The Jewish conception of the Sabbath, therefore, represents an idea of human creativity which stands in opposition to the prevailing winds of both Eastern and Western civilization. At the same time, it integrates the salient feature of each into a careful oscillation between the two: During the week, man creates worlds, as in the West; while on the Sabbath, his creative action gives way to contemplative restraint, as in the East.

Yet, it would be a mistake to describe the seven-day sabbatical cycle as simply a synthesis of the two. The presence of each has a profound effect on the nature of the other: In the Jewish view, neither achievement nor passive unification with nature is seen as ideal. Rather, it is through the kind of creative activity that results from the combination of the two that man achieves great things, in imitation of the Creator. By focusing exclusively on his achievements, man works for the sake of his own aggrandizement, without regard for the higher meaning of his creations, and in the end takes God’s place instead of imitating him. By surrendering his will to nature’s own dynamic, however, man sacrifices the “image of God” within each individual, for the sake of which he was put on earth.

The individual will thus lies at the basis of the Jewish conception of creativity. And like Western culture after the Renaissance, Judaism therefore views positively the enjoyment of labor and its fruits.⁷⁴ But in contrast to the ceaseless purposiveness of Western rationalism, the Sabbath teaches about the rhythm of all true creativity, human and divine. By directing himself to this rhythm, man learns to cast his desires into the fundamental mold of Creation. He learns to work and to rest, to go forth from himself and to return to himself.

 

VI

The Jewish idea of creativity, of which the Sabbath is a central pillar, gives man a unique place in the world. He is simultaneously part of Creation and outside of it. As a creature of flesh and blood, he is subject to the laws that rule the material world. As one who was created in the image of God, however, he possesses a freedom that enables him to subjugate nature to his authority. The dual aspect of humankind is expressed in the mission that God imposed upon Adam: “The Eternal God took Adam and placed him in the Garden of Eden, to work it and to keep it.”⁷⁵ When he commands man to “work” the garden, God makes him an active partner in Creation. Man’s role in this context is expressed in the following midrash from Genesis Rabba:

A philosopher asked R. Hoshaya: “If circumcision is so important, why was Adam not created circumcised?” R. Hoshaya answered him: “Why did you shave the hair of your head and your beard?” The philosopher replied, “They were growing wild.” R. Hoshaya said to him: “If so, then may your eyes be gouged out and your hands cut off—for they too have grown wild!” The philosopher asked him: “Aren’t you going a bit far?” R. Hoshaya answered: “I cannot offer you a decisive answer, but I can say this: Everything was created in need of improvement. Mustard requires sweetening, as does the lupine, and wheat requires grinding—so even man requires correction.”⁷⁶

According to R. Hoshaya, nature is not a perfect creation, and its improvement is an obligation cast upon mankind. This is not meant as an indictment of the quality of God’s works, but rather as a statement about the fundamental continuity between God’s works and those of man in the world—that man’s task is, in essence, to complete the process of Creation which God began.

Still, Adam was required not only to work the garden, but also to “keep” it. Man is the custodian of Creation, and has a responsibility toward it. He must treat it as a precious charge, which can be spoiled if his arrogance is not kept in check. As the midrash explains:

When the Holy One created Adam, he took him and went around with him to all the trees of the Garden of Eden, and he said to him: “Look at my works, how fine and excellent they are. All that I created, I created for you. Make certain not to spoil or destroy my world, for if you do, there is no one to repair it after you.”⁷⁷

This view of man’s place in the universe finds its most important expression in Judaism in the Sabbath, and the balance it implies between “working” and “keeping” the garden that is our world. Genesis Rabba makes this connection explicit, by comparing the verbs employed in the verse, “He placed him in the Garden of Eden, to work it and to keep it” with those of the account of the Sabbath of Creation: “‘He placed him [vayaniheihu]’—similarly, he gave him the commandment of the Sabbath, as it is written, ‘And he rested [vayanah] on the seventh day.’ ‘To work it’—’Six days you shall work.’ ‘And to keep it’—‘Keep the Sabbath day.’”⁷⁸ The midrash poses a balance between will and restraint, between the urge to change and fashion the world and the need to listen, to open oneself to the intonations of earthly existence. “The Sabbath day. From every direction light, in every corner a spark. The symbol of revelation,” writes Franz Rosenzweig. “The Israelite soul looks into apertures of nature and sees the light of God bursting forth from within it. The Israelite soul looks into the apertures of life and acknowledges its role, its mission, and its obligation.”⁷⁹

The secret of the Sabbath is inherent in the Jewish obligation to identify with and adhere to God. It teaches of man’s place in the world, and his responsibility to strike a balance between the two fundamentals of his nature: Between his material and finite being, on the one hand, and the creative vitality given him by God, on the other. Such a balance enables man to transcend nature and take part in the exalted. It contains within it the promise of healing the rift between man and the world, and between the created and the Creator.

