It is no secret that the prescriptions for observance of the Sabbath have undergone a slow attrition, even among Orthodox Jews. Emanuel Rackman, recognizing that the rules of Sabbath observance must continually be brought into consonance with changing social conditions, finds nevertheless that most proposals for “modernizing” the Sabbath are based on a superficial concept of the nature of the “day of rest,” and tries here to suggest a truer vision of the Sabbath, in terms of its true ends, on which any changes in the injunctions governing it should be based. 

_____________

The Sabbath, that day of peace, now wages a war for survival. In an advanced technological society, her regulations are considered “dated”; one constantly hears it said, for instance, that a prohibition against riding could not possibly have included the automobile, and laws with respect to fire could not possibly apply to electricity. Furthermore, we are told that the traditional conception of Sabbath rest should be broadened to include newer forms of leisure activity: creative art is urged upon us as a Sabbath goal pretty much equivalent to the older goals of prayer and study. Finally, it is said that even a Jewish state cannot function without flouting the Sabbath: the essential services of modern life must be maintained day and night. How, then, can the Sabbath survive?

Often, indeed, the Sabbath suffers as much from her defenders as from those who would override her demands. Most champions of the traditional Sabbath have a conception of Jewish law which resembles the philosophical position of the “Imperative School” in general jurisprudence. John Austin, the founder of this school, who lectured at the University of London in the first half of the 19th century, regarded the law as a body of general rules laid down by a political superior to a political inferior. To discover the law, one must only discover the commands. The law is. What the law- ought to be is irrelevant to the judicial process. It is not the jurist’s function to replace the sovereign.

Austin thus abstracted the judicial function from all social and economic desiderata, and made judges neutral with regard to ideal ends. Within the law the great diversity of rules was to be analyzed and classified. If a judge was confronted with a new case—say, trespasses by planes in the air over one’s home—he would have to resolve the issue by reference to the existing rules pertaining to the ownership of property. But his decision must be strictly logical and not based on social considerations, such as the development of air transport or its retardation.

Many orthodox teachers of Talmud take a similar view. Torah or Halachah consists of rules handed down by a divine sovereign who will punish disobedience. Man lives to fulfill these rules—for in obedience lies salvation. In discovering or applying the rules, there is to be no reference whatever to social and economic conditions unless the rule in advance provides for such considerations. Changes can be made only as the divine sovereign willed them. The judicial process consists in discovering what the law is. Analysis there must be, but the analysis must be strictly legal, arrived at deductively or inductively from existing rules without reference to ideal ends or social facts.

This fundamental approach to Torah has at least one advantage over Austin’s jurisprudence: at least the sovereign in Judaism is divine. And it would not be fair to imply that all Jewish fundamentalists are simply uninterested in the problem of Sabbath observance under modern conditions. The ultra-conservative, it is true, hesitate to tamper with any divine command and do not even tolerate the suggestion that electricity may not come within the scope of the Biblical prohibition against fire; they do not want to jeopardize their right to eternal bliss by hazarding a decision which may be wrong. Others do venture to make an analysis: perhaps the “fire” mentioned in the Bible involves only that which consumes its object or yields flame; the Talmud does distinguish between hot coals and hot metals; consequently, one authority in Israel felt that this distinction warranted the conclusion that the extinguishing of hot metals was prohibited only by Rabbinic—not Biblical—law. Electric lights came into this category. A third group of scholars among the fundamentalists simply prefer to delay action. They feel that no Halachic scholar has yet become sufficiently expert in physics to make the analysis as it should be made, and they wait for the day when great Halachic scholars will also excel in theoretical and applied science; the training of such a group of scholars is even projected by one religious party in Israel. But all groups among the fundamentalists are united in their refusal to probe the values implicit in the Halachic texts.

_____________

One may ask this: if the Talmud makes distinctions, is the rationale of these distinctions of no consequence? Was there no philosophy of Sabbath ends involved in the dicta of the Rabbis? And shouldn’t this play a part in the resolution of new issues?

