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MOTHERING,
Russian, Palestinian and Jewish
Middle-Class Mothers in Israeli Society

EDUCATION
Deborah Golden, Lauren Erdreich, Sveta Roberman

AND CULTURE
Mothering, Education and Culture
 Deborah Golden · Lauren Erdreich
Sveta Roberman

Mothering, Education
and Culture
Russian, Palestinian and Jewish Middle-Class
Mothers in Israeli Society
Deborah Golden Sveta Roberman
Faculty of Education Gordon Academic College
University of Haifa of Education
Haifa, Israel Haifa, Israel

Lauren Erdreich and

Levinsky College of Education Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tel Aviv, Israel Jerusalem, Israel
and
Beit Berl Academic College
Kfar Saba, Israel

ISBN 978-1-137-53630-3 ISBN 978-1-137-53631-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53631-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938542

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover image: © Bon Appetit/Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
 This book is dedicated to the memory of Deborah’s parents
Abe and Aviva Golden,
and to our children Daniel, Maayan, Gefen, Bustan, Adi and Liza
 Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we wish to thank the women who generously shared
their lives with us and who are the bedrock of this study.
We are grateful to our colleagues and students who took time to offer
insightful readings, useful suggestions and encouragement along the
way: Eyal Ben-Ari, Edna Lomsky-Feder, Afnan Masarwa, Hadas Netzer-
Dagan, Galia Plotkin Amrami, Amit Rottman-Tzur and Chen Yaari.
Thanks to Michal Mor-Milerman for her wide range of indispensable
research skills and to Sophie Richmond for her experienced editorial eye
and sound advice.
We are also pleased to have had the opportunity to present parts of
the study at various academic forums where we received timely ques-
tions and comments, among these: 2nd Annual Conference of the Israel
Comparative Education Society (Bar-Ilan University, 2016), Parenting
and Personhood Conference (University of Canterbury, 2016) and the
Education and Inequality Summer Workshop convened by Annette
Lareau (Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, 2016).
The University of Haifa provided initial seed money that enabled us
to set this project in motion, as well as contributing towards the cost of
editing and indexing; the Department of Leadership and Policy at the
Faculty of Education, University of Haifa made available some resources
for research assistance.
Finally, we thank each other for such a good mix of lively, thoughtful
and convivial collaborative work.

vii
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Setting the Scene—Theory, Context, Method 5

3 En Route 27

4 The ‘Well-Invested’ Child 63

5 Homing In 105

6 A Comparative Look 141

7 Conclusion: Envisioning Possibilities 157

Appendix: Group Sketches 163

Notes 167

Bibliography 177

Index 195

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This study began on a sunny summer day over coffee and conversation
between two anthropologists—Deborah and Lauren—a conversation
that turned into the first of many, and was subsequently joined by a third
anthropologist, Sveta. At the time of that first conversation, Lauren had
moved to the town in Israel where Deborah was living with her son,
then 13 years old. As Lauren’s daughter toddled around the table, we
discussed our past work and interests. Sometime later, Deborah called
Lauren with an idea. When we met this time, Deborah brought with her
a stack of fliers that had been shoved into her postbox—advertisements
for after-school activities, private tutoring, and leisure activities for moth-
ers and children. ‘Let’s do something about this—about how mums are
inundated with educational goods and services that tell them how they
should be taking care of their kids,’ she suggested. This hit home with
Lauren, who had just given birth to her second daughter and had spent
a lot of time checking out possibilities for child care for both daugh-
ters. The town in which we lived offered many options—for a price. We
noticed almost immediately how our particular locale shaped our expe-
rience as mothers—the abundance of educational goods and services
required that we make choices among them, choices that were decisions
about what sort of mothers we are or would like to be.
From the perspective of this study, mothering must be understood in
relation to perceptions and practices of what constitutes a proper educa-
tion for children—since the two are inextricably interwoven. In today’s
world, education plays an increasingly important role in equipping

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D. Golden et al., Mothering, Education and Culture,
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2 D. Golden et al.

children with knowledge and practical and social skills, as well as defining
social location and potential social mobility. With the onset of industrial
society and the burgeoning of nation-states, education of children was
removed from the home and replaced by a formal system of compulsory
schooling. Schooling was deemed necessary to adequately prepare chil-
dren with basic skills, knowledge, values and sentiments requisite for a
future citizen in the modern nation-state (Gellner 1983) and was put
in the hands of professional educators. In this form of social organiza-
tion, the family fulfilled a supporting role; in this supporting role women
were viewed as the most appropriate caretakers of home and as primarily
responsible for the children’s upbringing and education.
Education—within school and without—is a major arena in which
parents—primarily through the gendered work of mothers—reproduce
their own class and cultural sensibilities. Although family life has under-
gone changes, and men are increasingly involved in the upbringing of
their children, recent decades have seen the ‘transformation of women’s
domestic labour to include extensive educational work in the home’
(Reay 2005a, 113); mothers take prime responsibility for the ‘comple-
mentary education work’ around schooling (Griffith and Smith 2005)
and for decision-making relating to educational matters (Ball 2003).
Perceptions and practices of mothering are culturally embedded and pro-
duced in response to changing requirements and expectations of what
mothers can and should be doing in relation to their children’s educa-
tion and the demands produced by educational institutions. In seeking
to ensure a proper education for their children, mothers are obliged
not only to make decisions regarding their children’s schooling but also
to negotiate a market of ‘extra-curricular’ ideas, goods and services, all
of which hold out the promise of ensuring a proper education for the
children. This negotiation requires knowledge, financial resources and
time—putting the middle class at a distinct advantage and, in turn,
positing middle-class mothering as something to be emulated and as a
widely disseminated cultural model of what is considered to be proper
mothering.
In a landmark study entitled The Cultural Contradictions of
Motherhood, published in 1996, Sharon Hays coined the term ‘intensive
mothering’ to describe middle-class motherhood—a ‘gendered model
that advises mothers to expend a tremendous amount of time, energy,
and money in raising their children’ (Hays 1996, x). With its roots in
western middle-class sensibilities and values, this model has evolved
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

into a dominant cultural model and benchmark for proper mothering

among other mothers elsewhere (Arendell 2000; Ennis 2014; Faircloth
et al. 2013; Lee et al. 2014; O’Reilly 2014). But how far could this con-
struct take us in understanding diverse social realities? We wondered how
middle-class mothers, far removed from the context of the American
mothers who formed the basis of Hays’ study, interpret and implement
‘intensive mothering’? How are these perceptions and practices elabo-
rated in ways of educating their children?
This study looks at how women reflect upon and make sense of this
task. Grounded in an approach that brings together ideas of class, cul-
ture and social positioning, our study is a comparative, ethnographically
informed interview study of Israeli middle-class mothers’ understandings
and modes of engagement in their children’s education. Focusing on
middle-class mothers from three Israeli social-cultural groups—Russian
immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Palestinian Israelis and Jewish
native-born Israelis1—the book examines the ways in which these moth-
ers both share and differ in their understandings of a proper education
for their children and of their task as mothers in ensuring this. Propelled
throughout by a comparative thrust, our study is guided by four main
questions:

• What are mothers’ understandings of a proper education for their

children and of their role in ensuring this?
• What perceptions and practices of mothering and education do
women share and in what ways do they differ?
• How do class, culture and social positioning conjoin in shaping per-
ceptions and practices of educating children and of what it means to
be a mother?
• How do global discourses about proper education and competent
mothering interweave with local concerns and possibilities?