---

Yosef Yitzhak Lifshitz is an Associate Fellow at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

 

 

Notes

This article was written with the assistance of Assaf Sagiv.

1. Zohar, Truma, 164. Cf. Sanhedrin 58b: “Resh Lakish said: If an idolater observes the day of rest, he is liable for the death penalty, as it is said: ‘Day and night they shall not cease.’”

More than any other aspect of Jewish law, the Sabbath expresses God’s covenant with Israel: “Speak to the Israelites and say: Still, you must keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout the ages, that you may know that I, the Eternal, have chosen you.” Exodus 31:13.

2. “R. Hiya bar Aba said, in the name of R. Yohanan: Whoever observes the Sabbath properly, even an idolater in the generation of Enosh, is forgiven, as it is written: ‘Happy is the man [enosh] who does this… who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it [m’halelo]’ (Isaiah 56:2)—do not read ‘m’halelo,’ but ‘mahul lo [he is forgiven].’” Shabbat 118b.

3. The difference between the sanctity of the Sabbath and that of the other festivals is clearly expressed in the formulation of the blessing sanctifying each day. On the Sabbath, it is concluded with the words: “Blessed are you, Eternal, who sanctifies the Sabbath,” while on the holidays this blessing ends with the words: “Blessed are you, Eternal, who sanctifies Israel and the seasons.” Brachot 49a. According to the rabbis, this difference reflects the divine source of the sanctity of the Sabbath, inter alia, because the determination of the Sabbath is not dependent upon humans, while the determination of the holidays is dependent upon the proclamation of the beginning of each month, which in Jewish tradition is determined in accordance with the decision of the Sanhedrin. Psahim 117b.

4. The sanctified days of rest of Christianity and Islam—traditions that are inspired by the Jewish Sabbath—also are distinguished from it on this decisive point. Friday, which is sacred to Muslims as yom al-jum’a, is consecrated for prayer, but work is not prohibited on it. The Christian Sunday, on the other hand, is a day of rest from work, but this is generally not for the reasons that the Tora presents for the demand to cease from work; rather, the main reason for the Christian day of rest is to free time for religious rites and prayers. Exceptional in this context are the English Puritans and the Seventh-Day Adventists, who copied the Sabbath commandment almost in its entirety (the former applying it on Sundays, while the latter moving it to Saturdays).

5. Haim Nahman Bialik, Halacha and Agada (London: Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, 1944), p. 12.

6. Ya’akov Melchin, “The Sabbath Laws Against Cultural Communities?” Yahadut Hofshit 19, Spring 2000, p. 7.

7. This position appears in his book Belief and Prayer, of which no known copies remain; we instead rely on the citations of Augustine. Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R.W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1998), p. 264. In a similar spirit, Tacitus noted that the Jews “say that they first chose to rest on the seventh day because that day ended their toils; but after a time they were led by the charms of indolence to give over the seventh year as well to inactivity.” See Tacitus, The Histories, in Tacitus in Five Volumes, trans. C.H. Moore (Cambridge: Harvard, 1958), vol. iii, p. 181. Especially virulent is the statement by the poet Rutilius Namatianus, who wrote in the fifth century that if Judea had not been conquered by Pompey and Titus, the plague of the “ignoble sloth” of the Sabbath would have spread throughout the Empire. Peter Schafer, Judeophobia: Attitudes Towards the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Harvard, 1997), pp. 87-88.

8. The historian Aharon Gurevich writes on this subject: “In man’s obligation to labor the Church saw both the result of his imperfection and a striking manifestation of it. As long as Adam and Eve were in paradise they were in a state of innocence and took no thought for their sustenance. The Fall entailed divine retribution; now man would have to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, and Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden to till the earth from which he had been made.” Aharon Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. G.L. Campbell (London: Routledge, 1985), pp. 259-260.