Hillel recognized that the Biblical law which cancelled all debts in the Sabbatical year was defeating its purpose: the poor simply could not obtain credit. He therefore created the Pruzbul which circumvented the Biblical law by making the court the creditor instead of the individual.

One of the principal practices of mourning in ancient times was the complete covering of the head—Atifat ha-Rosh. The practice was suggested by a Biblical verse. Yet it was abandoned in the Middle Ages because the practice provoked laughter, and laughter during the mourning period was the very antithesis of the value which the mourning was to conserve.

The Rabbis were opposed to free and unbridled competition in economic affairs. If one resident of an alley set up a handmill and another resident of the alley wanted to do the same, the former could enjoin the latter and say to him, “You are interfering with my livelihood.” Yet a teacher who set up a school was not thus protected; he could not stop a second teacher from coming in. In the propagation of Torah, competition was encouraged, for “the jealousy of scholars increaseth wisdom.”

Do not these examples—and there are many more—represent something other than slavish commitment by the Rabbis to forms and texts instead of ends?

The Halachah is more than texts. It is life and experience. What made the Babylonian and not the Palestinian Talmud the great guide of Jewish life in the Diaspora was not a decree or a decision, but vox populi. Maimonides tells us that it was the people who by custom and popular will constituted the authority. Can a Halachic scholar lose himself in texts exclusively when the texts themselves bid him to see what practice “has become widespread among Jews,” what is required socially “because of the precepts of peace,” what will “keep the world aright,” and many other social criteria? These standards are as much a part of Torah as the texts themselves. A Halachic approach comparable to that of Austin does not conform to the historic Halachic process. In addition, it makes radical creativity altogether dependent upon the existence of a Sanhedrin— which cannot be convoked easily, if at all. As a matter of fact, the proponents of this extreme position in Halachah are generally the most bitter opponents of the Sanhedrin projected for our day. As Austin’s jurisprudence ultimately became the basis for reactionary individualism as well as totalitarianism, so this Halachic approach has become the one cherished most by Jewish reactionary theologians who would restrict Halachic creativity to the reconciling of the texts of authorities. This approach has the advantage of offering a simple answer to the question, what is God’s will and wherein lies man’s salvation; but that is not enough to make it palatable to those who believe there are no easy roads to God and His will. And for the preservation of the Sabbath, it certainly holds no promise.

_____________

II

But the approach of the reformers has been equally unsatisfactory. If the fundamentalists in Jewish law approximate the general jurisprudence of Austin, the reformers were in great measure the spiritual heirs of the historical jurists, who viewed the law as a product of the historical process. Rules of law and procedure came into being at certain times and places because of political, economic, social, religious, ethical, or moral phenomena then and there prevailing; the law was simply a reflection of the state of a people’s development. The earliest of the historical jurists, Savigny, paid reverential homage to the historical process. The law was like language—the expression of the Volksgeist; too much tampering with the law was dangerous, for it is always difficult to ascertain what is in harmony with the internal spirit of a people. Other historical jurists, like Kohler, felt that “the law that is suitable for one period is not so for another,” and thus invited changes suitable to changed conditions.

Liberal Jewish theologians are committed to the latter point of view for Judaism, while conservative Jewish theologians have accepted the former. “Reconstructionists” veer between the two positions—they agree with Savigny, and his Jewish counterpart, Ahad Ha’am, that radical departures from tradition are a threat to the Volksgeist and constitute assimilation, but they are finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile their almost humanistic philosophy with resistance to reform. The Jewish layman, without realizing it, most often echoes the historical view, and the vulgar rationalism associated with it. He is likely to claim, for instance, that the prohibition against the making of fire on the Sabbath stems from a time when great effort was required for the purpose, apparently believing that Moses lived in the Stone Age, and that for the Rabbis too it was a major undertaking to light a fire.

