Sometimes, you find the most interesting things in the most mundane places. However, sometimes you find the most interesting things in the most interesting places.
Several years ago I was teaching a Talmud class. The text we were studying was Tractate Pesachim, the tractate dealing with the laws of Passover. In preparation for the class I was comparing the printed edition of the Talmud, the Vilna edition that is commonly used in study, to the manuscripts of the tractate. (Facsimile versions of these manuscripts are available courtesy of the website of the Jewish National and University Library of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.) I was looking at a manuscript which was written around 1600 in Yemen. (It has the romantic moniker JTS RAB 1623.) On the first page of the transcription of Tractate Pesachim, one of the owners' names is written in the outside margin: "Saadia ... who resides in the land of the shadow of death ... in the city of Sana'a... blessed be the reader..." And so, with four hundred year old blessings at my back, I started perusing the manuscript.
On the top of the first folio there is a combination introduction and advertisement by the scribe. It starts praising the tractate ("I directed myself to the goal of copying with iron stylus and lead [an allusion to Job 19:24] the sayings of God / and I published this book because all of its sayings are things of beauty") and then praises the purchase ("Therefore the person who is eager for life [an allusion to Psalms 30:14] eternal should not harden his heart but should spend his money to buy a book like this...") all in rhyme and meter.
Struck by the uniqueness of this inscription, and eager for an excuse to procrastinate, I decided to investigate the manuscript further. I turned my attention to the end of Tractate Pesachim. As is often the case, curiosity and procrastination are rewarded. After finishing the transcription of Tractate Pesachim, the scribe announces: "I will commence writing songs and praise to God the God of all spirits." What follows is a five page collection of liturgical poetry. The first section is titled "About Shabbat" and it is, actually, about Shabbat. The first verse of the first poem caught my attention.
Amplify the preciousness of Shabbat day / with a covenant of peace and life,
Sanctify it, and it will separate / between Israel and the nations.
A bit of research uncovered the fact that the original author was the great eleventh century Andalusian poet and thinker Yehudah Halevi. Halevi is famous for his poems of longing for the Land of Israel. "My heart is in the East but I am in deepest West." He is also known for his defense of Judaism and Jewish exceptionalism called The Kuzari: In Defense of a Despised Religion. So, while it makes rational sense that Halevi might see Shabbat as one more instance of differentiating between Jews and Gentiles, it is not an intuitive move. The language of "separation" is used at the end of the Shabbat in the "separation" or havdalah ceremony. There the difference between Israel and the nations is one in a long list of differences - sacred and profane, light and dark, the seventh day and the rest of the week. Originally (in its Talmudic form) this list included the upper waters and the lower waters and other things.
It is understandable and even, perhaps, necessary, to mark the transition between Shabbat and the weekday with a ceremony of differentiation - setting this difference in the context of many differences. However, Shabbat as a whole is about "performing God" and thereby testifying to God's action in the world. One performs God by resting as God did on the seventh day. This then is the testimony that God created the world in seven days. Our Shabbat practices - lighting candles, blessing the day over the wine, eating three meals together, communal prayer - all point to the celebration of a day devoted to matters of the spirit. Why does Halevi see this essentially as a day which separates Israel from the nations?
So what does this have to do with this week's Torah portion? I thought you'd never ask. In the midst of giving directions on how to build the Tabernacle, God interrupts God's instructions to instruct Moshe (and thereby Israel) about Shabbat.
Speak to the Israelite people and say: Nevertheless, you must keep My sabbaths, for this is a sign between Me and you throughout the ages, that you may know that I the LORD have consecrated you. (Exodus 31:13)
Rashi, the twelfth century French commentator, focuses on the word "nevertheless" (Hebrew ach): "Even though you will be stressed about the necessities of the labor [needed for the building the Tabernacle], Shabbat should not be shunted aside for [the Tabernacle building]." Rashi is citing the sixth century Palestinian Midrash Mekhilta. This principle - that the labors needed to build the Tabernacle are to be ceased on Shabbat - is developed in the Babylonian Talmud. A great deal of effort is expended explaining how each of the thirty nine activities which are forbidden on Shabbat is derived from an activity that was needed in the building or ongoing activity of the Tabernacle.
Six days may work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does work on the sabbath day shall be put to death. (Exodus 31:15)
This is not a suggestion for an interesting spiritual practice if one wishes to enhance their spiritual life. This is a cornerstone practice whose abrogation leads to execution. Why is it so important?
The Israelite people shall keep the sabbath, observing the sabbath throughout the ages as a covenant for all time: it shall be a sign for all time between Me and the people of Israel. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He ceased from work and was refreshed. (Exodus 3:16-17)
God commands the Sabbath as a sign of the covenant. It is not creating (which God did for six days) that is the sign, but cessation. Complete cessation. This idea is developed in the Babylonian Talmud. The Talmud teaches that knowing the Sabbath means knowing the thirty-nine categories of forbidden activities. It is not knowing that one has to light candles, or that one has to eat three meals. Knowing what Shabbat is, according to the cornerstone text of Jewish thought and practice means knowing what one cannot do on Shabbat. This "not doing" is the sign of the covenant. Once one knows what is forbidden, everything else that one does (eating, sleeping, walking, making love) is a Shabbat activity.
Shabbat then is a space which is cleared out so that everything we then put into it is, by definition, Shabbat activity. It is only later (relatively) that the positive Shabbat rituals (candles, blessing the wine, three meals) were added. The baseline Shabbat is - doing nothing; or doing anything as long as it is not those thirty nine activities that were forbidden.
So this is how I understand Yehudah Halevi's poem. Shabbat is, essentially, a state of mind. Once you stop doing all the activities which are forbidden (sowing, sewing, building, writing, burning, etc.) you carry Shabbat around in your head and everything you do is done in the territory of Shabbat. There you can be walking down the same street as your neighbor who is not Jewish. Both of you are out for a morning stroll. Yet, you are doing a Shabbat activity since you are "in" Shabbat and he is not. This is how Shabbat is a sign of Jewishness.
This is not necessarily easy. It seems to me that it is no coincidence that immediately following the Shabbat commandment in this week's portion, the story of the Golden Calf is told. Idolatry is the necessity for something material to build and behold. Shabbat is the opposite of idolatry. Shabbat is a sign, and the signified is God.