?
As Jews, we know that Shabbat is a day of rest. But how is Shabbat different from Sunday for Christians? They also have a day of rest. There were factions in the Reform movement who wanted to change the Shabbat from Saturday to Sunday because it would be more convenient and would bring us in line with the rest of the world. Is there anything wrong with doing that?
A further concept to be understood about Shabbat concerns some of the rituals we perform then; Kiddush for example, when we take a full cup of wine and make a blessing over it, thereby sanctifying the day of Shabbat. The word Kiddush comes from the word Kadosh meaning holy. The day of shabbos is holy and we the Jewish nation sanctify it. What does it mean that the day of shabbos is holy, and what is holy?
Why all these do’s and don’ts on Shabbat?
To explain this we must first take a closer look at all the things we are prohibited from doing on the Shabbat. There are 39 activities which we may not do on the Shabbat (Shabbat 7:2).
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Ploughing
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Sowing
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Reaping
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Sheaf making
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Threshing
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Winnowing
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Selecting
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Sifting
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Grinding
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Kneading
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Baking
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Sheep shearing
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Bleaching
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Combing
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Dyeing
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Spinning
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18. & 19. Weaving operations
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Separating
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Tying a knot
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Untying a knot
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Sewing
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Tearing
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Trapping or hunting
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Slaughtering
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Skinning
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Tanning
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Scraping pelts
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Marking out
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Cut into a shape
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Writing
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Erasing
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Building
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Demolishing
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Kindling a fire
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Extinguishing
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The final hammer blow (finishing a newly made article)
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Carrying from the private to the public domain and vice versa.
The above list is taken from the Mishna. This list isn’t just a random group of activities placed together. They are activities that were done in order to build the Tabernacle that the Jewish people built to serve God when they were in the wilderness. Why especially these 39 Melochot (activities)? What is the common denominator among them?
Furthermore, one may ask why it is that I may work strenuously on Shabbat, for example I may reposition all the furniture in my house, but am prohibited from switching on the light which involves the use of only a tiny amount of energy?
Changing and producing
Among all the answers given by Jewish Rabbinical authorities to the question of why especially these 39 prohibitions, I would like to discuss the explanation made by one of the leading Rabbinical figures of the 20th century, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch says that if we look at all the Melochot we will notice that these activities are acts which change the course of events, which, if you had not done them, nature would not have done them for you.
(If you were to look at the entire above-mentioned list of 39 Melochot all of them involve actively changing the set of facts in a creative manner – except for number 39, “Carrying from the private to the public domain and vice versa”. This Melacha seems to involve no significant change at all but this Melacha is particularly significant and it alone involves a further whole composition. I will try to explain this in a separate essay).
Why is changing circumstances and facts in our world such a major concern to the extent that it is prohibited to do so on Shabbat?
A Resting God
A look at the origin of Shabbat sheds light on this. God created the world in six days and on the seventh day He rested. Why did God rest? What does it mean God rested? Surely God is not like a physical being that needs to rest after a week of hard labour?
In any event, during the six days of creation God did not really work. God created the world with the ten sayings: He said, “Let there be light” and there was light, etc, and according to Jewish law speaking is not considered work.
Perhaps we should view it from a different angle: God created the world during the first six days and on the seventh He stopped creating the world.
By this, God is demonstrating that He is not a God who must create or a God who cannot create, rather, He can create and stop creating at His leisure. God has absolute control over His creative powers saying I will create a world only this size and no bigger.
This tells us about an unlimited, all-powerful, omnipotent God. A God who one day works and creates an incredibly beautiful and complex world and, the next day, ceases from creating. In short Shabbat is the day God rested (stopped) from creating the world, the day He stopped all creative activity.
God commanded us to rest as He rested. Therefore, six days a week we work and the seventh, “Shabbat”, we rest, we cease from work. In other words, Shabbat is a day removed from work and dedicated to not working.
Physical Work
Let us analyze work.