One unfortunate effect of the historical approach is that it oversimplifies the process of legal development. First, it tends too readily to accept as historical fact what are mere conjectures. The prohibition against the eating of pig, for example, is vaguely believed to have some connection with the danger of trichinosis, and other Biblical prohibitions with regard to food are then assumed to be similarly “reasonable.” Has anyone, bothered to find out whether all the other animals, fish, and fowl prohibited in Leviticus also carry infection? Similarly with respect to the Sabbath, one must challenge the simple assumption that it was the expending of much effort that was tabooed. How much effort is required to write two tiny letters with a pen? Yet that too the Law prohibits.

Second, though history plays an important part in the development of law, it cannot explain everything. Women may have been subject to certain disabilities in Jewish law because, it is alleged, the Jews held women in low esteem and accorded them an inferior social status. But even if this was true, can history explain why women need not sit in succahs on the Feast of Tabernacles but must eat matzos with the men on Passover?

Third, in Judaism, precisely because it is a historical religion, the past has a unique philosophical and theological role to play beyond the role of shedding light on how that which presently exists came to be. In the authentic Halachic approach, history was always taken into account—reformers were not the discoverers of the role of history in Halachah. The Rabbis, for example, found two contradictory sources with regard to the immunity of a king to criminal or civil prosecution by a court. One source held that a king was sovereign and subject only to God’s punishment. The other held that the king was subject to the rules applicable to all Jews. To reconcile these sources the Rabbis gave a historical explanation. The kings of the Kingdom of Israel—who were idolaters—entertained a pagan conception of kingship and held themselves above the Law. The kings of Judah, however, were more righteous and accepted the Biblical theory that everyone was subject to the jurisdiction of established courts. History accounts for the contradictory sources.

In Halachah, however, history was not resorted to principally to reject a given rule because it arose under given past conditions at a particular time and place, but rather to fulfill a philosophy of history to which Judaism subscribes. Halachah assumed that God was ever revealing Himself in His encounter with man, particularly through the people of Israel. That is why the festival of Chanukah was observed with lights over which a blessing was recited which attributed the performance of the mitzvah to the will of God. The Maccabean victory occurred centuries after the revelation on Mount Sinai. Yet neither conservative nor liberal theologians have changed the blessing to make it appear that anyone other than God willed the ritual of the candles. That was because the Halachic process permitted the expansion of revelation into history.

Furthermore, the authentic Halachic approach recognized that there were rules that were dependent exclusively upon time and place. While men and women were prohibited from wearing each other’s clothing, the articles of clothing described in the Talmud as prohibited to each sex were prohibited only so long as they were the distinctive garb of one sex or the other. It was even suggested by one great medieval Talmudist that if any Rabbinic rule was established for a reason which the Rabbis who established it could have believed would disappear, then such a rule does not require an equally competent Sanhedrin to nullify it. This Talmudist mentioned only two Rabbinic rules which he felt required formal abrogation: the promulgation of these two rules was predicated on the continuance of Jerusalem as the site of the Temple service, and no Rabbi in establishing these two rules could reasonably have anticipated the Dispersion. Otherwise, most rules were for special situations, and once the situation changed the rule became obsolete.

_____________

Yet while the authentic Halachic approach does take history into account, it cannot altogether substitute Volksgeist for Halachah, nor can it substitute human ends for divine ends. The people are only one partner in revelation. To decide what of the past one will retain and what one will reject by criteria which eliminate God’s role in the establishment of these criteria is to create the Halachah in man’s image, not in God’s. Yet the writings of both liberal and conservative theologians abound in both of these conceptions. And if occasionally it is God’s criteria that are referred to, then the criteria are most unrefined. That the Sabbath was meant to be a day of rest and relaxation becomes an acceptable postulate. Therefore, what constitutes rest and relaxation for the individual Jew becomes the measure of Sabbath observance—golf for the sportsman, music for the aesthete, dancing for the teen-ager, cigar-smoking for the addict. Is that all these Jewish spiritual heirs of the historical jurists can find in a three-thousand-year tradition of scholarship on the Sabbath? Did they really probe the depths and come up with so tiny a pearl-that the Sabbath is a day of rest and relaxation? The answer is that they did not probe. History became an excuse to make the Halachah suit one’s desires and not the means to fathom God’s will.