The three groups of mothers in our study currently participate in the

Israeli middle class, albeit with different relationships to major social
institutions and resources, as well as access to educational goods and ser-
vices. Note that we use the verb ‘participate’ in the middle class advis-
edly, rather than the word ‘belong’, which is both more fixed and more
passive. The use of the term ‘participation’ gives a sense of the ongo-
ing work of class and its forward-moving thrust. In a discussion of the
constituents of class, Conley (2008, 370) highlights what he calls the
4 D. Golden et al.

imagining of ‘possibility, expectation, probability’. This process of

‘envisioning possibility step by step’ (2008, 370) is particularly apt for
describing and understanding the ways by which mothers seek, over
time, and through ensuring what they view as a proper education for
their children, to ensure the future social positioning of their children,
even as this may not be fully in place in the present moment. Moreover,
all the women in our study have the economic means and social and cul-
tural capital with which to seek out and take advantage of educational
resources. Under these circumstances, in which these women are rela-
tively less constrained, we assumed that cultural underpinnings of what
is deemed to be proper mothering would be more easily discerned. That
is, by holding class constant across the three groups, we sought to allow
issues related to culture and social positioning to come to the fore. As
the study shows, mothers in each group share certain ideas about moth-
ering; yet their modes of engaging with their children’s education reflect
distinct, but changing, cultural models of both mothering and educa-
tion, as well as being shaped by their different, and evolving social posi-
tionings in Israeli society.
 CHAPTER 2

Setting the Scene—Theory, Context,

Method

In this chapter, we outline the theoretical, contextual and methodologi-

cal knowledge that sets the scene for the empirical findings to be pre-
sented in subsequent chapters. The chapter comprises four main sections.
In the first (‘Conceptual underpinnings’), we present the conceptual
underpinnings of our study—the ideas and concepts that inform our
understanding of the issues at hand; in the second (‘The Israeli context’),
we provide some background information on Israeli society necessary
for making sense of and contextualizing our empirical findings; in the
third (‘The study’), we present the women in our study and the mode of
research; finally (‘Reading the book’), we present the structure and style
of subsequent chapters.

Conceptual Underpinnings
Women’s domestic activity, including child care, has long been con-
ceptualized by feminist theorists as a form of gendered work, albeit a
special form of such work. It is special because it entails the fostering
of profound, complex and affectionate bonds of love (Arendell 2000;
Ramaekers and Suissa 2011); it is based in virtues and values that make
it other-directed—oriented towards the production of another’s emo-
tions, feelings and sense of self in society; it requires attentiveness, recep-
tivity and responsiveness, all the while arousing intense emotion on the
part of the mother (Bubeck 2001). Thus, there is a special texture to
the relationship between mothers and children which lends this work its

© The Author(s) 2018 5

D. Golden et al., Mothering, Education and Culture,
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6 D. Golden et al.

intensity and sense of import. Yet the particular forms that this love and
care take are shaped in broad sociocultural contexts (Barlow and Chapin
2010). It is to these broader contexts, and the ways they inform mother-
ing among middle-class mothers, that we turn.

Parenting, Education and Middle-Class Advantage

In this study, we adopt a number of premises regarding class. Our first
premise is that class matters—it is a ‘fundamental organizer of social
experience’ (Weis 2008, 3, emphasis in original), though not the only
one. This is the case objectively—that is, people may be affiliated to
class in terms of objective parameters, with class serving as a major axis
of stratification, though exactly what those parameters are and what
the links are between them is a matter of ongoing debate, both theo-
retical and empirical (Lareau and Conley 2008). It is also the case that
class matters subjectively—people may have a sense of class belonging—
what Reay (2005b) terms a ‘psychic landscape’ or ‘affective lexicon of
class’. However, a subjective sense of class as a fundamental constituent
of social identity may itself vary according to context (Ortner 2003);
moreover, there may be a disjuncture between objective measures of class
affiliation and subjective experiences of such affiliation (Sayer 2002). Our
second premise is that class is not a fixed category, or a ‘ready-made’
reality (Skeggs 2004). Rather, class formation is ‘lived out’ (Weis 2008,
8): class boundaries, positioning and belonging are dynamic—constantly
produced and reproduced, made and remade through lived social prac-
tices (Skeggs 2004, 5). Our third premise is that one of the prime arenas
in which such class work takes place is childrearing and education, as par-
ents seek to create and maintain future class belonging for their children.
To this third premise, we now turn.
More than two decades ago, Brown discerned the emergence of a ‘paren-
tocracy’, in which ‘a child’s education is increasingly dependent upon the
wealth and wishes of parents, rather than the ability and effort of pupils’
(1990, 66, emphasis in original). Since then, the spread and entrenchment of
neoliberalism (Apple 2001) and the concomitant expansion of choices in the
educational system, have shifted responsibility for a child’s future prospects
from the state onto families. In this scheme of things, middle-class families
are at a distinct advantage. A proliferation of studies shows how middle-class
families secure class advantage by bringing to bear the various forms of capi-
tal—economic, social, cultural and emotional—on their children’s education.
 2 SETTING THE SCENE … 7

Bourdieu was primarily concerned with the mechanisms by which

class advantage is reproduced across generations in major social institu-
tions—particularly family and school. His work focused on the inter-
actions between three different forms of capital: economic (money
and assets), social (relationships, networks and connections) and cul-
tural (goods, embodied dispositions and institutionalized qualifica-
tions), examining how these are activated in different institutional fields
and may be converted into each other (Bourdieu 1997). Informed by
Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital, studies show how middle-class par-
ents—whose meritocratic and individualist values and attitudes towards
education mesh with those of the school, and who have at their disposal
resources of time and money, as well as appropriate cultural capital—are
better placed to further their children’s education (Horvat et al. 2003;
Lareau 2003). Broadly speaking, studies of parenting,2 education and
middle-class advantage cover four, partially overlapping, spheres: school
choice, parental involvement in schools, after-school enrichment activi-
ties and the inculcation of habitus.

