WE KEEP SHABBBAT…OR DO WE?

“The Children of Israel were in the wilderness and they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day.  Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moshe and Aharon, and to the entire assembly. They placed him in custody, for it had not been clarified what should be done to him. Hashem said to Moshe, “The man shall be put to death; the entire assembly shall pelt him with stones outside of the camp.” The entire assembly removed him to the outside of the camp; they pelted him with stones and he died, as Hashem had commanded Moshe.” (Bamidbar 15:32-36)

When we read this passage, our modern sensibilities are offended. Why in the world was the man executed for the seemingly innocent ‘crime’ of gathering some sticks? He did not harm anyone or damage any property. And even though we previously learned in the Torah (Shmot 31:14), “You shall observe the Sabbath, for it is holy to you; its desecrators shall be put to death, for whoever does work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among its people”, we are nevertheless shocked when that warning is brought to life in such a graphic way. Clearly, there is more to observing Shabbat than meets the eye.

It would be impossible to list all the references to Shabbat in the Torah. Suffice it to say that they are many. Consider these examples: Shabbat is mentioned right at the beginning of the Torah, in the section about the seven days of Creation (Bereishit 2:1-3), “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because on it He abstained from all his work which God created to make.” God commanded the Israelites to observe Shabbat even before the giving of the Torah at Mt Sinai. In the passage about the manna (Shmot 16), God warns the Children of Israel not to venture forth on Shabbat to look for manna. He also assures them that a double portion will fall on Friday. Shabbat is no less than the fourth of the Ten Commandments (Shmot 20:8-11 and Devarim 5:12-15). In the section about the Tabernacle, the first Jewish communal house of worship, Hashem warns the nation not to desecrate Shabbat for the project, notwithstanding its sacred nature (Shmot 31:12-17 and 35:1-3). This is because observing Shabbat trumps the building of the Sanctuary (Vayikrah 19:30) as it does the precept of honouring parents (Ibid, verse 3). Thus, if a parent asks his or her child to drive to the shops and purchase something on Saturday, the child must disregard the request.

The prophets also spoke of Shabbat often and they castigated the people for their failure to observe it properly. Perhaps the most famous passage in this respect is the end of the Haphtarah of Yom Kippur morning (Isaiah 58:13-14), “If you restrain your foot because of the Sabbath, from pursuing your business on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honourable; and you honour it, not doing your own ways, nor pursuing your own business, nor speaking of vain matters, then shall you delight in the Lord; and I will cause you to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Yaakov your father: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” There are two lengthy tractates about the Holy Day in the Talmud (tractate Shabbat, 24 chapters and tractate Eruvin, 10 chapters) and countless references to it in the Oral Law. So vital is Shabbat to the character of a Jew that the Sages compared a public Shabbat violator to an idol worshipper (see, for example, Chullin 5a). Throughout history, the ‘badge’ of an Observant Jew was the fact that he or she was a ‘shomer/et shabbat’, a Sabbath observer.

In the past, a Jew either observed Shabbat fully or not at all. There was virtually no middle position. The latter was viewed as a rebel, a person outside the community who violated its norms. He was not counted in a minyan, nor was his testimony accepted and he could not be relied upon in ritual matters, such as serving as a shochet or mohel. That all began to change in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries in Western Europe. With the Emancipation of Jews in Germany and elsewhere, many Jews began to assimilate into the local culture. Some abandoned Judaism altogether. Others sought to reform the religion and make it more palatable to the modern world and yet, others maintained an in-between position. 

Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger (1798-1871), a leading Torah scholar in Germany, was perplexed by a new type of Jew who partially observed Shabbat. He wrote in his volume of responsa (Binyan Zion Hechadashot 23), “Until now, we have discussed the essential law regarding how to judge one who publicly desecrates the Sabbath. However, regarding the Jewish sinners of our times, I do not know how to rule concerning them. For, unfortunately, the affliction has spread so widely that for most people Sabbath desecration has become as though it were permitted. Perhaps they should be considered as those who act under the status of “one who says it is permitted”, who is regarded only as close to intentional wrongdoing. Among them are those who recite the Sabbath prayers and make Kiddush over the day, and afterward desecrate the Sabbath through labors prohibited by Torah law and by rabbinic law. Now, one who desecrates the Sabbath is considered an apostate only because one who denies the Sabbath thereby denies Creation and the Creator. Yet these people affirm both through their prayers and Kiddush. All the more so regarding their children who have arisen after them, who neither know nor have heard the laws of the Sabbath. They are truly comparable to the Sadducees, who were not regarded as apostates despite desecrating the Sabbath, because they were following the practices of their fathers. Such people are like a child who was captured and raised among idolaters (tinok she’nishbah bein ovdei kokhavim).”

This was a radical ruling in its time because it raised the possibility of a Shabbat desecrator who nonetheless respected the core principles of Shabbat. In a ruling concerning a gett (bill of divorce) in South Africa that was signed by men who opened their shops on Shabbat, Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski of Vilna (1863-1940) permitted the gett post facto (Achiezer 3:25). Rabbi Grodzinski’s brother-in-law, Rabbi Yitzchak Kossowsky (18717-1951), was the Av Beit Din in Johannesburg. The woman in question had already received the gett and her former husband had since passed away. The man had died childless. If the gett was deemed invalid, it would mean that the woman was not a divorcee but a widow and would require chalitzah, release, from her husband’s’ brother before she could remarry (Devarim 25:5-10). However, the man was in America and had no intention of ever coming to South Africa. If a leniency could not be found, she would remain an aguna, a chained woman who could never remarry. Rabbi Grodzinski relied on a number of factors to validate the gett, one of which was the above ruling of Rabbi Ettlinger! The witnesses to the gett were not Shabbat desecrators in the original sense of the term. True, they did not observe Shabbat scrupulously but neither did they reject it outright. They were traditional Jews who had a Friday night dinner and attended shul on Shabbat, much the same as very many South African Jews observe Shabbat until this day!

Lee, Chani Merryl & Naomi join me in wishing you Shabbat Shalom!  Rabbi Liebenberg.

This week’s YouTube message: https://youtu.be/_K9Snq53ARg?si=QL_qiOeFemHipeTq

*Monday 15 & Tuesday 16 June – Rosh Chodesh Tammuz

Tammuz contains the fast of the 17^th Tammuz (Thursday 2 July) when the walls of Jerusalem were breached. This fast marks the beginning of the Three Weeks of Mourning that conclude on the ninth Av. The Molad (appearance of the new moon) is on Monday 15 June at 06h46 and 16 chalakim (a chelek, literally a “portion”, is a Talmudic measure of time equal to one-eighteenth of a minute, or 3 and 1/3 seconds).