It is not only reconstructionists or reformers, however, who abuse the historical method in connection with the Sabbath. Dr. Yeshayahu Lebovitz has suggested in Israel that Sabbath restrictions be relaxed in the management of state affairs because such relaxation was permitted in carrying out the Temple service in ancient Jerusalem. The exemptions which the Temple enjoyed he views as an indication that the rules of the Sabbath were suspended when the interest of collectivity was involved. The state, he argues, should now have the status of the Temple. But he has cited a very special instance of Temple service. On the other hand, it was from the fact that the Temple could not be built on the Sabbath that we derive all the thirty-nine prohibited forms of work. Israel’s Chief Rabbinate permits the maintenance of essential services on the Sabbath because they are required for the preservation of life. The Sabbath’s prohibitions yield because the welfare of human beings is at stake and not because the State personified à la Hegel is superior to the Law.

Many reconstructionists and reformers take a frankly utilitarian approach to the entire problem. They would change the Law to fulfill “the consent of the governed.” But the weakness of the utilitarian position in any religious order is that the utilitarian is concerned with doing what will make the majority happy, while the religious man asks what ought to make the majority happy. What the Jewish community legislates occasionally becomes a part of the Halachah. But the community’s wishes alone cannot become the basis for divine Law. Jewish law would then be no more than the will of the majority. To what greater degradation could the Halachah be brought? At least the humanist utilitarian does not call positive law divine.

_____________

III

The only authentic Halachic approach must be that which approximates the philosophy of the teleological jurist. The teleological jurist asks: what are the ends of the law which God or nature ordained and how can we be guided by these ideal ends in developing the Law?

The Torah, to the devotee of Halachah, is God’s revealed will, not only with respect to what man shall do but also with respect to what man shall fulfill. To apprehend these ends, however, requires more than philosophical analysis of some general ideals set forth in the Bible. It is not enough to say that the Sabbath is a day of rest. One must also study the detailed prescriptions with respect to rest so that one may better understand the goals of the Sabbath in the light of the prescriptions, for if one considers the ends alone, without regard to the detailed prescriptions, one will be always reading into the Bible what one wants to find there. It is God’s ends we are to seek, not our own. The Halachic scholar must probe and probe, and his creativity must itself be a religious experience supported by the conviction that in what he is doing he is fulfilling a divine mandate—a divine responsibility. Thus in seeking to understand the Law he is seeking to understand God, and in developing the Law he is discovering God’s will more fully for the instant situation. Needless to say, his results must meet the challenge of revelation in the Bible, the challenge of history in general and Jewish history in particular, and also the challenge of Jewish life in the present.

The teleological approach is to be found at its best in the work of Dr. Joseph B. Solo-veichik of Yeshiva University. For him, the Halachah is “an a priori idea system . . . it postulates a world of its own, an ideal one, which suits its particular needs.” To begin with, therefore, any rejection of the revealed character of both the Written and the Oral Law constitutes a negation of the very essence of the Halachah. Jews who thus reject would do better to regard their interest in Halachah as comparable to the antiquarian’s interest in antiquity. They may become historians of the Halachah, or borrowers from the Halachah; they cannot regard themselves as actors within the Halachic tradition.

But once one concedes the divine character of the a priori idea-system, one can turn to the second phase of Halachic creativity—in which the Law begins “to realize its ideal order within a concrete framework and tries to equate its pure constructs and formal abstractions with a multi-colored transient mass of sensations” On the level of application and realization, the Halachic scholar has God’s revealed method, “a modus cogitandi, a logic, a singular approach to reality which the community . . . had to learn, to understand, to convert into an instrument of comprehension of which man, notwithstanding frailties and limitations, could avail himself. . . . Man’s response to the great Halachic challenge asserts itself not only in blind acceptance of the divine imperative but also in assimilating a transcendental content disclosed to him through an apocalyptic revelation and in fashioning it to his peculiar needs.” There is objectivity and stability in the Halachah. “Yet these do not preclude diversity and heterogeneity as to methods and objectives. The same idea might be formulated differently by two scholars; the identical word accentuated differently by two scribes. . . . Halacha mirrors personalities; it reflects individuated modi existentiae.”