School Choice
One basic practice of reproducing educational advantage is school
choice. In his book Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing
in America, Stearns (2003) claims that since the late nineteenth century
school and schooling emerged as a major arena of anxiety for parents.
New ideas about the vulnerable nature of infants and children, along-
side parents’ increasing awareness that their children’s futures were
dependent on a proper education, led to an expanding realm of parental
anxiety in relation to schooling—spanning a range of issues from con-
cern about the suitability of the social milieu to the learning process
itself. From the slightly different angle of the literature on the risk soci-
ety, sociologists have further identified the contemporary phenomenon
of ‘parent anxiety’ as a particular manifestation of the notion of risk.
Middle-class parents find themselves confronted with increasing respon-
sibility for their children’s education, a burgeoning market of educa-
tional services and goods, at the same time as they are dogged by ‘fear
of falling’ (Ehrenreich 1989), namely, the potential loss of educational
advantage. Parents approach the educational market from a perspec-
tive of identifying and managing perceived potential risks, including the
perceived inadequate quality of schooling, misrecognition of children’s
needs and abilities, and physical and/or social environments deemed
8 D. Golden et al.

unsafe or unsuitable (Ball 2003; Cucchiara 2013; Lareau and Goyette

2014; Rollock et al. 2015). It is middle-class parents who enjoy the
‘privilege of risk’ (Kimelberg 2014)—that is, they have the cultural and
financial capital and wherewithal to invest in the ongoing, time-consum-
ing definition of what constitutes the risks of schooling. The manage-
ment of risk becomes a moral keystone of middle-class parenting, both
informed by, and yet arousing further anxiety (Furedi 2002; Stearns
2003). Middle-class parents are equipped with the personal knowledge
and resources to best negotiate the educational market, as well as to tap
into the resources embedded in social networks of like-minded middle-
class parents (Ball 2003; Ball and Vincent 1998). Bringing different ide-
ologies into their definitions of what constitutes risk, middle-class parents
develop strategies of school choice and risk-management that repro-
duce middle-class advantage and identity (Cucchiara 2013; Lareau and
Goyette 2014; Reay et al. 2011; Vincent and Ball 2007).

Parental Involvement in Schooling

Sociological studies of parental involvement in schooling focus on class-
based inequalities in access to the various forms of capital (economic,
social, cultural and emotional) and the impact of this unequal access on
parental involvement in children’s schooling. Taking a lead from Annette
Lareau’s Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in
Elementary Education (1989) in the USA and Diane Reay’s Class Work:
Mothers’ Involvement in Their Children’s Primary Schooling (1998) in
the UK, studies show that middle-class mothers are actively involved
and intervene in schooling, while working-class mothers tend to leave
schooling to professionals, and to depend on and trust their decisions.
Specifically, studies have found that the lower and middle classes dif-
fer regarding the extent and mode of intervention in educational deci-
sions (Lareau 1989; Lareau and Horvat 1999), including speech styles
when dealing with teachers (Lareau and Calarco 2012) and responses of
teachers to parents from different classes (Reay 1998; Vincent and Ball
2007). Studies consistently show that it is middle-class mothers who
are most adequately equipped to actively manage, mediate and negoti-
ate the home/school boundary (Crozier 1998, 1999; Cucchiara and
Horvat 2009; Griffith and Smith 2005; Horvat et al. 2003; Lareau and
Horvat 1999; Lareau and Lopes Muñoz 2012; Reay et al. 2011; Wanat
and Zieglowsky 2010). Moreover, the active navigation of this bound-
ary serves to construct what is deemed to be appropriate middle-class
 2 SETTING THE SCENE … 9

mothering and proper parental involvement in schools (Erdreich and

Golden 2017; Gillies 2006; O’Brien 2008; Posey-Maddox 2013).3

Enrichment Activities
The complementary educational work that mothers do for their children
on a daily basis also includes the organization and supervision of their
children’s extra-curricular activities. On this account, too, the literature is
replete with distinctions between the work of middle-class and working-
class mothers. In her influential book Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race
and Family Life (2003), Lareau, addressing the ways in which modes
of childrearing reflect and contribute to the reproduction of class, pro-
posed the terms ‘concerted cultivation’ and ‘accomplishment of natural
growth’. According to this distinction, middle-class parents engage in
concerted cultivation as they ‘deliberately try to stimulate their children’s
development and foster their cognitive and social skills’ (2003, 5), pri-
marily through organized activities, leading to skills in interacting with
adults on an equal basis and a strong sense of entitlement. By contrast,
while working-class parents provide comfort, food, shelter and support
for their children, they do not engage in the deliberate cultivation of
children and their leisure activities: ‘In the accomplishment of natural
growth, children experience long stretches of leisure time, child-initiated
play, clear boundaries between adults and children, and daily interactions
with kin’ (2003, 3). The array of choices with which middle-class chil-
dren are presented is aimed at allowing them to tap into a wide range
of inherent capabilities and talents, to develop the wide-ranging tastes of
‘cultural omnivores’ (Peterson and Kern 1996) and ‘life skills’ from an
early age (Vincent and Ball 2007), and to prepare children for competi-
tion and stringent selection procedures at a later stage in their educa-
tional career (Friedman 2013).

Inculcating Habitus
The furnishing of middle-class children with what are deemed to be vital
qualities, modes of being and behaviour is further nurtured at home.
Bourdieu termed this ‘habitus’—namely, the processes whereby cultural
capital, primarily cultivated in family settings, is embodied in such a way
as to become an enduring part of mind and body (Bourdieu 1997). In
middle-class families, these include the ‘feting’ of individualism through
material goods and of individual achievement through praise (Ochs
and Kremer-Sadlik 2015); ‘fun morality’ attached to the way in which
10 D. Golden et al.

mothers play with their children (Sirota 2010); a democratic style of

childrearing, in which children are encouraged to choose how to act,
think and feel, and to act on these choices (Sirota 2010); shared enjoy-
ment of joint activities among parents and children that serve as a means
for cultivating focus and persistence in children or ‘enriching intimacy’
(Stefansen and Aarseth 2011); and mutual sharing of authentic feelings
between parents and child (Ochs and Kremer-Sadlik 2015). Through
these mutually resonating practices, mothers inculcate in their children
the basic sensibilities and skills of the middle class.
These mothering practices that instil a certain class culture or habitus
reproduce advantage in other spheres of social interaction, particularly
at school. Expanding on Bourdieu’s notion of capital, a British school
of researchers has conceptualized women’s complementary educational
work as a means for communicating what they call ‘emotional capital’
(Gillies 2006; O’Brien 2008; Reay 2000). They argue that the work
done by both middle-class and working-class mothers for their children
is emotional and involves caring, albeit in different ways and with differ-
ent aims. Middle-class mothers’ care communicates support and encour-
ages well-being in ways that mesh with the emotional support expected
of parents. While middle-class mothers nurture a strong ‘sense of enti-
tlement’ among their children as unique individuals (Lareau 2003),
working-class mothers emphasize attributes of ‘“fitting in” rather than
standing out’ (Gillies 2005, 845). In a study of childrearing and social
class in three neighbourhoods in the USA, Kusserow (2004) further
elaborated the middle class/working class distinction. In her view, the
‘soft individualism’, characteristic of upper middle-class modes of chil-
drearing, emphasizes the delicacy and uniqueness of the child’s self and
the need to provide a protective environment so as to allow the child’s
self to flower; ‘hard individualism’, emphasizing the need to develop a
tough and resilient self, characterizes the working classes. There are two
types of hard individualism—the one more geared to survival (‘hard pro-
tective individualism’) and the other towards social mobility (‘hard pro-
jective individualism’). The specific type of individualism is instilled in
children by parents at home and in interaction with the dominant insti-
tution of school.
*
To sum up so far, these four overlapping spheres of mothering and
education—school choice, parental involvement, cultivation of enrich-
ment activities and the inculcation of habitus—hang together to make
 2 SETTING THE SCENE … 11

a coherent whole in which the educational work mothers do on behalf

of their children is tied up with class-based access to the various forms
of capital. However, notwithstanding its crucial importance, we note
that this lens, in focusing on differences between classes, has taken less
interest in diversity within classes (Irwin and Elley 2011). Such diversity
emerges as class interacts with other factors. In a study close in spirit to
our own, Rollock et al. (2015) show how class and race interact as black
middle-class families of Caribbean heritage in Britain endeavour to steer
a successful educational course for their children in the face of low expec-
tations, racism, discrimination, stereotyping of black parents and resist-
ance among teens. This research indicates that the capital middle-class
parents bring to parental involvement is shaped not only by class, but
also by cultural history, race and ethnicity.
The educational work mothers do on behalf of their children is also
inextricably intertwined with cultural perceptions of mothering. As
middle-class women put these practices into action, they secure class
advantage for their children; in so doing, they also shape themselves
as mothers in light the of cultural models of proper mothering. It is to
mothering as a cultural model that we now turn.

