William Samuel Schwartz
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"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You will work six days, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. "- Ex 20:8-11
The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week, from Friday evening to Saturday evening.
is a fundamental tenet of Judaism. Like the D- God who created the universe and everything in it in six days and rested on the seventh of his work, the Jew ceases all of its work this week with the approach of night on Friday evening, to devote himself entirely to Gd, body and spirit, the holy day of Shabbat.
When Shabat, certain activities are prohibited (build, cook, carve, buy, write, ...), because they arise from the work involved in the main building of the Temple, itself a symbol of the creation of the world by God. But the essence of Shabbat is to leave aside the tasks of the week to make room for Gd in the day when he completed the world making up a human.
The Sabbath day should be an occasion to celebrate with family, clearing his mind of worries and material duties of the week, to delve into the study of Torah and welcome in his house and in his mind the Oneg Shabbat, the welfare of Shabbat, perpetual gift of God to the Jews so they always follow the path of the Creator to bring the reign of Good. Yehuda Halevi
wrote in Quzari (book 2, line 50): "Whoever believes in the Sabbath as a day that stopped the work of Creation, admits no doubt of Creation, Creation admitting he recognizes the existence of a Creator who made the world. But whoever does not believe in Shabbat falls into the difficulties of the doctrine of eternity and not a perfect faith in the Creator of the universe. The observance of the Sabbath law closer to God more than monasticism, asceticism and the hermit. "
Each Shabbat, synagogue, we read the parsha, portion of the weekly Torah scroll.
Lessons Shabbat
John Halperin
Old
more than three thousand years, the institution of Shabbat, far from becoming archaic, still occupies a central place in Jewish thought and, more broadly, canned its meaning for today's world.
Everyone knows that the Sabbath is the first compulsory weekly rest day ever known in world history. It a title of nobility which moreover earned the Jews in ancient Greek and Roman, sarcasm great writers outraged seventh men wasting their time and even more
that of their slaves, doing nothing productive. This aspect does not exhaust, by far, the meaning of Shabbat.
Shabbat is a time when skilled renounce its power to transform the world. For the implementation of his thought, the man knows how to create, produce, process, and this activity is part of his vocation, almost an obligation. But the Torah to the man sets a limit to his power. Shabbat is defined as the time when it is required to relinquish power. It is first an ascetic: "You shall do no work." (...) The man changes the world below as it pleases and submits to his rule. The Torah assigns a time limit that sovereignty ...
There are two essential commandments concerning the Sabbath: a negative command, a prohibition of any work that reflected, and a positive commandment, an obligation, the constitution of the Sabbath into a day of quiet.
Creation and release
What appear to target these commandments, which produce their practice and study, what lessons can we learn today?
Let the phrase apparently enigmatic, which concludes the story of the Creation and the Sabbath: "God rested from all his work he had created, to act (Gen 2.3). As it was created, the world remained unfinished, leaving it to the man to perfect. From the eighth day, man (and woman) become partners with God in the work of continuous creation. As Prosper Weil said: "Thus was anchored in Jewish thought the idea of progress. However, experience shows that progress can be achieved at the cost of ongoing tensions and conflicts: against nature that surrounds us, we must dominate but we spoil; cons of human society in which to create relations of domination, but mostly within each of us. "
ambition of the Jews is not Judaizing the world, but to humanize it, make it better, fairer, more harmonious. Shabbat, as a model, can ontribution.
example, the Shabbat is placed both under the sign of remembrance of the Creation of the world and that of liberation (as also shown in the parallel reading almost identical versions of Deuteronomy cited above, and Exodus (20.15 to 18). Indeed, the Sabbath is an appeal to the highest standards of human dignity and social equality. There is a vision of harmony between men by the refusal of all dispositions and all of economic, social and political.
Added to absolute respect for life: as specified in the rabbinic texts,
"the Sabbath was given to men, not men in Shabbat (Mekhilta, 31.13). Nothing is more important, according to the Torah, to preserve human life. If there is any danger that human life could be at stake, we must break prohibitions prescribed by the laws of Shabbat (Genesis Rabbah,
19.31).
By failing to create one day a week, the man asserts his freedom from nature, in power and things, while he says his fraternity against other men. So we can understand as a sociologist Georges Friedmann, who spent much of his work with labor problems, could see "a kind of prophetic genius in the institution of the Sabbath" he considered necessary to fight against the dehumanization of technological civilization of today.
Babylonian Talmud Shabbath 156 has processed and b
R. Judah said in the name of Rav: Where do we know that the stars have no influence on Israel? For it is written (Genesis 15: 5): "God took him (Abraham) out." Abraham said the Holy One, blessed be He: "He who is born in my house is my heir! - Not the one who is born in your house, but whoever comes out of your womb (ib. 4). Abraham said: "Master of the world, I saw that under my circumstances I will not astral child. - Get out of astral these considerations, because there is no such influence for Israel. Samuel also teaches" point astral influence on Israel "
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