9. Cf. Amos Frisch, The Biblical View of Labor (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hame’uhad, 1999), p. 30. [Hebrew]

10. Exodus 20:8-9. Avot D’rabi Natan, ch. 11.

11. Genesis 2:15-16.

12. Exodus 25:8.

13. Exodus 20:9.

14. Avot D’rabi Natan, ch. 11.

15. Genesis Rabba 74:12; see also Midrash Tanhuma, Vayetze 13.

16. Mishna Avot 2:2.

17.  Maimonides, Mishneh Tora, Laws of Tora Study 3:10.

18. “Follow the Eternal your God, and revere him; observe his commandments, and heed his voice; worship him, and adhere to him.” Deuteronomy 13:5.

19. Deuteronomy 13:5.

20. Genesis 2:8.

21. Leviticus Rabba 25:3.

22. Cf. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “And You Shall Search from There,” in Halachic Man: Revealed and Hidden (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1979), p. 180. [Hebrew]

23. R. Haim of Volozhin, Nefesh Hahaim 1:7.

24. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 12.

25. With regard to the quality of this labor, there is obviously a world of difference between God and his creatures. God is the supreme Craftsman, who created the universe ex nihilo; while man has to work from existing raw materials. However, in his attempt to imprint his vision on nature and thereby give his materials form, he resembles his Creator in his ability to fashion reality in accordance with his own designs.

26. Plutarch, On the Rationality of Animals, in C.C.W. Taylor, trans., The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1999), p. 147. Aristotle raises a similar argument in The Physics: “Indeed, as a general proposition, the arts either, on the basis of Nature, carry things further than Nature can, or they imitate Nature.” Aristotle, The Physics, trans. Philip H. Wicksteed (Cambridge: Harvard, 1963), vol. i, p. 173. 

27. Jean-Marc Ferry, “Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary,” in Mark Lilla, ed., New French Thought: Political Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton, 1994), p. 136.

28. Plato, “Timaeus,” in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, eds. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, trans. A.E. Taylor (Princeton: Princeton, 1961), pp. 1158-1161.

29. Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, A History of Six Ideas: An Essay in Aesthetics, trans. Christopher Kasparek (Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1980), p. 247.

30. Tatarkiewicz, History, pp. 247-248.

31. Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting, trans. A. Philip McMahon (Princeton: Princeton, 1956), vol. i, p. 23.

32. An echo of this tradition is heard in Mechilta D’rabi Ishmael, Vayak’hel. Cf. also Rashi on Beitza 13b; Zvahim 47a.

33. Numbers Rabba 12:13. The verses cited are, respectively: Genesis 1:1; Genesis 1:6; Exodus 26:33; Genesis 1:9; Exodus 30:18; Genesis 1:14; Exodus 25:31; Genesis 1:20; Exodus 25:20; Exodus 28:1; Genesis 2:1; Exodus 39:32; Genesis 2:2; Numbers 7:1; Genesis 2:3; Numbers 7:1.

34. Mechilta, beginning of Vayak’hel. Cf. Yevamot 6a: “One might think that the building of the Temple overrides the Sabbath. Scripture therefore teaches: ‘You shall keep my Sabbaths and venerate my sanctuary’ (Leviticus 19:30)—all of you are obligated to honor me.” See also Rashi and Nahmanides on Exodus 35:2; as well as Nahmanides on Exodus 31:13, s.v. ah et shabtotai tishmoru.

35. According to the Talmud, “The categories of labor are forty less one. R. Hanina bar Hama said to them: These correspond to the types of labor in the Tabernacle.” Therefore: “Liability is incurred [for a Sabbath labor prohibition] only for a labor of the kind that was performed in the Tabernacle. They sowed, therefore, you may not sow. They reaped, therefore, you may not reap. They carried boards up from the ground to the wagon, therefore, you may not carry from a public domain to a private domain. They lowered the boards from the wagon to the ground, therefore, you may not carry from a private domain to a public domain. They transported from one wagon to another, therefore, you may not carry from one private domain to another.” Shabbat 49b.

36. The halacha distinguishes between avot melacha (categories of labor) and toledot melacha (derivatives), both of which are considered to be forbidden under the biblical prohibition. A labor is considered to be an av melacha if it is one of the types of work involved in the construction of the Tabernacle, or if it resembles one of these labors in the purpose of the action and in the means with which it is performed. A labor is considered to be a toledat melacha if it is similar in purpose to one of the types of work involved in the construction of the Tabernacle, but is performed by different means, or if it is similar in the manner in which the act of labor is performed.