‘Intensive Mothering’ as a Cultural Model

Anthropological research has long addressed the culturally embedded
nature of childrearing,4 but only relatively recently has such research
explicitly focused on what perceptions and practices of childrearing tell
us about cultural notions of mothering. Hays’ Cultural Contradictions
of Motherhood (1996), presented in the Introduction, shifted the classi-
cal anthropological focus from non-western societies to the American
middle class and from childrearing to mothering. What, she asked, did
childrearing practices among middle-class women in contemporary west-
ern society have to teach us about cultural expectations of mothers?
Hays’ study was based on the idea of looking at mothering as a cultural
model—namely, one of those:

presupposed, taken for granted models of the world that are widely shared
(although not necessarily to the exclusion of other, alternative models) by
the members of a society … that frame experience, supplying interpreta-
tions of that experience and inferences about it, and goals for action.
(Quinn and Holland 1987, 4–6)5
12 D. Golden et al.

Specifically, she described motherhood among American middle-class

mothers as ‘intensive mothering’—a ‘gendered model that advises
mothers to expend a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money
in raising their children’ (Hays 1996, x). This model is child-centred,
expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labour-intensive and financially
expensive. The model of intensive mothering, with its cultural defi-
nitions pertaining to the care and work required to foster children’s
development and education, has evolved as a dominant cultural model
for women in western middle-class families, even as these same women
negotiate with sometimes competing cultural models of gender equity,
rationality, detachment, self-interest and power (Hays 1996).
The model itself is a cultural construct—grounded in, shaped and
reinforced by changing perceptions of childhood, child development,
well-being and family over the last century. With the demise of child
labour, there emerged a perception of childhood as a period of vulner-
ability, and of parents as protectors of, and emotionally invested in, their
children (Zelizer 1985). The expansion of free and compulsory school-
ing shaped the work of childhood into learning, with women’s roles
as mothers coming to increasingly focus on education (Mintz 2004;
Rutherford 2013; Stearns 2003). Increased expectations put on chil-
dren by schools and the evaluation of children through grading their
educational achievements framed schooling as the means for future class
belonging and possibilities of mobility. At the same time, psychology
was in its heyday, providing a scientific basis for an emphasis on proper
child development (Burman 1994). Being a parent came to be per-
ceived not as natural or intuitive, or even socially learned, but as expert-
guided. Mothers were required to comply not only with medically based
injunctions of how to care for their children’s physical health, but also
psychologically based injunctions as to how to care for their emotional
and psychological well-being (Apple 2006; Furedi 2002; Grant 1998;
Rutherford 2013; Stearns 2003; Zelizer 1985). Bringing up children had
become ‘parenting’ (Furedi 2002; Lee 2014) and being a mother ‘moth-
ering’ (Ramaekers and Suissa 2011; Suissa 2006).
As experts proliferated, a market of expert opinions on parenting
expanded. Parenting shifted again to include more autonomy in the
choice among experts, but also an unceasing obligation for parents to
gather information and make choices, now seen as determining a child’s
well-being and future trajectory (Rutherford 2013). Once perceived
as in need of expert advice and scientific guidance, mothers were now
 2 SETTING THE SCENE … 13

viewed as active consumers of educational ideas, products and services

(Apple 2006; Rutherford 2013). ‘Parenting’ became a matter of making
informed choices that would determine a child’s future and the way chil-
dren were educated became a sign and statement of parents’, and par-
ticularly mothers’, competence and social identity.
Notwithstanding the specific cultural roots of the model of intensive
mothering in western middle-class sensibilities and values, the model has
become a hegemonic one for other classes and cultures. Mothers across
the globe are confronted by the western middle-class model of intensive
mothering as a powerful cultural model, even as the very different cir-
cumstances of their lives—economic, cultural and social and political—
may shape different ideas of what is deemed to be a proper education for
their children.
Let us now turn to the unique context in which the questions at the
heart of this study are addressed.

The Israeli Context

To grasp the nature of Israeli society today, one must under-
stand something of its history. Jewish settlement in Palestine
began in the late nineteenth century—settlers consisted primar-
ily of young immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe seeking
to participate in the quest for Jewish self-determination by estab-
lishing a national home in the ancestral homeland, then part of
the Ottoman Empire. Those early decades saw the setting up of
the foundations of the new Jewish society in Palestine—at once
administrative, economic, military, social and cultural. It also saw
the beginnings of conflict—sometimes violent—between settler
Jews and indigenous Arabs, culminating in the war that followed
immediately on the declaration of the state in 1948. The war—
called the War of Independence by Israeli Jews and the Nakba
(or “catastrophe”) by Palestinians—resulted in the expulsion
or fleeing of over 700,000 Palestinians. Those Palestinians who
remained within the borders of the new state—some 150,000—
became Israeli citizens in the new state. Today, Palestinian citi-
zens of Israel, distinct from Palestinians living in the West Bank,
Gaza and the Palestinian diaspora, number well over a million
and constitute over 20% of Israel’s population. The vast majority
are Muslim; the rest Christians and Druze. The ongoing Israeli
Another random document with
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institution is so pure that men in their present imperfect state cannot
acceptably sanctify it. They will keep it, however, in the new creation,
but in the meantime they keep with joyfulness the eighth day, which
having never been sanctified by God is not difficult to keep in the
present state of wickedness.
Justin Martyr’s reasons for not observing the Sabbath are not at all
like those of the so-called Barnabas, for Justin seems to have
heartily despised the Sabbatic institution. He denies that it was
obligatory before the time of Moses, and affirms that it was abolished
by the advent of Christ. He teaches that it was given to the Jews
because of their wickedness, and he expressly affirms the abolition
of both the Sabbath and the law. So far is he from teaching the
change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week,
or from making the Sunday festival a continuation of the ancient
Sabbatic institution, that he sneers at the very idea of days of
abstinence from labor, or days of idleness, and though God gives as
his reason for the observance of the Sabbath, that that was the day
on which he rested from all his work, Justin gives as his first reason
for the Sunday festival that that was the day on which God began his
work! Of abstinence from labor as an act of obedience to the
Sabbath, Justin says:—

“The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such

observances.”[633]

A second reason for not observing the Sabbath is thus stated by

him:—

“For we too would observe the fleshly circumcision, and the

Sabbaths, and in short, all the feasts, if we did not know for
what reason they were enjoined you—namely, on account of
your transgressions and the hardness of your hearts.”[634]

