The Shabbat Prohibitions

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, "The Sabbath"

To set apart one day a week for freedom, a day on which we would not use the instruments which have been so easily turned into weapons of destruction, a day for being with ourselves, a day of detachment from the vulgar, of independence of external obligations, a day on which we stop worshipping the idols of technical civilization, a day on which we use no money, a day of armistice in the economic struggle with our fellow men and the forces of nature--is there any institution that holds out a greater hope for man's progress than the Sabbath?

The solution of mankind's most vexing problem will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence of it.

In regard to external gifts, to outward possessions, there is only one proper attitude--to have them and to be able to do without them. On the Sabbath we live, as it were, independent of technical civilization: we abstain primarily from any activity that aims at remaking or reshaping the things of space. Man's royal privilege to conquer nature is suspended on the seventh day.

What are the kinds of labor not to be done on the Sabbath? They are, according to the ancient rabbis, all those acts which were necessary for the construction and furnishing of the Sanctuary in the desert. The Sabbath itself is a sanctuary which we build, a sanctuary in time.

Rabbi Isidor Grunfeld, "The Sabbath"

In arriving at his interpretation of melakhah [work], Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch starts with the basic idea that the Sabbath testifies to God as the supreme Creator of heaven and earth and all they contain. Man, however, is engaged in a constant struggle to gain mastery over God's creation, to bring nature under his control. By the use of his God-given intelligence, skill, and energy, he has in large measure succeeded in this. He is thus constantly in danger of forgetting his own creature hood--his utter and complete dependence on the Lord of all things. He tends to forget that the very powers he uses in his conquest of nature are derived from his Creator, in whose service his life and work should be conducted.

In a world increasingly forgetful of God, Israel was entrusted with the task of preserving this all-important truth for the future salvation of all mankind. God willed therefore that the Jew, while subduing and controlling his environment like every other human being, must recognize, and show that he recognizes, that his powers are derived from One higher than himself. This recognition he is to express by dedicating one day in every week to God, and by refraining on this day from every activity which signifies human power over nature.

On this day we renounce every exercise of intelligent, purposeful control over natural objects and forces, we cease from every act of human power, in order to proclaim God as the Source of all power. By refraining from human creating, the Jew pays silent homage to the Creator....

...Any act, however small, which demonstrates man's mastery of nature in this way is a melakhah, be it striking a light or washing clothes, tying a knot or building a house.

We have thus arrived at the definition we have been searching for. A melakhah is:

an act that shows man's mastery over the world by the constructive exercise of his intelligence and skill.