A man works to make a living. In order for one to do this most people must leave the home and go out to the “workplace”. The difference between the home and the workplace is that while at work one may have to act a certain way, at home one can be oneself. Most people have two personas, one for the workplace and one for home; hopefully at home they are loving, kind and relaxed even though at work they may have to be more aggressive and thick-skinned. In other words, at home one feels comfortable and therefore does not have to put on a show whereas, at work, one has to portray oneself to the world and therefore must act according to the position one holds.
It would be terrible if a prison manager treated his family the same way he does the prisoners, or vice versa. Similarly, a lawyer or doctor cannot treat his client with the same openness that he does his family.
So we see a person has two personas, one for home and private life and one with which he faces the world at work.
Another difference between work and home is that at work it is necessary to play the game of the money and business world, or the world of whichever field one pursues. At home, however, one plays by one’s own rules. At work one wants to make a change. One either wants to buy or sell, improve or develop, always trying to be creative. At home, on the other hand, one just wants stability and happiness.
In short, work is where one deals with the world. Home is where one can forget about the world and just be oneself.
Shabbat: Removed From Work
So, if Shabbat is a day for not working, then it also means a day when one ceases contact with worldly matters. Shabbat is a time to reflect on the more important and finer things in life, like the purpose of life and our relationship with God. It is a time to be “at home” and not “at work”. In other words, God leads by example saying rest from your creative powers (worldly matters) just as I rested.
The truth is that with today’s modern technological advances even when one is at home one can be heavily involved with worldly affairs. All one need to do is to “log on” and buy anything; one can bank “online”, buy and sell stocks, and the list is endless, all from the comfort of one’s living room.
This is what is meant by saying Shabbat is Kadosh, holy, removed. Removed from the other six days of the week in the sense that we cease from our involvement in worldly matters, automatically this day is different, then, from the other six days.
The authentic meaning of work and resting God style
In the light of what has been explained above, it may be clearly understood why even when one does strenuous labour on the Shabbat it is not necessarily considered a Melacha, but if one stitches the hem of a dress one has contravened the laws of Shabbat.
This is because resting or not working (when said in reference to Shabbat) does not mean not straining oneself, rather, it means not getting involved in worldly matters. And when examining the 39 activities that are prohibited on Shabbat we will notice every one is an activity that affects a new situation that wasn’t there before and that wouldn’t happen naturally without our interference. So, by performing these activities, one is showing how the human being has a power over nature, how we can influence things by getting involved and interfering with the world. On Shabbat, however, we pay homage to the creator and we contemplate His omnipotence. Keeping in mind that He is in reality the only power that creates, to this end, we cease from doing any activity that will show us as having any creative powers.
To this end, too, the Torah gives us a list of 39 activities that, when doing them, one changes a set of facts in a productive manner thereby showing a creative power over nature.
Shabbat totally refraining from worldly matters
So we now understand that Shabbat is a day in which we totally refrain from worldly matters. We turn off our computers and don’t answer our phones; we don’t talk about our business. It is a day to pay homage to the creator of the world.
What better way to do that than by not doing anything that shows our hold over the world and worldly matters? It is a way of showing our belief in the fundamental truth of creation; that God is the only creator and that we are but His creations with no true power without Him.
At this point, let us recap what we have answered. We now know why we especially consider the 39 Melochot, we have answered what “resting” means and we understand why Shabbat is “Kadosh”, holy.
Two levels of reality
We are still left with the question about the chap I met in Ben Gurion Airport. What was he feeling? Was it a genuinely spiritual sensation?
In order to explain this, we must take the concept of Shabbat to a deeper level, to the mystical and Kabbalistic dimension.
We established that on the seventh day God stopped creating and we also said that God created through speech so, on the seventh day, God stopped talking, so to speak. What does it mean, God’s speech, does God talk?
In order to fully comprehend this I would first like to make clear a fundamental point, which is really a basis for understanding the simplest mystical concepts. In this physical world we are limited as to how much we can see and observe; to illustrate the point a story must be told.