As Justin never discriminates between the Sabbath of the Lord

and the annual sabbaths he doubtless here means to include it as
well as them. But what a falsehood is it to assert that the Sabbath
was given to the Jews because of their wickedness! The truth is, it
was given to the Jews because of the universal apostasy of the
Gentiles.[635] But in the following paragraph Justin gives three more
reasons for not keeping the Sabbath:—

“Do you see that the elements are not idle, and keep no
Sabbaths? Remain as you were born. For if there was no
need of circumcision before Abraham, or of the observance of
Sabbaths, of feasts and sacrifices, before Moses; no more
need is there of them now, after that, according to the will of
God, Jesus Christ the Son of God has been born without sin,
of a virgin sprung from the stock of Abraham.”[636]

Here are three reasons: 1. “That the elements are not idle, and
keep no Sabbaths.” Though this reason is simply worthless as an
argument against the seventh day, it is a decisive confirmation of the
fact already proven, that Justin did not make Sunday a day of
abstinence from labor. 2. His second reason here given is that there
was no observance of Sabbaths before Moses, and yet we do know
that God at the beginning did appoint the Sabbath to a holy use, a
fact to which as we shall see quite a number of the fathers testify,
and we also know that in that age were men who kept all the
precepts of God. 3. There is no need of Sabbatic observance since
Christ. Though this is mere assertion, it is by no means easy for
those to meet it fairly who represent Justin as maintaining the
Christian Sabbath.
Another argument by Justin against the obligation of the Sabbath
is that God “directs the government of the universe on this day
equally as on all others!”[637] as though this were inconsistent with
the present sacredness of the Sabbath, when it is also true that God
thus governed the world in the period when Justin acknowledges the
Sabbath to have been obligatory. Though this reason is trivial as an
argument against the Sabbath, it does show that Justin could have
attached no Sabbatic character to Sunday. But he has yet one more
argument against the Sabbath. The ancient law has been done away
by the new and final law, and the old covenant has been superseded
by the new.[638] But he forgets that the design of the new covenant
was not to do away with the law of God, but to put that law into the
heart of every Christian. And many of the fathers, as we shall see,
expressly repudiate this doctrine of the abrogation of the Decalogue.
Such were Justin’s reasons for rejecting the ancient Sabbath. But
though he was a decided asserter of the abrogation of the law, and
of the Sabbatic institution itself, and kept Sunday only as a festival,
modern first-day writers cite him as a witness in support of the
doctrine that the first day of the week should be observed as the
Christian Sabbath on the authority of the fourth commandment.
Now let us learn what stood in the way of Irenæus’ observance of
the Sabbath. It was not that the commandments were abolished, for
we shall presently learn that he taught their perpetuity. Nor was it
that he believed in the change of the Sabbath, for he gives no hint of
such an idea. The Sunday festival in his estimation appears to have
been simply of “equal significance” with the Pentecost.[639] Nor was
it that Christ broke the Sabbath, for Irenæus says that he did not.[640]
But because the Sabbath is called a sign he regarded it as
significant of the future kingdom, and appears to have considered it
no longer obligatory, though he does not expressly say this. Thus he
sets forth the meaning of the Sabbath as held by him:—

“Moreover the Sabbaths of God, that is, the kingdom, was,

as it were, indicated by created things,” etc.[641]

“These [promises to the righteous] are [to take place] in the

times of the kingdom, that is, upon the seventh day which has
been sanctified, in which God rested from all the works which
he created, which is the true Sabbath of the righteous,”[642]
etc.

“For the day of the Lord is as a thousand years: and in six

days created things were completed: it is evident, therefore,
 that they will come to an end at the sixth thousand year.”[643]

But Irenæus did not notice that the Sabbath as a sign does not
point forward to the restitution, but backward to the creation, that it
may signify that the true God is the Creator.[644] Nor did he observe
the fact that when the kingdom of God shall be established under the
whole heaven all flesh shall hallow the Sabbath.[645]
But he says that those who lived before Moses were justified
“without observance of Sabbaths,” and offers as proof that the
covenant at Horeb was not made with the fathers. Of course if this
proves that the patriarchs were free from obligation toward the fourth
commandment, it is equally good as proof that they might violate any
other. These things indicate that Irenæus was opposed to Sabbatic
observance, though he did not in express language assert its
abrogation, and did in most decisive terms assert the continued
obligation of the ten commandments.
Tertullian offers numerous reasons for not observing the Sabbath,
but there is scarcely one of these that he does not in some other
place expressly contradict. Thus he asserts that the patriarchs
before Moses did not observe the Sabbath.[646] But he offers no
proof, and he elsewhere dates the origin of the Sabbath at the
creation,[647] as we shall show hereafter. In several places he
teaches the abrogation of the law, and seems to set aside moral law
as well as ceremonial. But elsewhere, as we shall show, he bears
express testimony that the ten commandments are still binding as
the rule of the Christian’s life.[648] He quotes the words of Isaiah in
which God is represented as hating the feasts, new-moons, and
sabbaths observed by the Jews,[649] as proof that the seventh-day
Sabbath was a temporary institution which Christ abrogated. But in
another place he says: “Christ did not at all rescind the Sabbath: he
kept the law thereof.”[650] And he also explains this very text by
stating that God’s aversion toward the Sabbaths observed by the
Jews was “because they were celebrated without the fear of God by
a people full of iniquities,” and adds that the prophet, in a later
passage speaking of Sabbaths celebrated according to God’s
commandment, “declares them to be true, delightful, and
inviolable.”[651] Another statement is that Joshua violated the
Sabbath in the siege of Jericho.[652] Yet he elsewhere explains this
very case, showing that the commandment forbids our own work, not
God’s. Those who acted at Jericho did “not do their own work, but
God’s, which they executed, and that, too, from his express
commandment.”[653] He also both asserts and denies that Christ
violated the Sabbath.[654] Tertullian was a double-minded man. He
wrote much against the law and the Sabbath, but he also
contradicted and exposed his own errors.
Origen attempts to prove that the ancient Sabbath is to be
understood mystically or spiritually, and not literally. Here is his
argument:—

“‘Ye shall sit, every one in your dwellings: no one shall

move from his place on the Sabbath day.’ Which precept it is
impossible to observe literally; for no man can sit a whole day
so as not to move from the place where he sat down.”[655]

Great men are not always wise. There is no such precept in the
Bible. Origen referred to that which forbade the people to go out for
manna on the Sabbath, but which did not conflict with another that
commanded holy convocations or assemblies for worship on the
Sabbath.[656]
Victorinus is the latest of the fathers before Constantine who offers
reasons against the observance of the Sabbath. His first reason is
that Christ said by Isaiah that his soul hated the Sabbath; which
Sabbath he in his body abolished; and these assertions we have
seen answered by Tertullian.[657] His second reason is that “Jesus
[Joshua] the son of Nave [Nun], the successor of Moses, himself
broke the Sabbath day,”[658] which is false. His third reason is that
“Matthias [a Maccabean] also, prince of Judah, broke the
Sabbath,”[659] which is doubtless false, but is of no consequence as
authority. His fourth argument is original, and may fitly close the list
of reasons assigned in the early fathers for not observing the
Sabbath. It is given in full without an answer:—

“And in Matthew we read, that it is written Isaiah also and

the rest of his colleagues broke the Sabbath.”[660]
 CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SABBATH IN THE RECORD OF THE EARLY FATHERS.

