7/28/2019 Summerthemes.shabbat

1/2

Summer Sabbath Themes at the Allied Jewish Chapel

June 29August 31 2013

1. Gen. 2:1-3.,-., ; ,

-.-: ,-,-.

1 And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished His workwhich He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. 3 And God blessed theseventh day, and hallowed it; because that in it He rested from all His work which God in creating had made.

2. Ex. 20:7-10.-. ,,-.,--: ,--

. , , ,

---,----, , ;-,---.

7 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 8 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; 9 but the seventh day is asabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thyman-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; 10 for in six days the LORDmade heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed thesabbath day, and hallowed it.

3. Deut. 5:11ff.-. , , ,,-.,--: ,

----,--. ,,

; , ,-, , ,-.

11 Observe the sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD thy God commanded thee. 12 Six days shalt thou labour, and do

all thy work; 13 but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work,thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thycattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. 14 And

thou shalt remember that thou was a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God brought thee out thence by amighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.

4. Isa. 58:13-14.-,, , , ;.,-, ,-, ; ) (--. ,

13 If thou turn away thy foot because of the sabbath, from pursuing thy business on My holy day; and call the sabbath a

delight, and the holy of the LORD honourable; and shalt honour it, not doing thy wonted ways, nor pursuing thy business,nor speaking thereof;14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD, and I will make thee to ride upon the high places ofthe earth, and I will feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.

5. Neh. 13:19ff.---,-, ,

, ;.,-. , ;; ,,-, ,-.,---,

, ;-, ,-., , ,, ;----. ,-,--

7/28/2019 Summerthemes.shabbat

2/2

.,---; ,-,-.,--,-;--. ,

15 In those days saw I in Judah some treading winepresses on the sabbath, and bringing in heaps of corn, and lading assestherewith; as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the sabbath

day; and I forewarned them in the day wherein they sold victuals.16 There dwelt men of Tyre also therein, who broughtin fish, and all manner of ware, and sold on the sabbath unto the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem.17 Then I contendedwith the nobles of Judah, and said unto them: 'What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day? 18 Did not

your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israelby profaning the sabbath.'19 And it came to pass that, when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the sabbath, Icommanded that the doors should be shut, and commanded that they should not be opened till after the sabbath; and someof my servants set I over the gates, that there should no burden be brought in on the sabbath day.20 So the merchants andsellers of all kind of ware lodged without Jerusalem once or twice.21 Then I forewarned them, and said unto them: 'Whylodge ye about the wall? if ye do so again, I will lay hands on you.' From that time forth came they no more on thesabbath. 22 And I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves, and that they should come and keep the

gates, to sanctify the sabbath day. Remember unto me, O my God, this also, and spare me according to the greatness ofThy mercy.

6. Excerpted from Heschel, The SabbathThere 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 tosubdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes oursole concern.In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes

perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is thinghood, consisting of substances that occupy space; even God isconceived by most of us as a thing. The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself asa thing, as a matter of fact.The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred

momentsSpiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.Judaism teachesus to be attached to holiness in time, to attach to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from

the magnificent stream of year. The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither theRomans nor the Germans were able to burn.The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six daysa 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 ofcreation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

7. From The Sabbath and Zionism, by Asher Ginsberg (Ahad Ha-Am).The Sabbath debate in Berlin reported by one of our colleagues is worthy of attention, for several reasons.We see peoplenotable people, free seekers, far from faith, who admit openly that they themselves do not keep not the

Sabbath or any other religious practicesgoing all out to protect the Sabbath as a historic institution of the entire nation,and without any shadow of the religious hypocrisy which played such a large role in such arguments of late. ForNational reasons only, they do not agree even to adda Second Day of the Sabbath Among the Exiles [Shabbat shenit

shel galuyot: compare the concept ofyomtov sheni shel galuyotthe second day of festivals as observed outside ofIsrael.SW]. Is there a greater proof of the emergence of a national Jewish sentiment even among our brothers in the

West outside the Zionist camp? No need to be a Zionist or to be religiously observant to recognize the value of theSabbathsaid one of the greatest men of the community. And he is right. Whoever feels an authentic connection with thelife of the nation, in all its generations, cannot under any circumstances - even if it does not admit the existence of the

World-to-Come or The Jewish Statecannot imagine the existence of the People of Israel without the "Sabbath Queen."It can be stated without any exaggeration, that more than Israel kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept them. Without

it, returning their "soul" and renewing their spiritual life every week, the trials and tribulations of "workdays" would havedriven them more and more down, until they were drown down to the lowest level of "materialism" and moral and

intellectual depravity. And therefore one probably does not need to be a Zionist to feel the splendor of historic holinesssurrounding this great gift, and to resist with all ones might against anything detracting from it.