A-Z OF JEWISH VALUES -

S FOR SHABBAT

On Fridays evenings during our services we have a little break for discussion on Jewish values. We’re currently discussing the Reform approach to Shabbat observance, using as a guideline a booklet produced by our movement 23 years ago now called ‘Remember the Sabbath Day’. So far we’ve talked about Friday night observance and the vexed question of riding on Shabbat.

I’d just like to spend a few minutes taking an overview of the whole subject.

Shabbat was called by Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Palace in Time. To me that means that Shabbat gives us a special space where we can be at the end of a routine workaday week, to do things differently and experience life on a different plane.

I envisage it as one palace in time; not several, not an Orthodox one, a Reform one, a Conservative one, a Liberal one, but one great institution. And the Palace has many rooms – and you are free to move from one room to the other. Or choose your rooms.

There’s a lot of room for eating. Shalosh Seudot 3 good meals are prescribed for Shabbat, not including breakfast. There’s Kiddush Friday night with candles, wine and challah and at Shabbat Lunch, again with wine and challah. There’s the third meal – Seudah Shlishit - before Havdalah, the final ceremony before we leave the palace when 3 stars appear in the sky.

There’s a lot of room for singing Zemirot, table songs.

There’s a room for services of course, for Reading the Torah; that’s done in many places on Mondays and Thursday, traditional market days, too, but that’s only a preview, a foretaste of Shabbat. That day is no market day of course. There’s no shop in the Palace. Commercial activities don’t take place there. This is something we might discuss – whether in the name of Reform Judaism we would extend the boundaries of Shabbat to include spending money for pleasurable purposes, because pleasure, delight, Oneg is a key cornerstone of the Palace of Shabbat. If we can avoid spending money, say by paying in advance for tickets for a show, so much the better.

For a Reform Jew the honest truth is that it is the ‘don’ts’ more than the ‘dos’ that are hard to address. There’s not carrying on Shabbat from your home to another place or vice versa. It’s nothing to do with hard work. None of the Shabbat laws are to do with the hardness of the work only the type of work. How come you can shift heavy furniture in your home on Shabbat but not carry a handbag to Shul? It stems from the Torah itself when the people of Israel were given instructions for building the tabernacle, then all of a sudden it says the Children of Israel shall keep the Shabbat. ‘Aha!’ said the rabbis, by placing the two together, the Torah is trying to teach us not to carry from the private domain to the public or vice versa which they would have had to do for the work of the tabernacle.

Then there’s not cooking which usually involves not lighting a fire which the Torah explicitly prohibits on Shabbat. Not writing, and not riding which are rabbinical rules derived also from actions connected with building the tabernacle. Not touching implements or ‘mukseh’ as it’s called – that means not only not using by not even touching anything which you would ordinarily use as an implement.

It could be argued that the whole subject of the building of the tabernacle, and later the Temple holds little relevance for Reform Jews. We do not pray for, or look forward to a rebuilding of the Temple on Zion. So the prohibition against carrying holds no meaning for us.

The question of fire and cooking is more difficult. The Torah does not give any reason for the prohibition. The reason suggested is that it is to refrain from creativity. Anything which is metaken, improving or fixing is off limits on Shabbat. To take things apart not for the purpose of fixing is permitted. The Reform answer to this is that if the intention is to enhance our enjoyment of Shabbat then it the value of Shabbat for us outweighs the value of not doing creative work.

This argument has been applied to riding. If it enables us to keep Shabbat by going to shul or visiting family, this value supersedes the value of abstaining from riding. This principle is called a hierarchy of values. The main reason for not driving is to avoid making sparks which is fire. Making an electrical circuit is considered making fire by Orthodox scholars but not by Conservative or Masorti, and although we do not tend to go into the details the same would be true of Reform.

Not riding is also proscribed because of the danger of having to fix something that goes wrong such as for example a puncture.

There is the overarching value of not being creators on Shabbat, but reverting to being creatures, and enjoying creature comforts. There have to be bedrooms in the Shabbat Palace, by the way, and lounges where you can have the traditional Shabbat schluf. Another aspect of awareness of being creatures is the environment. On Shabbat once a week we do not interfere with nature. It’s debatable for a Reform Jew as to whether you do the garden. Digging is out traditionally since trenches were dug for the building of the tabernacle. But as a Reform Jew I might argue that it is pure pleasure and enhances my enjoyment of Shabbat.

Homework for school or college is definitely work. Writing is prohibited because of marking surfaces for the tabernacle. But you can study without writing. Say I am doing Jewish Studies, or say something like Music, Literature, Art, Science, Technology – say I enjoy my studies – one would have to make a personal choice as to how congruent it is with the spirit of Shabbat. There’s also something about making it a different day. The Shabbat Palace is not supposed to be a Prison. But neither is it to be an extension of your Office.

The traditional purpose of Shabbat is that it is to be a whole day for doing the will of God. For fulfilling commandments of the Torah – as interpreted by the Rabbis. To stick with just the Torah commandments just doesn’t work. One sect called the Karaites used to do that and refused to observe any mitzvoth or prohibitions of the Talmudic Rabbis. The classic example is fire. You shall not burn fire throughout your habitations on Shabbat says Exodus. The Rabbis said that means not to light it on Shabbat itself, it’s OK before, so you can bring in Shabbat with candles, light the havdalah candle from a pre-existing flame, indirectly these rabbis gave us a wonderful invention called cholent (a stew made before Shabbat and kept going all day).

The Karaites said, these are man-made laws, the Shabbat says no fire on Shabbat and that means no fire on Shabbat. Given that so many communities of Karaites lived in the Crimea, can you imagine what their winter was like?

Some 19^th century Reform Jews argued similarly against Talmud law, and their position was called Biblicism. It was flawed because most of Judaism is Rabbinical not Biblical. Where does the mitzvah of lighting Shabbat candles come from? It’s not from the Torah; it’s nowhere in Tanach; it’s rabbinic; similarly Kiddush, reading from the Torah on Shabbat...

It’s definitely difficult for many of us to relate to that rationale of fulfilling the will of the Creator. If we can, well and good- so how do we interpret what is meant by the will of the Creator? If we can’t, what would we substitute for that? If I say a day for reconnecting with family community and people, for personal regeneration, how does that sound?

A day for doing things differently, for stepping back from it all.

A day to davven, or a moment to meditate. To expand one’s learning.

To celebrate events, to remember the departed.

To share bad news, and good.

To promote peace at home – to support peace in Israel and the world.

To curb the acquisitive tendency.

To give tzedakah before Shabbat comes in.

Are we to serve Shabbat’s purposes or is Shabbat to serve ours? The challenge to Reform Judaism is that we make things convenient for ourselves. If it’s so convenient why is it so difficult? Why does it take so much effort for so many even to get out of bed and go to shul, however little time it takes to get there? Why is it so difficult to switch off from work? Why do we bother at all about what the laws mean, and have it translated to us in a way we can understand? Why do we bother about how are we going to get them across to the next generation and pass it on?

Isn’t it because we take it seriously, we are proud of what it stands for, and we love it?

Isn’t it because it does us good? Or the poet Hayyim Nachman Bialik said

‘More than Israel has kept the Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept Israel’