The first reasons for neglecting the Sabbath are now mostly obsolete—A
portion of the early fathers taught the perpetuity of the decalogue, and
made it the standard of moral character—What they say concerning
the origin of the Sabbath at Creation—Their testimony concerning the
perpetuity of the ancient Sabbath, and concerning its observance—
Enumeration of the things which caused the suppression of the
Sabbath and the elevation of Sunday.
The reasons offered by the early fathers for neglecting the
observance of the Sabbath show conclusively that they had no
special light on the subject by reason of living in the first centuries,
which we in this later age do not possess. The fact is, so many of the
reasons offered by them are manifestly false and absurd that those
who in these days discard the Sabbath, do also discard the most of
the reasons offered by these fathers for this same course. We have
also learned from such of the early fathers as mention first-day
observance, the exact nature of the Sunday festival, and all the
reasons which in the first centuries were offered in its support. Very
few indeed of these reasons are now offered by modern first-day
writers.
But some of the fathers bear emphatic testimony to the perpetuity
of the ten commandments, and make their observance the condition
of eternal life. Some of them also distinctly assert the origin of the
Sabbath at creation. Several of them moreover either bear witness to
the existence of Sabbath-keepers, or bear decisive testimony to the
perpetuity and obligation of the Sabbath, or define the nature of
proper Sabbatic observance, or connect the observance of the
Sabbath and first day together. Let us now hear the testimony of
those who assert the authority of the ten commandments. Irenæus
asserts their perpetuity, and makes them a test of Christian
character. Thus he says:—
 “For God at the first, indeed, warning them [the Jews] by
means of natural precepts, which from the beginning he had
implanted in mankind, that is, by means of the Decalogue
(which, if any one does not observe, he has no salvation), did
then demand nothing more of them.”[661]

This is a very strong statement. He makes the ten commandments

the law of nature implanted in man’s being at the beginning; and so
inherited by all mankind. This is no doubt true. It is the presence of
the carnal mind or law of sin and death, implanted in man by the fall,
that has partially obliterated this law, and made the work of the new
covenant a necessity.[662] He again asserts the perpetuity and
authority of the ten commandments:—

“Preparing man for this life, the Lord himself did speak in
his own person to all alike the words of the Decalogue: and
therefore, in like manner, do they remain permanently with us,
receiving, by means of his advent in the flesh, extension and
increase, but not abrogation.”[663]

By the “extension” of the decalogue, Irenæus doubtless means the

exposition which the Saviour gave of the meaning of the
commandments in his sermon on the mount.[664] Theophilus speaks
in like manner concerning the decalogue:—

“For God has given us a law and holy commandments; and

every one who keeps these can be saved, and, obtaining the
resurrection, can inherit incorruption.”[665]

“We have learned a holy law; but we have as Law-giver him

who is really God, who teaches us to act righteously, and to
be pious, and to do good.”[666]
 “Of this great and wonderful law which tends to all
righteousness, the ten heads are such as we have already
rehearsed.”[667]

Tertullian calls the ten commandments “the rules of our regenerate

life,” that is to say, the rules which govern the life of a converted
man:—

“They who theorize respecting numbers, honor the number

ten as the parent of all the others, and as imparting perfection
to the human nativity. For my own part, I prefer viewing this
measure of time in reference to God, as if implying that the
ten months rather initiated man into the ten commandments;
so that the numerical estimate of the time needed to
consummate our natural birth should correspond to the
numerical classification of the rules of our regenerate life.”[668]

In showing the deep guilt involved in the violation of the seventh

commandment, Tertullian speaks of the sacredness of the
commandments which precede it, naming several of them in
particular, and among them the fourth, and then says of the precept
against adultery that

It stands “in the very forefront of the most holy law, among
the primary counts of the celestial edict.”[669]

Clement of Rome, or rather the author whose works have been

ascribed to this father, speaks thus of the decalogue as a test:—

“On account of those, therefore, who, by neglect of their

own salvation, please the evil one, and those who, by study of
their own profit, seek to please the good One, ten things have
been prescribed as a test to this present age, according to the
number of the ten plagues which were brought upon
Egypt.”[670]
 Novatian, who wrote about a. d. 250, is accounted the founder of
the sect called Cathari or Puritans. He wrote a treatise on the
Sabbath, which is not extant. There is no reference to Sunday in any
of his writings. He makes the following striking remarks concerning
the moral law:—

“The law was given to the children of Israel for this purpose,
that they might profit by it, and return to those virtuous
manners which, although they had received them from their
fathers, they had corrupted in Egypt by reason of their
intercourse with a barbarous people. Finally, also, those ten
commandments on the tables teach nothing new, but remind
them of what had been obliterated—that righteousness in
them, which had been put to sleep, might revive again as it
were by the afflatus of the law, after the manner of a fire
[nearly extinguished].”[671]

It is evident that in the judgment of Novatian, the ten

commandments enjoined nothing that was not sacredly regarded by
the patriarchs before Jacob went down into Egypt. It follows,
therefore, that, in his opinion, the Sabbath was made, not at the fall
of the manna, but when God sanctified the seventh day, and that
holy men from the earliest ages observed it.
The Apostolical Constitutions, written about the third century, give
us an understanding of what was widely regarded in the third century
as apostolic doctrine. They speak thus of the ten commandments:—

“Have before thine eyes the fear of God, and always

remember the ten commandments of God,—to love the one
and only Lord God with all thy strength; to give no heed to
idols, or any other beings, as being lifeless gods, or irrational
beings or dæmons.”[672]

“He gave a plain law to assist the law of nature, such a one
as is pure, saving, and holy, in which his own name was
 inscribed, perfect, which is never to fail, being complete in ten
commands, unspotted, converting souls.”[673]

This writer, like Irenæus, believed in the identity of the decalogue

with the law of nature. These testimonies show that in the writings of
the early fathers are some of the strongest utterances in behalf of
the perpetuity and authority of the ten commandments. Now let us
hear what they say concerning the origin of the Sabbath at creation.
The epistle ascribed to Barnabas, says:—

“And he says in another place, ‘If my sons keep the

Sabbath, then will I cause my mercy to rest upon them.’ The
Sabbath is mentioned at the beginning of the creation [thus]:
‘And God made in six days the works of his hands, and made
an end on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified
it.’”[674]

Irenæus seems plainly to connect the origin of the Sabbath with

the sanctification of the seventh day:—

“These [things promised] are [to take place] in the times of

the kingdom, that is, upon the seventh day, which has been
sanctified, in which God rested from all his works which he
created, which is the true Sabbath, in which they shall not be
engaged in any earthly occupation.”[675]

Tertullian, likewise, refers the origin of the Sabbath to “the

benediction of the Father”:—

“But inasmuch as birth is also completed with the seventh

month, I more readily recognize in this number than in the
eighth the honor of a numerical agreement with the
Sabbatical period; so that the month in which God’s image is
sometimes produced in a human birth, shall in its number tally
 with the day on which God’s creation was completed and
hallowed.”[676]

