Abraham Joshua Heschel, associate professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, is the author of Maimonides, Die Prophetie, Studies in Ibn Gabirol’s Metaphysics, The Quest for Certainty in Saadia’s Philosophy, The Earth Is the Lord’s, and Man Is Not Alone. The passages below are taken from his latest book, The Sabbath, to be published soon by Farrar, Straus, and Young. They form an example of that art which the Jews have practiced for two thousand years above all others—COMMENTARY. Professor Heschel’s text is from the Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 33b; and the English version given here is from the Maaseh Book, translated by Moses Gaster. Rabbi Judah ben Ilai, Rabbi Jose, and Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai were all Tannaim of the 2nd century of the Common Era; they were all three students of Rabbi Akiba; and their discussion, the account of which undoubtedly contains a kernel of historical truth as well as an admixture of legend, probably took place after 130 ce, following Bar Kochba’s revolt, when the issue of what attitude to take to Rome and Roman civilization became vital.—Ed.
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The time: about the year 130.
The place: Palestine.
The people present: three leading scholars and one outsider. The place and the people under the dominion of the Roman Empire.
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Rabbi Judah ben Ilai, Rabbi Jose, and Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai were sitting together, and with them was a man called Judah ben Gerim. Rabbi Judah opened the discussion and said:
How fine are the works of this people [the Romans]! They have made roads and market places, they have built bridges, they have erected bathhouses.
Rabbi Jose was silent.
Then Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai replied and said:
All that they made they made for themselves. They made roads and market places to put harlots there; they built bridges to levy tolls for them; they erected bathhouses to delight their bodies.
Judah ben Gerim went home and related to his father and mother all that had been said. And the report of it spread until it reached the government. Decreed the government:
Judah who exalted us shall be exalted; Jose who was silent shall go into exile; Shimeon who reviled our work shall be put to death.
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When Rabbi Shimeon heard of the decree, he took his son Rabbi Eleazar with him and hid in the House of Learning. And his wife came every day and brought him stealthily bread and a jug of water. When Rabbi Shimeon heard that men were searching for them and trying to capture them, he said to his son:
We cannot rely upon a woman’s discretion, for she can easily be talked over. Or perhaps she may be tortured until she discloses our place of concealment.
So they went together into the field and hid themselves in a cave, so that no man knew what had become of them. And a miracle happened: a carob tree grew up inside the cave and a well of water opened, so that they had enough to eat and enough to drink. They took off their clothes and sat up to their necks in sand. The whole day they studied Torah. And when the time for prayer came, they put their clothes on and prayed, and then they put them off and again dug themselves into the sand, so that their clothes should not wear away. In this way they spent twelve years in the cave.
When the twelve years had come to an end, Elijah the prophet came and, standing at the entrance of the cave, exclaimed:
Who will inform the son of Yohai that the emperor is dead and his decree has been annulled?
When they heard this, they emerged from the cave. Seeing the people plowing the fields and sowing the seed, they exclaimed:
These people forsake eternal life and are engaged in temporary life!
Whatever they looked upon was immediately consumed by the fire of their eyes.
Thereupon a voice from heaven called out:
Have ye emerged to destroy My world? Return to your cave!
So they returned and dwelled there another twelve months; for, they said, the punishment of the wicked in hell lasts only twelve months.
When the twelve months had come to an end, the voice was heard from heaven saying:
Go forth from your cave!
Thus they went out. Wherever Rabbi Eleazar hurt, Rabbi Shimeon healed. Said Rabbi Shimeon:
My son, if only we two remain to study the Torah, that will be sufficient for the world.
It was the eve of the Sabbath when they left the cave, and as they came out they saw an old man carrying two bundles of myrtle in his hand, a sweet-smelling herb having the perfume of paradise.
“What are these for?” they asked him.
“They are in honor of the Sabbath,” the old man replied.
Said Rabbi Shimeon to his son:
Behold and see how dear God’s commands are to Israel.
At that moment they both found tranquillity of soul.
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There is a mass of cryptic meaning in this silent, solitary story of one who, outraged by the scandal of desecrated time, refused to celebrate the splendor of civilized space. It symbolically describes how Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai and his son went from exasperation and disgust with this world, which resulted in their actually trying to destroy those who were engaged in worldly activities, to a final reconciliation with this world.
What stirred these men was not, as it is usually understood by historians, mere patriotic resentment against the power that had vanquished and persecuted the people of Judea. From the development of the story, it becomes obvious that from the outset the issue was not only Roman rule but also Roman civilization. After they had spent twelve years in the cave, the scope of the issue expanded even further. It was not any more a particular civilization but all civilization, the worth of worldly living that became the problem.
It was hard not to be impressed by the triumphs of that great Roman Empire and to disagree with the mild and gentle Rabbi Judah ben Ilai who acknowledged the boon it had brought to many lands. And yet, to Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai these triumphs were shocking, hateful, and repulsive. He knew that all these splendid edifices and public institutions were not built by the Roman rulers to aid the people but to serve their own selfish designs:
All that they made they made for themselves.
When Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai abandoned the world of civilization to spend many years in a cave, sitting up to his neck in sand, he forfeited worldly life to attain “eternal life.” Yet this was an attainment which was hardly meaningful to his persecutors. To most Romans eternity was almost a worldly concept. The survival of the soul consisted not in being carried away to a superterrestrial and blessed existence. Immortality meant either fame or the cleaving to one’s home, to one’s earthly abode, even after death. But Rabbi Shimeon abandoned home as well as the road to fame. He fled from the world where eternity was the attribute of a city and went to the cave where he found a way to endow life with a quality of eternity.
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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. To him 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.
To this day, the idea of Torah being the source of eternity is proclaimed in our prayers. The world is transitory, but that by which the world was created—the word of God—is everlasting. Eternity is attained by dedicating one’s life to the word of God, to the study of Torah. It is for the gift of perceiving the taste of eternity in dedication to the Torah that time and again we thank and say: “Blessed be Thou . . . who has given us the Torah . . . and has planted within us eternal life.” And when we go hence and rest in the world to come—what is the bliss that awaits the souls of righteous men? It is to begin to understand the deeper meaning of the Torah: “Things that are covered up from men in this world will become transparent as globes of crystal.”
It was thus not the force of despair that bred Rabbi Shimeon’s contempt for the affairs of this world. Behind his blunt repudiation of worldliness we discern a thirst for the treasures of eternity. In his boundless thirst, he saw no middle way, no ground for compromise in the pursuit of temporary life. The duty to study Torah—which was the way to attain eternity—had an exclusive claim on all of life: “This book of the Torah shall not depart out of thy mouth hut thou shalt meditate therein day and night” [Josh. 1:8]. To abate, to relent even for an hour was to forfeit a part of eternal life, an act of partial suicide. Hence Rabbi Shimeon could not but regard any secular activity as iniquity.
An older contemporary of Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai, the distinguished heretic Elisha ben Abuyah, had taken the opposite view. Charmed with the worldly culture of Hellenism, he would visit the schools and attempt to entice the students from the study of the Torah and urge them to dedicate their energies to some more practical occupation :
Out with you, you lazy people, stop idling away your days. Begin a human work, you become a carpenter, and you a mason, you a tailor, and you a fisherman.
However, Rabbi Shimeon’s renunciation of this world and Elisha’s infatuation with this world represented an extremism which found little acclamation among their contemporaries. The saintly Rabbi Judah ben Ilai rejected Rabbi Shimeon’s immoderate demands of man. Personally, Rabbi Judah was given to severe self-denial and austerity. “I do not wish to derive any pleasure from this world,” he said. 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.”
But Rabbi Shimeon rejected this outlook. “Scripture says: And thou shalt gather in thy corn [Deut. 11:14]—what has this teaching to tell us? Since it is written: This book of the Torah shall not depart out of thy mouth but thou shalt meditate therein day and night [Josh. 1:8], it is possible to think that these words are to be understood as they are written (namely, that no time be devoted to any other activity, such as earning a livelihood); therefore there is a teaching to say: And thou shalt gather in thy corn, that is, conduct at the same time a worldly occupation.” These are the words of Rabbi Ishmael. Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai says: “Is it possible for a man to plow at the time of plowing, sow at the time of sowing, harvest at the time of harvesting, thresh at the time of threshing, and winnow at the time of winnowing—what is to become of Torah?”
Rabbi Shimeon and his son appear in this story as the antipodes of Prometheus. When Zeus, in an act of revenge, withheld fire from men, Prometheus stole it from the deity in heaven and brought it down to men on earth, concealed in a hollow stalk, and taught them the use of the technical arts. For this he was honored by men as the founder of civilization, and for this he was punished by the gods and was chained to a rock where every day an eagle ate his liver, which was healed again at night. In contrast, Rabbi Shimeon tried, as it were, to take away fire from men, reproving them for pursuing the art of cultivating the ground. For this he was rebuked by a heavenly voice and punished by being placed in confinement in a cave for twelve months.
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The most baffling moment of the story comes at the end, in the epilogue. After spending twelve years in the cave in study and prayer, the two saints persisted in their condemnation of all worldly activities. Having been reproved by a heavenly voice, and having spent twelve more penitential months in the cave, the father was cured of his world-negation. The son, however, did not make peace with the world even then; not until both encountered the sight of “the old man” holding two bundles of myrtle in honor of the Sabbath, and that sight gave both of them tranquillity of spirit. What was the symbolic significance of that sight? What caused the change of mind?
It was the “old man”—symbolizing the people of Israel—who went out to meet the Sabbath with myrtles in his hand as if the Sabbath were a bride.
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. At the wedding ceremony it was customary in some places to recite the blessing over the myrtle. An overhead awning of myrtle was erected for the bride, while the groom wore a garland of roses or myrtles. 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, 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!” The “old man” who was running at twilight to welcome the Sabbath, holding two bundles of myrtle in his hands, personified the idea of Israel welcoming the Sabbath as a bride.
This, then, is the answer to the tragic 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 heart is claimed by the seventh day.
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