A little boy was once standing by a lily pond and was tossing some stones into the pond and watching the ripple effect on the water. As he was doing this he was thinking to himself that, in the pond, there are many different types of fish; there is probably the baker fish and the builder fish and the scientist fish, too. Now, the scientist fish sees the ripple effect from inside the pond and thinks to himself, what phenomena could have caused this to occur. As he is thinking through the laws of physics and science in order to figure out the reason behind this unexplained occurrence, he will not even for a second entertain the idea that maybe there was an outside force that he is totally unaware of and it was that force (person) which tossed the stone and caused the ripple effect. And the reason why he won’t entertain this thought is because according to science anything that cannot be observed does not exist. And this is in fact a form of self-induced myopia.
So, we see, just as in the pond there is something beyond the scope of this scientist fish, so, too, in the big world there is a power which we are not aware of, and which we cannot tap into. But nonetheless it has an affect on things that we see and observe.
This illustrates for us very nicely that there are two levels to everything, the first being what we see, meaning the purely physical, and the second (and as important) the level that we don’t see but which has a direct influence on what we see.
In Kabbalistic jargon the first level would be called the chi’tzoyniut meaning external and the second level is called the pni’meut meaning the internal. In other words we have the outer external level, in our case meaning the physical, and then we have the internal, the spiritual, God’s powers that keep the physical in existence.
Thought and Speech
We will now take this a step further, and look at only the internal level, the spiritual. The spiritual also has two levels, the external and the internal.
By way of illustration, take the human being. For example, each person has his own unique character. With his character he interacts with other people. His character is made up of his speech and actions and it is through this that people perceive him. So his personality, his character, is the way in which he relates to things outside of himself i.e. other people.
On the other hand, a person’s speech and action is predominantly influenced by his thought (speaking or acting without thinking causes all kinds of problems). But thought alone does not necessarily have any correlation with speech and action. A person can think his own thoughts without anyone knowing what he is thinking (unless he is Uri Geller or a mind-reader). Moreover, most people don’t want anyone to know what is going on in their minds; one’s thoughts are highly confidential, unless made public by the thinker.
To put this into Kabbalistic terminology, our speech and action would be chi’tzoyniut, external self (the one we display to others), and our thought would be pni’meut, the internal self (our private self).
We may use all of this as a metaphor for the spiritual when we talk about God in terms of creating the world. As we have already mentioned, the world is not “Godly”, rather, it is “Worldly”. And, on the face of things, from the plane of the physical world we cannot sense spirituality at all. As a matter of fact, it negates the existence of an all-powerful dominating God because the physical is the antithesis of spiritual and of Godly. God created the world so that it would seem removed from God. The physical cannot comprehend or fathom even the lowest of spiritual levels.
So, just as a person who wants to relate to a being outside of himself uses his external self, i.e. speech and action, similarly, G–d, when He relates to the world, does so with His external persona – speech and action, which are in turn influenced by the internal – thought. But His thought is somewhat removed from the world in the sense that it does not come into the world without becoming speech first.
(Note: as far as God is concerned speech is considered action).
There are ten sayings with which God created the world. Now this would mean, using the metaphor, that God created the world with his external personality.
Obviously, each one of the ten sayings was influenced by the internal, meaning, God’s thought process. So God first thought about creating the world and then He created, in actuality, by uttering the ten sayings.
Reading God’s thoughts
Now on Shabbat God rested, meaning, the thought stopped influencing the speech and therefore God stopped speaking. God’s thoughts become personal again, and this is what is revealed to the world.
To sum it up, during the week, God relates to the world through His external (speech and action) persona, but, on Shabbat, God reveals his thought (before it is modified for speech) to the world. God’s highly personal thoughts (to use the metaphor) are revealed in the world on Shabbat.
This is what makes the Shabbat a holy day.
Epilogue
The businessman I met in the airport that day is a very fortunate man, because he was able to sense the lofty revelations that are revealed on the Shabbat, whereas most people need to be artificially made to feel the Shabbat spirit: as I was in the week when I ended up being alone on Shabbat, without the tablecloths, and I didn’t have a special Shabbat feeling at all.
But, truth be told, we can also tap into these revelations and feel them, but let us save that for another essay.