“For even in the case before us he [Christ] fulfilled the law,

while interpreting its condition; [moreover] he exhibits in a
clear light the different kinds of work, while doing what the law
excepts from the sacredness of the Sabbath, [and] while
imparting to the Sabbath day itself which from the beginning
had been consecrated by the benediction of the Father, an
additional sanctity by his own beneficent action.”[677]

Origen, who, as we have seen, believed in a mystical Sabbath, did

nevertheless fix its origin at the sanctification of the seventh day:—

“For he [Celsus] knows nothing of the day of the Sabbath

and rest of God, which follows the completion of the world’s
creation, and which lasts during the duration of the world, and
in which all those will keep festival with God who have done
all their works in their six days.”[678]

The testimony of Novatian which has been given relative to the

sacredness and authority of the decalogue plainly implies the
existence of the Sabbath in the patriarchal ages, and its observance
by those holy men of old. It was given to Israel that they might
“return to those virtuous manners which, although they had
received them from their fathers, they had corrupted in Egypt.” And
he adds, “Those ten commandments on the tables teach nothing
new, but remind them of what had been obliterated.”[679] He did not,
therefore, believe the Sabbath to have originated at the fall of the
manna, but counted it one of those things which were practiced by
their fathers before Jacob went down to Egypt.
Lactantius places the origin of the Sabbath at creation:—
 “God completed the world and this admirable work of
nature in the space of six days (as is contained in the secrets
of holy Scripture) and consecrated the seventh day on
which he had rested from his works. But this is the Sabbath
day, which, in the language of the Hebrews, received its name
from the number, whence the seventh is the legitimate and
complete number.”[680]

In a poem on Genesis written about the time of Lactantius, but by

an unknown author, we have an explicit testimony to the divine
appointment of the seventh day to a holy use while man was yet in
Eden, the garden of God:—

“The seventh came, when God

At his work’s end did rest, decreeing it
Sacred unto the coming age’s joys.”[681]

The Apostolical Constitutions, while teaching the present

obligation of the Sabbath, plainly indicate its origin to have been at
creation:—

“O Lord Almighty, thou hast created the world by Christ,

and hast appointed the Sabbath in memory thereof, because
that on that day thou hast made us rest from our works, for
the meditation upon thy laws.”[682]

Such are the testimonies of the early fathers to the primeval origin
of the Sabbath, and to the sacredness and perpetual obligation of
the ten commandments. We now call attention to what they say
relative to the perpetuity of the Sabbath, and to its observance in the
centuries during which they lived. Tertullian defines Christ’s relation
to the Sabbath:—

“He was called ‘Lord of the Sabbath’ because he

maintained the Sabbath as his own institution.”[683]
 He affirms that Christ did not abolish the Sabbath:—

“Christ did not at all rescind the Sabbath: he kept the law
thereof, and both in the former case did a work which was
beneficial to the life of his disciples (for he indulged them with
the relief of food when they were hungry), and in the present
instance cured the withered hand; in each case intimating by
facts, ‘I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.’”[684]

Nor can it be said that while Tertullian denied that Christ abolished
the Sabbath he did believe that he transferred its sacredness from
the seventh day of the week to the first, for he continues thus:—

“He [Christ] exhibits in a clear light the different kinds of

work, while doing what the law excepts from the sacredness
of the Sabbath, [and] while imparting to the Sabbath day
itself, which from the beginning had been consecrated by the
benediction of the Father, an additional sanctity by his own
beneficent action. For he furnished to this day divine
safeguards—a course which his adversary would have
pursued for some other days, to avoid honoring the Creator’s
Sabbath, and restoring to the Sabbath the works which were
proper for it.”[685]

This is a very remarkable statement. The modern doctrine of the

change of the Sabbath was unknown in Tertullian’s time. Had it then
been in existence, there could be no doubt that in the words last
quoted he was aiming at it a heavy blow; for the very thing which he
asserts Christ’s adversary, Satan, would have had him do, that
modern first-day writers assert he did do in consecrating another day
instead of adding to the sanctity of his Father’s Sabbath.
Archelaus of Cascar in Mesopotamia emphatically denies the
abolition of the Sabbath:—
 “Again, as to the assertion that the Sabbath has been
abolished, we deny that he has abolished it plainly; for he was
himself also Lord of the Sabbath.”[686]

Justin Martyr, as we have seen, was an out-spoken opponent of

Sabbatic observance, and of the authority of the law of God. He was
by no means always candid in what he said. He has occasion to
refer to those who observed the seventh day, and he does it with
contempt. Thus he says:—

“But if some, through weak-mindedness, wish to observe

such institutions as were given by Moses (from which they
expect some virtue, but which we believe were appointed by
reason of the hardness of the people’s hearts), along with
their hope in this Christ, and [wish to perform] the eternal and
natural acts of righteousness and piety, yet choose to live with
the Christians and the faithful, as I said before, not inducing
them either to be circumcised like themselves, or to keep the
Sabbath, or to observe any other such ceremonies, then I
hold that we ought to join ourselves to such, and associate
with them in all things as kinsmen and brethren.”[687]

These words are spoken of Sabbath-keeping Christians. Such of

them as were of Jewish descent no doubt generally retained
circumcision. But there were many Gentile Christians who observed
the Sabbath, as we shall see, and it is not true that they observed
circumcision. Justin speaks of this class as acting from “weak-
mindedness,” yet he inadvertently alludes to the keeping of the
commandments as the performance of “the eternal and natural
acts of righteousness,” a most appropriate designation indeed.
Justin would fellowship those who act thus, provided they would
fellowship him in the contrary course. But though Justin, on this
condition, could fellowship these “weak-minded” brethren, he says
that there are those who “do not venture to have any intercourse
with, or to extend hospitality to, such persons; but I do not agree with
them.”[688] This shows the bitter spirit which prevailed in some
quarters toward the Sabbath, even as early as Justin’s time. Justin
has no word of condemnation for these intolerant professors; he is
only solicitous lest those persons who perform “the eternal and
natural acts of righteousness and piety” should condemn those who
do not perform them.
Clement of Alexandria, though a mystical writer, bears an
important testimony to the perpetuity of the ancient Sabbath, and to
man’s present need thereof. He comments thus on the fourth
commandment:—

“And the fourth word is that which intimates that the world
was created by God, and that he gave us the seventh day as
a rest, on account of the trouble that there is in life. For God is
incapable of weariness, and suffering, and want. But we who
bear flesh need rest. The seventh day, therefore, is
proclaimed a rest—abstraction from ills—preparing for the
primal day, our true rest.”[689]

Clement recognized the authority of the moral law; for he treats of

the ten commandments, one by one, and shows what each enjoins.
He plainly teaches that the Sabbath was made for man, and that he
now needs it as a day of rest, and his language implies that it was
made at the creation. But in the next paragraph, he makes some
curious suggestions, which deserve notice:—