The observance of the Sabbath is one area in which the teleological approach is of special significance. Simply to assert that God wanted man to rest one day in seven, as the physician prescribes a vacation, is to oversimplify. Even to assert that God wanted the day to be a holy day on which man will come closer to Him is to rush hastily to conclusions on the basis of a few Biblical verses and to ignore a tremendous Halachic tradition which begs for philosophical analysis. Yes, rest and relaxation, as well as consecration, are ends of the Sabbath. But what do the prescriptions with regard to work imply? What is the unity in the thirty-nine types of labor traditionally prohibited? What is the point of the Rabbinic additions? To answer these questions will not only bring us closer to understanding what the Law is; it will also show us how the Law can be creatively developed.

_____________

IV

The Law started with the Biblical premise that God wanted man to toil six days every week, thus making himself master of the earth and its fullness. On the seventh day man was to desist from toil. Maimonides correctly asserts that there are two commands with respect to work on the Sabbath. One is negative—no work shall be done. The other is positive—to call a halt to work, to apply the brake to one’s productivity and creativity, to desist from the conquest of the earth. Why?

First, man can thereby demonstrate that he is not the slave of greed and envy; when, by self-discipline, he shows that it is in his power to call a halt to the acquisition of things and the exploitation of natural resources, it can be said that his craving for economic power is not altogether his master. Our sages understood this significance of the Sabbath. In a rather elusive passage of the Midrash they made the point. After Cain had killed his brother Abel, he repented and asked God to shield him from attack. The shield God gave him was not his “brand” as a murderer. Most Rabbis did not so understand it. It was rather the badge of the penitent. But what was the badge? It was the Sabbath. The Sabbath was called a “sign” and so was Cain’s shield called a “sign.” By Cain’s observance of the Sabbath, people would identify him as a penitent for his sin of envy. As a matter of fact, say the Rabbis, Adam later met Cain and inquired what God had done to him. “I repented,” replied Cain, “and made my peace with God.” “Is that the power of penitence!” exclaimed Adam, and he forthwith recited “A Psalm, a Song for the Sabbath Day.” Adam too wanted to demonstrate his own remorse for his sin of greed by proclaiming the sanctity of the Sabbath.

Thus the Law made the Sabbath a means for the cultivation of personal ethics—the mastery of greed and envy. Jews were first told about the Sabbath when God gave them the manna and tried them by ordering them not to gather it in on the holy day. Many Jews, nonetheless, went forth on the Sabbath to search for more.

Interestingly enough, the thirty-nine forms of work prohibited by the Law deal almost exclusively with the exploitation of nature. Every form of agriculture was prohibited as well as the preparation of agricultural products—including food and cotton. Hunting was prohibited as well as the preparation of meat, wool, and hides. While one was permitted to consume on the Sabbath articles taken from the earth in the six days of toil, the Law forbade the capture, discovery, and conservation of these products on the Sabbath.

We must remember that many definitions of work were available to the Oral Law. Work might have been interpreted to mean gainful employment of any kind. It might also have been equated with the expenditure of physical energy. It might even have had the physicist’s meaning—pulls against gravity. And if the Law regarded the Sabbath as nothing more than a day of rest and relaxation, any one of these definitions would have sufficed. However, it was the taking and creating from nature that was prohibited. That is why the Law derived its concept of work from a surprising source.

The Bible had indicated that the Sabbath was not to be desecrated even for the construction of God’s sanctuary. The Oral Law inferred from this that nothing could be done on the seventh day to speed up the rearing of the Temple or the furnishing of its interior. Here, therefore, was a clue to the meaning of the prohibition against work. Work was any activity connected with the construction of the Temple. Upon analysis, thirty-nine categories were discovered. And these thirty-nine, in essence, turned out to be any taking from nature, or any creation from, or improvement upon, matter.