37. Exodus 35:30-33.

38. Rashi on Hagiga 10b.

39. Aroch Hashulhan, Laws of the Sabbath 242:20.

40. A terminological comment should be made here regarding the terms “liable” (hayav), “exempt” (patur) and “permitted” (mutar). The halacha contains two levels of law, that of the laws of the Tora itself and that of the decrees and regulations enacted throughout the generations by the rabbinical authorities, which are considered to have a lower standing. In halachic language, the term “liable” refers to a violation of the biblical law and its attendant sanctions. “Exempt” relates to an action that does not violate the biblical law, and therefore is exempt from biblical sanction; this term, however, is understood to imply that the act is nonetheless prohibited on the rabbinical level. “Permitted” actions, in contrast, are not considered a violation on any level. Since it is my intention in this essay to present the meaning of the term “labor” as a biblical concept bound up in the original idea of the Sabbath, our interest is in the biblical law—that is, in those actions which are considered “work” and are therefore liable, as opposed to those which are not considered “work” and are therefore exempt or permitted. Cf. Maimonides, Mishneh Tora, Laws of the Sabbath 1:2-4.

41. Maimonides, Mishneh Tora, Laws of the Sabbath 1:8; 1:5.

42. Hagiga 10a-b.

43. Most of the medieval authorities ruled in accordance with R. Shimon, except for Maimonides, who finds the digger liable for using the earth, in accordance with the position of R. Yehuda.

44. Cf. Tosafot on Psahim 47b; see also the commentary of R. Joseph Karo, the Kesef Mishneh on Maimonides, Mishneh Tora, Laws of the Sabbath 1:7. Rashi’s commentary on the Talmud makes this point very clear. See Rashi on Shabbat 12a.

45. Rashi on Sanhedrin 84b.

46. Maimonides, Mishneh Tora, Laws of the Sabbath 22:27; 10:1. See note 40 above.

47. “Rabba—some said it was R. Yehoshua ben Levi—said: Even if one prays alone on the Sabbath night, he must recite the prayer of ‘[The heaven and the earth] were completed,’ for as R. Hamnuna said, Whoever prays on the Sabbath night and recites ‘[The heaven and the earth] were finished’ is regarded
by Scripture as one who becomes a partner with the Holy One, as it were, in the
act of Creation, for it is said, ‘vayechulu [they were completed]’; do not read ‘vayechulu’ but ‘vayechalu [and they (that is, God and man together) completed].’” Shabbat 119b.

48. Genesis 2:2-3.

49. Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (Bethesda: CDL Press, 1996), vol. 1, p. 161.

50. Isaiah 40:28.

51. Saadia Gaon related to this issue when he drew a parallel between the verses “and he rested [vayanah] on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11) and “and he ceased [vayishbot] on the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2). According to his interpretation, the two expressions have the same meaning, that of the cessation of activity: “The Scriptures do, indeed, characterize the positive and negative acts of creation by saying: ‘And God made’ (Genesis 1:7), ‘And he rested’ (Genesis 2:2). However, just as the ‘And he made’ was effected without motion or exertion, consisting only of the production of the thing created, so undoubtedly, when it is said, ‘And he rested,’ it was not relaxation from any kind of motion or exertion. It constituted merely the discontinuance of the production of what was to be created. Even though, then, the Scriptures say of God, ‘And he rested’ (Exodus 20:11), it means nothing further than that he discontinued his work of creation and production.” Saadia Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Samuel Rosenblatt (New Haven: Yale, 1948), p. 128.

Maimonides, based on other biblical verses, reaches the same conclusion. With regard to the verse in I Samuel 25:9: “[David’s young men] went and delivered this message to Nabal in the name of David, and then stopped [vayanuhu]…,” he interprets vayanuhu to mean that they “refrained from speech,” noting that “in the preceding verses there is no mention of their being tired in any way…. In this sense it is likewise said: ‘And he reposed [vayanah] on the seventh day.’” Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963), pp. 161-162.

The Vilna Gaon comments on the verse, “On the seventh day God finished the work which he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day from all the work which he had done,” (Genesis 2:2) that “‘ceasing’ is stated with regard to the completion of work, which is the moment after the action is finished.” Vilna Gaon, Aderet Eliahu, Genesis, s.v. yom hashishi.