“Having reached this point, we must mention these things

by the way; since the discourse has turned on the seventh
and the eighth. For the eighth may possibly turn out to be
properly the seventh, and the seventh manifestly the sixth,
and the latter properly the Sabbath, and the seventh a day of
work. For the creation of the world was concluded in six
days.”[690]

This language has been adduced to show that Clement called the
eighth day, or Sunday, the Sabbath. But first-day writers in general
have not dared to commit themselves to such an interpretation, and
some of them have expressly discarded it. Let us notice this
statement with especial care. He speaks of the ordinals seventh and
eighth in the abstract, but probably with reference to the days of the
week. Observe then,
1. That he does not intimate that the eighth day has become the
Sabbath in place of the seventh which was once such, but he says
that the eighth day may possibly turn out to be properly the seventh.
2. That in Clement’s time, a. d. 194, there was not any confusion
in the minds of men as to which day was the ancient Sabbath, and
which one was the first day of the week, or eighth day, as it was
often called, nor does he intimate that there was.
3. But Clement, from some cause, says that possibly the eighth
day should be counted the seventh, and the seventh day the sixth.
Now, if this should be done, it would change the numbering of the
days, not only as far back as the resurrection of Christ, but all the
way back to the creation.
4. If, therefore, Clement, in this place, designed to teach that
Sunday is the Sabbath, he must also have held that it always had
been such.
5. But observe that, while he changes the numbering of the days
of the week, he does not change the Sabbath from one day to
another. He says the eighth may possibly be the seventh, and the
seventh, properly the sixth, and the latter, or this one [Greek, ἡ μὲν
κυρίως εἶυαι σάββατου,], properly the Sabbath, and the seventh a
day of work.
6. By the latter must be understood the day last mentioned, which
he says should be called, not the seventh, but the sixth; and by the
seventh must certainly be intended that day which he says is not the
eighth, but the seventh, that is to say, Sunday.
There remains but one difficulty to be solved, and that is why he
should suggest the changing of the numbering of the days of the
week by striking one from the count of each day, thus making the
Sabbath the sixth day in the count instead of the seventh; and
making Sunday the seventh day in the count instead of the eighth.
The answer seems to have eluded the observation of the first-day
and anti-Sabbatarian writers who have sought to grasp it. But there
is a fact which solves the difficulty. Clement’s commentary on the
fourth commandment, from which these quotations are taken, is
principally made up of curious observations on “the perfect number
six,” “the number seven motherless and childless,” and the number
eight, which is “a cube,” and the like matters, and is taken with some
change of arrangement almost word for word from Philo Judæus, a
teacher who flourished at Alexandria about one century before
Clement. Whoever will take pains to compare these two writers will
find in Philo nearly all the ideas and illustrations which Clement has
used, and the very language also in which he has expressed them.
[691] Philo was a mystical teacher to whom Clement looked up as to
a master. A statement which we find in Philo, in immediate
connection with several curious ideas, which Clement quotes from
him, gives, beyond all doubt, the key to Clement’s suggestion that
possibly the eighth day should be called the seventh, and the
seventh day called the sixth. Philo said that, according to God’s
purpose, the first day of time was not to be numbered with the other
days of the creation week. Thus he says:—

“And he allotted each of the six days to one of the portions

of the whole, taking out the first day, which he does not
even call the first day, that it may not be numbered with the
others, but entitling it one, he names it rightly, perceiving in it,
and ascribing to it, the nature and appellation of the limit.”[692]

This would simply change the numbering of the days, as counted

by Philo, and afterward partially adopted by Clement, and make the
Sabbath, not the seventh day, but the sixth, and Sunday, not the
eighth day, but the seventh; but it would still leave the Sabbath day
and the Sunday the same identical days as before. It would,
however, give to the Sabbath the name of sixth day, because the first
of the six days of creation was not counted; and it would cause the
eighth day, so called in the early church because of its coming next
after the Sabbath, to be called seventh day. Thus the Sabbath would
be the sixth day, and the seventh a day of work, and yet the Sabbath
would be the identical day that it had ever been, and the Sunday,
though called seventh day, would still, as ever before, remain a day
on which ordinary labor was lawful. Of course, Philo’s idea that the
first day of time should not be counted, is wholly false; for there is
not one fact in the Bible to support it, but many which expressly
contradict it, and even Clement, with all deference to Philo, only
timidly suggests it. But when the matter is laid open, it shows that
Clement had no thought of calling Sunday the Sabbath, and that he
does expressly confirm what we have fully proved out of other of the
fathers, that Sunday was a day on which, in their judgment, labor
was not sinful.
Tertullian, at different periods of his life, held different views
respecting the Sabbath, and committed them all to writing. We last
quoted from him a decisive testimony to the perpetuity of the
Sabbath, coupled with an equally decisive testimony against the
sanctification of the first day of the week. In another work, from
which we have already quoted his statement that Christians should
not kneel on Sunday, we find another statement that “some few”
abstained from kneeling on the Sabbath. This has probable
reference to Carthage, where Tertullian lived. He speaks thus:—

“In the matter of kneeling also, prayer is subject to diversity

of observance, through the act of some few who abstain from
kneeling on the Sabbath; and since this dissension is
particularly on its trial before the churches, the Lord will give
his grace that the dissentients may either yield, or else
indulge their opinion without offense to others.”[693]

The act of standing in prayer was one of the chief honors

conferred upon Sunday. Those who refrained from kneeling on the
seventh day, without doubt did it because they desired to honor that
day. This particular act is of no consequence; for it was adopted in
imitation of those who, from tradition and custom, thus honored
Sunday; but we have in this an undoubted reference to Sabbath-
keeping Christians. Tertullian speaks of them, however, in a manner
quite unlike that of Justin in his reference to the commandment-
keepers of his time.
Origen, like many other of the fathers, was far from being
consistent with himself. Though he has spoken against Sabbatic
observance, and has honored the so-called Lord’s day as something
better than the ancient Sabbath, he has nevertheless given a
discourse expressly designed to teach Christians the proper method
of observing the Sabbath. Here is a portion of this sermon:—

“But what is the feast of the Sabbath except that of which

the apostle speaks, ‘There remaineth therefore a Sabbatism,’
that is, the observance of the Sabbath by the people of God?
Leaving the Jewish observances of the Sabbath, let us see
how the Sabbath ought to be observed by a Christian. On the
Sabbath day all worldly labors ought to be abstained from. If,
therefore, you cease from all secular works, and execute
nothing worldly, but give yourselves up to spiritual exercises,
repairing to church, attending to sacred reading and
instruction, thinking of celestial things, solicitous for the future,
placing the Judgment to come before your eyes, not looking
to things present and visible, but to those which are future
and invisible, this is the observance of the Christian
Sabbath.”[694]

This is by no means a bad representation of the proper

observance of the Sabbath. Such a discourse addressed to
Christians is a strong evidence that many did then hallow that day.
Some, indeed, have claimed that these words were spoken
concerning Sunday. They would have it that he contrasts the
observance of the first day with that of the seventh. But the contrast
is not between the different methods of keeping two days, but
between two methods of observing one day. The Jews in Origen’s
time spent the day mainly in mere abstinence from labor, and often
added sensuality to idleness. But the Christians were to observe it in
divine worship, as well as sacred rest. What day he intends cannot