(31) And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (1) The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. (2) On the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing, and He ceased on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. (3) And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that He had done.
“If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you will find your joy in the LORD, and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob." The mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Abraham Joshua Heschel-The Sabbath
He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self. When the Romans met the Jews and noticed their strict adherence to the law of abstaining from labor on the Sabbath, their only reaction was contempt. The Sabbath is a sign of Jewish indolence, was the opinion held by Juvenal, Seneca, and others. In defense of the Sabbath, Philo, the spokesman of the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, says, “On this day we are commanded to abstain from all work, not because the law inculcates slackness...
Its object is rather to give man relaxation from continuous and unending toil and by refreshing their bodies, with a regularly calculated system of remissions to send them out renewed to their old activities. For a breathing spell enables not merely ordinary people but athletes also to collect their strength with a stronger force behind them to undertake promptly and patiently each of the tasks set before them.”
Here the Sabbath is represented not in the spirit of the Bible but in the spirit of Aristotle. According to the Stagirite [Aristotle], “we need relaxation, because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end”; it is “for the sake of activity,” for the sake of gaining strength for new efforts. To the biblical mind, however, labor is the means toward an end, and the Sabbath as a day of rest, as a day of abstaining from toil, is not for the purpose of recovering one’s lost strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labor. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work. “Last in creation, first in intention,” the Sabbath is “the end of the creation of heaven and earth.”
The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living. Three acts of God denoted the seventh day: He rested, He blessed, and He hallowed the seventh day (Genesis 2:2-3). To the prohibition of labor is, therefore, added the blessing of delight and the accent of sanctity. Not only the hands of man celebrate the day; the tongue and the soul keep the Sabbath. One does not talk on it in the same manner in which one talks on weekdays. Even thinking of business or labor should be avoided.
Labor is a craft, but perfect rest is an art. It is the result of an accord of body, mind, and imagination. To attain a degree of excellence in art, one must accept its discipline, one must adjure slothfulness. The seventh day is a palace in time which we build. It is made of soul, of joy and reticence. In its atmosphere, a discipline is a reminder of adjacency to eternity.
תניא אמרו עליו על שמאי הזקן כל ימיו היה אוכל לכבוד שבת מצא בהמה נאה אומר זו לשבת מצא אחרת נאה הימנה מניח את השניה ואוכל את הראשונה אבל הלל הזקן מדה אחרת היתה לו שכל מעשיו לשם שמים שנאמר (תהלים סח, כ) ברוך יקוק יום יום.
They said about the Elder Shamai that each day of the week would honor Shabbat. When he found a nice piece of meat, he would say, "This is for Shabbat." If he found another nicer piece, he would set that aside and eat the first one. But Elder Hillel [lived by] another value such that all of his acts were for the sake of heaven as it says, "Bless G!d each and every day"
Art Green These Are the Words pg. 255
Shabbat or the Sabbath is the central religious institution of rabbinic Judaism. Observance of Shabbat is the practice that most defines membership in the traditional community of the Jewish faithful. The idea of a holy day, unlike any notion of sacred place, is seen by the Torah as existing from the beginning of the world. It started on the day after humans were created, on the day God rested. God sanctified the Sabbath from the very beginning of time. This is a way of saying that human existence itself cannot be imagined in a world where there is no Shabbat.
The root of the word Shabbat means to ‘cease’ or ‘desist.’ To observe Shabbat means to cease our work life and break our daily routine every seventh day, making that day holy. Shabbat is to be a day of enjoying God’s world rather than doing battle with it; a day of relaxation rather than struggle, a day time to live in harmony rather than to achieve domination…
The Torah gives almost no instruction about how to observe the Sabbath. “Work” is forbidden, but the nature of that work is not defined. A few details, including the forbidding of lighting fire and gathering wood on the Sabbath, are all the text provides. The rabbis, however, found an entire body of Shabbat law hidden in the Torah, based on a parallel between the work prohibited on Shabbat and the work required for the building of the desert tabernacle. All the forms of work required for the building (there are thirty-nine major categories and many derivatives form them) are those forbidden on the Sabbath...