52. From the traditional prayerbook, in the silent devotion of the Sabbath evening service. R. Isaac Arama clarifies this point: “The Sages, who instituted the prayers, disagreed on the interpretation of the first of the Sabbath prayers: ‘You sanctified the seventh day for the sake of your name, the end [tachlit] of the creation of heavens and earth’—You made it the actual purpose… it seems that they interpreted the wording ‘God completed [vayechal]’ in the sense of a willed purpose [tachlit]… for it is the desired end.” R. Isaac Arama, Akedat Yitzhak, Genesis 4.

53. Genesis 2:2.

54. Genesis Rabba 10:9.

55. Zohar, Pekudei, 45.

56. Genesis Rabba 10:9.

57. Maharal, Gevurot Hashem, ch. 39.

58. Vilna Gaon, Aderet Eliahu, Genesis, s.v. yom hashishi. A similar idea, drafted in terms borrowed from craftsmanship, is expressed by the midrash in Genesis Rabba 10:9.

59. Genesis 1:31.

60. T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (London: Faber and Faber, 1944), p. 12.

61. Eliot, Four Quartets, p. 32.

62. Cf. Wang Zhaowen, “Art Appreciation as Recreation,” in Zhu Liyuan and Gene Blocker, eds., Contemporary Chinese Aesthetics (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 99.

63. I Kings 19:11-12.

64. Chinese music attempts to arouse similar feelings. One of the few Western scholars who had the fortune of studying the Chinese classic tradition before it was lost in the Cultural Revolution relates that “the music of the seven-stringed zither tends constantly towards imagined sounds: A vibrato is prolonged long after all audible sound has ceased…. In the hands of an older generation the instrument tends to be used to suggest, rather than to produce, sounds.” Quoted in David Tame, The Secret Power of Music: The Transformation of Self and Society through Musical Energy (Wellingborough: Aquarian, 1988), p. 51.

65. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, trans. John W. Harvey (New York: Oxford, 1958), p. 70.

66. Rene Descartes, A Discourse on Method (Letchwort: Temple Press, 1924),  pp. 26-53.

67. Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 307-341. 

68. The sociologists of the Frankfurt school, who articulated this point in the 1940s, showed how this phenomenon affected almost all aspects of modern life. In a world that adopts this form of thought, the worth of an activity is measured by its ability to yield results for which a rational calculation is applicable. Max Horkheimer  and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Seabury, 1972).

69. Chris Rojek, Leisure and Culture (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. 37.

70. The criticism of the neo-Marxists clearly goes too far, as it presents the individual as possessing only economic worth, but its basic argument cannot be disregarded.

71. The Way of Lao-Tzu (Tao-Te Ching), trans. Wing-Tsit Chan (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), p. 139. In expressing this point with respect to Chinese belief, Ben-Ami Scharfstein has written: “‘Suspending your thought’ about matters without painful correlation means to be subject to ‘inactive’ spontaneous activity, for which the Taoists so compellingly argued, on the grounds of its inherent healthfulness and charm. One should not trouble Nature with artificial and human designs.” Ben-Ami Scharfstein, The Artist in World Culture (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1970), p. 123. [Hebrew]

72. Scharfstein, The Artist in World Culture, p. 123.

73. Ben-Ami Shiloni, Traditional Japan: Culture and History (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1995), pp. 102-108. [Hebrew]

74. “R. Hiya bar Ami said in the name of Ula: A person who lives from the labor of his hands is greater than one who fears Heaven. For regarding the one who fears Heaven, it is said: ‘Happy is the man who fears the Eternal’ (Psalms 112:1), while with regard to him who lives from the labor of his hands, it is said: ‘You shall enjoy the fruit of your labors; you shall be happy and you shall prosper’ (Psalms 128:2). ‘You shall be happy’ in this world, ‘and you shall prosper’ in the world to come.” Brachot 8a.

75. Genesis 2:15.

76. Genesis Rabba 11:6.

77. Ecclesiastes Rabba 7:1.

78. Genesis Rabba 16:5. Verses quoted are Genesis 2:15; Exodus 20:11; Genesis 2:15; Exodus 20:9; Genesis 2:15; Deuteronomy 5:12.

79. Franz Rosenzweig, “The Secret of the Sabbath,” in Franz Rosenzweig, The Book of the Sabbath, ed. H.N. Bialik (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1952), p. 539. [Hebrew]