If the prohibition against work were simply a prohibition against physical labor, then the Law should have prohibited the transportation of articles anywhere. From the point of view of physical labor, what difference does it make whether one hauls wood a few yards from a forest or a few yards within one’s home? The expenditure of energy is the same in each case. Yet the Law’s principal prohibition was against the transportation of things to places where a new use would be made of them. Within one’s home the difference in use could hardly vary materially: the articles were already available to the user and their removal from one spot to another could hardly be regarded as an exploitation of nature. But to haul from forests or deserts, or over highways connecting them, was to take something from a place where its manipulation was not easy to a place where its manipulation was more feasible. Or to remove from one’s home to a public domain was to expand the usability and availability of the object removed. The Rabbis regarded carrying as a category of work “inferior” to other categories because no actual creation from nature was involved. However, even to expand the use of a thing already created was a remote form of the conquest of nature.

That is why one cannot help but be amused by some of the Law’s reformers who, on the premise that the Sabbath is to promote rest and relaxation, conclude that creative art is an excellent form of Sabbath relaxation. To create is certainly permitted—but never to create out of matter. Let the Sabbath observer create ideas, or cultivate sentiments, or even discover God and His will. But as for things material, only their consumption is permitted on the Sabbath, not their exploitation or manipulation.

_____________

This analysis of the Law had further significance. Often in human history we have had protests against civilization and its compulsions, and Jewish culture, too, has had its impulse to go “back to nature.” The festival of Tabernacles is one expression of this impulse. And so was the Sabbath.

“Back to nature” meant a static, as distinguished from a dynamic, existence—living with nature rather than the pushing of nature. That is why the Law prohibited the use on the Sabbath of that which was dynamic in nature—even animals and still growing vegetation. Moreover, just as one may not create instruments, one may not even use instruments already created if they have a dynamic character. Dishes for the serving of food were static—they could be used. Millstones, however, were to come to a halt before the Sabbath day. And it is this hostility to the dynamic that is the very antithesis of the mood of our lives in a technological age. That is why the original rules are so desperately needed now. A day to go “back to nature” once a week is more important now for peace of mind and human dignity than it ever was. Living with nature, however, means not living in primitive simplicity but rather in accord with man’s guiding principle—God’s will and reason. Man needs at least the one day to ask what are the ends for which he lives.

The automobile, for example, makes the prohibition against riding not obsolete but all the more compelling, for the automobile only increases the dynamism of travel. The deeper significance of spending one day within a limited area is that man shall find meaning to his existence where he is—and not where he can escape to. Similarly, the prohibition against fire was not a prohibition with respect to its use but rather with respect to its creation and its creative power; electrically propelled motors come no less within the scope of the prohibition.

Using the terminology of means and ends, it can be said that the six days of toil are concerned with the means of life and the Sabbath with its ends. The six days of toil represent the temporal and transitory—the Sabbath represents the eternal and the enduring. That is why the Hebrew language has no names for the days of the week—they are all the first day, or the second day, or the third day, “to the Sabbath”—the Sabbath is the goal toward which time itself moves.

To make the Sabbath symbolic of perfect and immutable “being,” the Law did not permit the use on the Sabbath of anything that did not exist before the Sabbath. For example, an egg laid on a Sabbath or holy day could not be used that day. The Talmudic discussion with regard to the egg evoked many quips from satirists—including the poet Heine. But the egg was only one of countless problems involved in seeing to it that the Sabbath should remain a day dedicated to ends.

_____________

The Sabbath was actually a day of transformation. The most bitter existence of peasant or laborer was transformed into something heavenly. From painful preoccupation with means all week, the higher man finally came into his own on the Sabbath.¹

God Himself had rested on the seventh day. For six days He caused Himself to be expressed in matter and subjected His omnipotence to the bounds of natural law. But on the seventh day He reverted to His omnipotence, to His infinite freedom and essence as spirit. The fourth commandment, as presented in Exodus, indicated that the Sabbath was to be observed because God was engaged in creation for six days and rested on the seventh. The same commandment, as presented in Deuteronomy, indicated that the Sabbath was to be observed so that Jews might remember that they were once slaves whom God had liberated. But the two explanations are one. Man was nature’s slave six days a week. But on the seventh day he was to be free of this commitment, so that he might, in a kind of imitation of God, catch a glimpse of that freedom which is the essence of God’s nature.