Shabbat may still be the most important religious form that Judaism has to give to humanity. In our age of ever increasing pace and demand, the need for a day of true rest is all the greater. But the forms of Shabbat observance as they have evolved in endless detail are, for many Jews, overwhelming and even oppressive to the very spirit of Shabbat freedom. A contemporary Shabbat will have to be simplified and streamline one. This is necessary before Shabbat can be accepted by larger parts of the Jewish people, and also for the sake of any new message of Shabbat we might hope to extend beyond the borders of Jewry. Such a Shabbat will of course have to be entirely voluntary, without compulsion of any sort. In the spirit of fulfilling this need, I offer the following list of ten prescriptions for a contemporary Shabbat. They may be used either alone to created a Shabbat for you and your family, or in combination of whatever traditional Jewish law seems to work for you:
1. Stay at home. Spend quality time with family and real friends.
2. Celebrate with others: at the table, in the synagogue, with your community, or with those whom you can best share in appreciating God’s world.
3. Study or ready something that will edify, challenge, or make you grow.
4. Be alone. Take some time for yourself. Check in with yourself. Review your week. Ask yourself where you are in your life.
5. Mark the beginning and end of this sacred time: lighting candles and kiddush on Friday night and havdalah on Saturday night.
6. Don’t do anything you have to have to do for your work life. This includes obligatorily reading, homework, unwanted social obligation, and preparing work as well as doing your job itself.
7. Don’t spend money. Separate completely from the commercial culture that so much surrounds us.
8. Don’t do business. No calls to the broker, no following up on ads, no paying of bills. It can all wait.
9. Don’t travel. Avoid especially commercial places like airports, hotel check-ins and similar depersonalizing commercial encounters. Stay free of situation in which people are likely to tell you to “have a nice day!” (Shabbat already is a nice day, thank you!)
10. Don’t use commercial or canned video entertainment, including TV and computer. Stay in situations where you can be face-to- face with those around you, rather than facing the all-powerful screen.
אָדָם בְּחַיָּיו (יהודה עמיחי)
אָדָם בְּחַיָּיו אֵין לוֹ זְמַן שֶׁיִּהְיֶה לוֹ
זְמַן לַכֹּל.
וְאֵין לוֹ עֵת שֶׁתִּהְיֶה לוֹ עֵת
לְכָל חֵפֶץ. קֹהֶלֶת לֹא צָדַק כְּשֶׁאָמַר כָּךְ.
אָדָם צָרִיךְ לִשְׂנֹא וְלֶאֱהֹב בְּבַת אַחַת,
בְּאוֹתָן עֵינַיִם לִבְכּוֹת וּבְאוֹתָן עֵינַיִם לִצְחֹק
בְּאוֹתָן יָדַיִם לִזְרֹק אֲבָנִים
וּבְאוֹתָן יָדַיִם לֶאֱסֹף אוֹתָן,
לַעֲשׂוֹת אַהֲבָה בַּמִּלְחָמָה וּמִלְחָמָה בָּאַהֲבָה.
וְלִשְׂנֹא וְלִסְלֹחַ וְלִזְכֹּר וְלִשְׁכֹּחַ
וּלְסַדֵּר וּלְבַלְבֵּל וְלֶאֱכֹל וּלְעַכֵּל
אֶת מַה שֶּׁהִיסְטוֹרְיָה אֲרֻכָּה
עוֹשָׂה בְּשָׁנִים רַבּוֹת מְאֹד
אָדָם בְּחַיָּיו אֵין לוֹ זְמַן.
כְּשֶׁהוּא מְאַבֵּד הוּא מְחַפֵּשׂ
כְּשֶׁהוּא מוֹצֵא הוּא שׁוֹכֵחַ,
כְּשֶׁהוּא שׁוֹכֵחַ הוּא אוֹהֵב
וּכְשֶׁהוּא אוֹהֵב הוּא מַתְחִיל לִשְׁכֹּח
וְנַפְשׁוֹ לְמוּדָה,
וְנַפְשׁוֹ מִקְצוֹעִית מְאֹד
רַק גּוּפוֹ נִשְׁאַר חוֹבֵב
תָּמִיד. מְנַסֶּה וְטוֹעֶה
לֹא לוֹמֵד וּמִתְבַּלְבֵּל
שִׁכּוֹר וְעִוֵּר בְּתַעֲנוּגוֹתָיו וּבְמַכְאוֹבָיו.
מוֹת תְּאֵנִים יָמוּת בַּסְּתָו
מְצֻמָּק וּמְלֵא עַצְמוֹ וּמָתוֹק,
הֶעָלִים מִתְיַבְּשִׁים עַל הָאֲדָמָה,
וְהָעֲנָפִים הָעֲרֻמִּים כְּבָר מַצְבִּיעִים
אֶל הַמָּקוֹם שֶׁבּוֹ זְמַן לַכֹּל.
A Man In His Life (Yehuda Amichai)
A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.
A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.
And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.
He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.