Shabbat: Three Stages in Israel's Experience

THREE STAGES IN ISRAEL’S EXPERIENCE

The reader of the Bible who starts at the beginning learns at the end of Chapter 1 of the Shabbat, the seventh day on which God “rests” and which He “hallows.” Historically, however, according to the biblical narrative, the people of Israel are first officially commanded to “remember” and “observe” the Shabbat at Sinai as one of the ten conditions of the Decalogue which seals their Covenant with God after the Exodus from Egypt.

Yet a closer look at the tradition reveals that long before Sinai the Israelites had already been introduced to various partial aspects of the Shabbat. This is hinted at in both versions of the Decalogue. Remember [zachor] the Sabbath day to keep it holy (Ex. 20:8). That is to say, the Shabbat with which you are already familiar from other contexts, remember to keep it holy. Observe

[shamor] the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as the Lord thy God commanded

you (Deut. 5:12). When and where before Sinai and in what context did the Israelites learn about the Shabbat?

I wish to suggest that we can trace three stages in Israel’s experience of the Shabbat, and that this led ultimately to a greater appreciation of the elements that comprise this unique institution in Jewish life which is operative to this very day.

IN EGYPT

The midrash reports a tradition:

And he [Moses] went out to his brothers and “he saw their suffer-

ing“ (Ex. 2:11). Moses saw that they had no rest and so he went to

Pharaoh and said to him, ’A slave that is not permitted to rest at

least one day in seven will die. Your Hebrew slaves will surely

die without a day of rest.’ Pharaoh replied, ’Go and do for them as

you suggested.’

And so Moses went and ordained for them the seventh day as

Shabbat – a day of rest“ (Gen. Rabbah 1:32).

There is no mention of why Moses chose the seventh day, nor is there any credible way by which the Patriarchs might have learned of the Creation story as told in Genesis.1

It is possible that Moses, on the basis of his own expe-

rience, concluded that six days of unrelieved physical drudgery pushes the limits of human endurance both physically and mentally. Therefore, according to this tradition which, given the described conditions, sounds quite credible, the Israelites during their servitude in Egypt were freed from their work each seventh day which they called Shabbat – day of cessation from labor.

THE MANNA

The second month after leaving Egypt, the Israelites reach the wilderness of Sin (Ex. 16:1), where they complain about the lack of food. God promises to cause to rain bread from heaven (16:4), which takes the form of a nourishing substance called “mann.” It will accompany them throughout their wilderness journeys (16:11-36). However, the instructions given to the people on how to gather and prepare the mann seem piecemeal and incomplete and there is

initially much confusion. What emerges is that the entire operation is somehow connected to the special character of the seventh day which is called Shabbat.2

This is the procedure to be followed:

1. Each morning the people are to gather enough mann from the fields for their daily needs. All is to be consumed that day and nothing left for the morrow.

2. On the morning of the sixth day, the people will find a greater abundance of the mann and they are to gather a double portion, for that day and for the morrow (the seventh day).

3. All of the preparations of the mann (cooking and baking) for the seventh day are to be done on the sixth day.

4. On the seventh day (the Shabbat), no one is to go out to gather. There will be no mann in the fields, and the people are to eat on the Shabbat what they prepared the day before.

What started out as a Divine intervention to provide food for a hungry

people turns into a vital lesson as to the special nature of the Shabbat: Eat it today, for today is a sabbath unto the Lord, today you shall not find it in the

field (16:25),3

and See that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore He

gives you on the sixth day, bread for two days (16:29).

The people learn that in some sense the Shabbat is a “day of rest” even for God, for behold on that day “bread is not raining from heaven!” But also as a “day of rest” for Israel, the Shabbat not only proclaims freedom from slave labor but also from self-imposed routine chores. God wishes the Shabbat to be a day of unhurried pleasures in which the simple joys of life are to be experienced within the orbit of one’s family, without the anxieties and petty aggravations that can accompany acquisition and preparation of food.4

SINAI

The inclusion of the Shabbat in the Decalogue reveals an entirely new dimension to the day. No longer a mere custom from the period of Egyptian

slavery or a day primarily associated with the phenomenon of the mann in the wilderness, the Shabbat is now seen as one of the main terms of the Covenant. The Shabbat is to be observed by every Israelite as one of the conditions of Israel’s special relationship to God. For the Shabbat represents a cosmic event; the completion of God’s work of Creation in which this vast, complex and dynamic universe with man at its apex is brought into being out of nothing. As such, the day itself, this time-warp, is impregnated by God with bracha [blessing] and kedusha [holiness] which can be experienced by those who remember to keep it holy.5

However, this enriched significance of the Shabbat does not come to re-

place the earlier conceptions but, rather, to build upon them. If the Shabbat of Egypt demonstrated the importance of making a radical break with the worka-day week, and the Shabbat of mann showed the value of a day of social

interaction with family and community, then the Shabbat of Sinai comes to provide a conceptual framework and to promise a Divine Presence to the

Shabbat experience as a whole. Thus, the oneg Shabbat [Shabbat pleasure] is no mere hedonistic exercise, but a weekly celebration of life in a world which God has pronounced very good (Gen. 1:31).

Understanding these three components of the Shabbat and how they inte-

ract is indispensable for anyone today who wishes to make (Ex. 31:16) Shabbat anew and to taste therein the goodness of God.

NOTES

1. This in spite of a rabbinic assertion that the Patriarchs “observed the Shabbat” and the inclusion of their names in the afternoon prayer [mincha] of the Shabbat. There is no evidence that any special religious significance was accorded to the seventh day in the neighboring cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Unlike the lunar month or the solar year, the seven-day week is not based on any astronomical phenomena. The concept of the seventh day as a religious day of rest seems unique to Judaism.

2. Israel’s encounter with the Shabbat in connection with the mann seems to have been entirely fortuitous, without any advance instruction as to the nature and special significance of the day. The rabbis, however, found a solution in another mysterious passage: At the first wilderness station, called Marah, we read: There he made for them a statute [hok] and ordinance [mishpat] . . . (Ex. 15:25). The rabbis explain that “there God gave to Israel some portions of the Torah, such as the Shabbat, parah adumah [law of the red heifer] and civil laws in which they might engage themselves” (Sanhedrin 56). I prefer the interpretation of Nachmanides that there, in Marah, Moses set down for the Israelites “statutes and ordinances” of his own making; i.e., rules and regulations pertaining to journeying and camping in the wilderness. I wish to suggest that among these was the custom of resting on the Shabbat, with which they were already familiar from Egypt. However, up until the mann, the Shabbat had not been given any religious significance.

3. On the basis of the three-fold repetition of the word “today” [hayom] the rabbis asserted that it is mandatory to eat three meals [shalosh seudot] in the course of the Shabbat (B.T. Shabbat 117).

4. The halakha of Shabbat applies this principle of “preparing before Shabbat” to such other areas as clothing, bedding, illumination, location.

5. While the pagan world was familiar with the idea of holiness in particular places in space, Judaism emphasizes the concept of holiness in time.

Contributions of $25.00 and over are U.S. tax deductible when paid to P.E.F. Israel Endowment Fund, Inc., 317 Madison Ave., Suite 607, New York, N.Y. 10017

IMPORTANT

Please stipulate that the recipient of your contribution is the

Jewish Bible Quarterly, P.OB. 29002,

Jerusalem, Israel.