The Rabbis of course found it necessary to make many additional rules, safeguards around the Sabbath. In the main, these are the rules against which moderns are most rebellious. As a matter of fact, moderns frequently visualize the Rabbis as misanthropes whose sole purpose was to make our lives as miserable as possible. There have been others in the past who could not understand the Sabbath. Sadducees and Karaites regarded the prohibition against fire as a prohibition against its use, instead of a prohibition against its creation and the use of its potential for still further creation. In darkness they sanctified the Sabbath. Many even outlawed food and sexual intercourse for the day. For them, misery was the keynote of the Sabbath.

_____________

The point of view of the Rabbis, however, stands in bold contrast—in fact, as a protest against these tendencies. The Rabbis prescribed the lighting of candles and made the Sabbath lights in the home one of the most significant features of the day. And they made eating and cohabitation on the Sabbath not only permitted functions but virtually mandatory ones. The Sabbath was not to frustrate man, but to help him fulfill himself.

In that large volume of the Talmud which deals with the Sabbath, one whole chapter is devoted to Sabbath lights and the use of oils that will not only burn well but also without unpleasant odors. The principal passages of this chapter are recited every Sabbath eve by most Jews as an established part of the service. And lest there be Jews who think that eating on the Sabbath is not permitted, the Talmud prescribed not only the minimum number of meals for the day, but also elaborate techniques for keeping the food warm despite the general prohibition against cooking and the making of fire. That husband and wife should have sexual intercourse on the Sabbath became standard; but there is also a full discussion of how women may make themselves most attractive with perfume and jewelry despite the prohibition against the carrying of weights and the preparation of drugs. There was even a relaxation of some of the rules pertaining to the woman’s ritualistic immersion after her menstrual period, in order that there might be no postponement of cohabitation on holy Sabbath.

Further to prevent the many Sabbath prohibitions from becoming a barrier to the fulfillment of the Law’s ideal, the Law emphasized two positive conceptions—Qibud and Oneg—the honor and joy of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was honored by festive dress and enjoyed with festive meals; it was welcomed with song and candlelight; its departure was toasted with wine and incense. On the other hand, just as concern with the minutiae of Passover observance caused Jews to become more impressed with the love of freedom, so the Sabbath’s restrictions made for greater preoccupation with Sabbath goals.

Thus the Rabbis never lost sight of the Sabbath’s affirmative aspects, which they expanded in every age.² But they also had to expand the Sabbath prohibitions to meet changing conditions. The basic categories of prohibited work were established in times when hunting, fishing, cattle-raising, and fanning were the principal occupations of man. In these endeavors there always was a direct taking and creating from nature. True, the Rabbis had to taboo many activities which resembled, or might induce, the basic activity prohibited by the Bible, in order to spread the knowledge of the Law and insure obedience to it. Yet, what of new enterprises—such as trading, which involved only the transfer of ownership with no changes whatever in the nature of the things traded? And what of business planning? And partners’ discussions among themselves? And the use of money itself? Relying upon a verse in Isaiah (58:13), the Rabbis expanded the Sabbath’s prohibitions to include commerce of any kind, and the prohibition stands despite the fact that many retail storekeepers profess that they are Orthodox Jews. In fact the Rabbis so expanded the prohibitions that they are adequate for an industrial age as well as a commercial one. Thus, without even considering the propriety of using electricity on the Sabbath, the viewing of television was prohibited a few years ago, in a responsum published by Yeshiva University’s “Talpioth,” because the vulgarity and the commercialism of the programs were not consonant with the mood of the Sabbath. Similarly, one can expect additional new prohibitions; our machine age needs more than ever the reminder that man himself is more than machine.²

_____________

V

How far does Sabbath observance in modern times fall short of the traditional objectives! For most Jewish families the day has no significance whatever. For others there is occasional participation in a religious service, usually to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah or Bas Mitzvah. Even in homes with elaborate Sabbath meals—with candles and Kiddush and perhaps a few guests—neither parents nor children dedicate their conversation to the ends of life or the spiritual quest of man. Orthodox homes are seldom more inspiring. Their excessive preoccupation with Sabbath prohibitions most often excludes adequate consideration of the positive values to be achieved, and the Sabbath becomes indeed a day of frustration.

