Summer Sabbath Themes at the Allied Jewish Chapel

June 29August 31 2013

1. Gen. 2:1-3.
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1 And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.2 And on the seventh day God finished His work
which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. 3 And God blessed the
seventh 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.
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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 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 thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; 10 for in six days the LORD
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the
sabbath day, and hallowed it.
3. Deut. 5:11ff.
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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 thy
cattle, 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 a
mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.
4. Isa. 58:13-14.
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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 of
the 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.
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15 In those days saw I in Judah some treading winepresses on the sabbath, and bringing in heaps of corn, and lading asses
therewith; 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 brought
in fish, and all manner of ware, and sold on the sabbath unto the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem. 17 Then I contended
with 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 Israel
by profaning the sabbath.' 19 And it came to pass that, when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the sabbath, I
commanded that the doors should be shut, and commanded that they should not be opened till after the sabbath; and some
of my servants set I over the gates, that there should no burden be brought in on the sabbath day. 20 So the merchants and
sellers of all kind of ware lodged without Jerusalem once or twice. 21 Then I forewarned them, and said unto them: 'Why
lodge ye about the wall? if ye do so again, I will lay hands on you.' From that time forth came they no more on the
sabbath. 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 of
Thy mercy.
6. Excerpted from Heschel, The Sabbath
There 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 to
subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our
sole 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 is
conceived by most of us as a thing. The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as
a 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 teaches
us 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 the
Romans nor the Germans were able to burn.The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days
a 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 of
creation; 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 people notable people, free seekers, far from faith, who admit openly that they themselves do not keep not the
Sabbath or any other religious practices going 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. For
National reasons only, they do not agree even to add a Second Day of the Sabbath Among the Exiles [Shabbat shenit
shel galuyot: compare the concept of yomtov sheni shel galuyot the second day of festivals as observed outside of
Israel.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 the
Sabbathsaid one of the greatest men of the community. And he is right. Whoever feels an authentic connection with the
life 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 State cannot 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 have
driven 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 holiness
surrounding this great gift, and to resist with all ones might against anything detracting from it.