To save the glory of the Sabbath, we must look to Plato’s prescription for the state-Jews must become philosophers. That does not mean that non-philosophers can experience no Sabbath joy. But unless our teachers and leaders undertake to expound the philosophical significance of the Sabbath and help everyone to grasp and live its meanings, the Sabbath will become nothing more than a day of leisure for most Jews and a haunted day for those who make the prohibitions ends in themselves. By all means the rules of the Sabbath will change and develop as they have done in the past. But our primary problem is not how to modify the prohibitions, but rather how to follow the path suggested by the prohibitions and give positive content to the day’s observance. Only then can we think of modifying the prescriptions, for only then will it be possible for our modifications to have any valid meaning. The aim must be, not to evade the Sabbath, but to fulfill it. That aim may demand some relaxation of prohibitions; but it may also demand the establishment of new prohibitions.

_____________

“Happiness,” said Justice Holmes to a class of graduating lawyers, “. . . cannot be won simply by being counsel for great corporations and having an income of fifty thousand dollars. An intellect great enough to win the prize needs other food beside success. The remoter and more general aspects of the law are those which give it universal interest. It is through them that you not only become a great master in your calling, but connect your subject with the universe and catch an echo of the infinite, a glimpse of its unfathomable process, a hint of the universal.” One can hardly offer a better explanation of why Jews have dedicated themselves to the study of Torah. Torah was the revealed will of the Infinite and a reflection of His universal law for the lives of men. The ultimate goal of its study was not only guidance and direction: it was also to help one catch a glimpse of God. That is why Jews who never owned an ox spent many a night and day mastering the intricate rules of torts committed by animals, and why Jews who, as aliens in the countries of their birth, could never acquire land, intoned page after page of Talmud on the manner of taking tide to real property. They did this to catch “the echo of the infinite.”

It is such an echo that we are to seek on the Sabbath. As the world and its needs change, certainly the problem of the Sabbath becomes more complicated; no one has the right to turn away from the voices of those Jews who find themselves troubled and disturbed in their Sabbath observance. It is not enough to say “the Law is the Law.” We must understand the Law and its ultimate purposes as best we can, and we must be prepared to interpret and develop the Law as the Rabbis did in the past. It is our privilege and our responsibility to do this. We need the Sabbath perhaps more than ever, and we must save it. However, just as its salvation does not lie in an arid fundamentalism, so its salvation cannot lie in the encouragement of the typical pastimes of American Jews. Jews must live in their tradition. But it would be fatal to forget that the tradition itself must also live.

_____________

¹ Is it any wonder then that slaves too were to rest? How could a day dedicated to ends permit the exploitation of human beings as means! Nor were Jews permitted to employ non-Jews on the Sabbath—notwithstanding popular opinion to the contrary. If a Gentile performed the labor for himself, a Jew was permitted the incidental enjoyment thereof, provided that the Gentile expended no extra effort for the Jew’s benefit.

² I cannot here discuss in detail the institution of the Sabbatical year. But what was true of the Sabbath was also true of the Sabbatical year: it was a year of restraint from the exploitation of nature, and also by that token a reaffirmation of the fact that the world belonged not to man but to the Lord (an analogy can be found in the fact that Rockefeller Plaza in New York is closed to all traffic one day a year; in this way the owner of the land, Columbia University, makes it clear that the public traverses this ground all year not by right, but by permission). The Sabbatical and Jubilee years further invaded property rights by making all the fruits of the earth free to the use of whoever gathered them, by the emancipation of slaves, and by cancelling all debts—though this last practice, as I have mentioned above, had to be abandoned because it defeated its own purpose.

_____________