The Sabbath

Prologue: Architecture of Time

“Yet a god who can be fashioned, a god who can be confined, is but a shadow of man.”

“Reality to us is thinghood, consisting of substances that occupy space; even God is conceived by most of us as a thing.

The result of our thinginess is our blindness to all reality that fails to identify itself as a thing, as a matter of fact. This is obvious in our understanding of time, which, being thingless and insubstantial, appears to us as if it had no reality.”

“The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments. In a religious experience, for example, it is not a thing that imposes itself on man but a spiritual presence. What is retained in the soul is the moment of insight rather than the place where the act came to pass. A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time. Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.”

“What we plead against is man’s unconditional surrender to space, his enslavement to things. We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things.”

The first time qadosh, the word ‘holy’, appears in the Bible is in Genesis: “And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.” A temporal, rather than spatial, event was made holy. Nothing else was holy in creation, until God proclaimed that the people of Israel shall be holy people, and objects were only made holy in response to the golden calf idolatry, after which Moses was given the tabernacle, a holy thing. But time -> man -> thing is the order of sanctification.

“The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”

Chapter 1: A Palace in Time

• Sabbath is not a day of rest in service of improving one’s efficiency. Rather it is a day for the sake of life, not work.

“Indeed, the splendor of the day is expressed in terms of abstentions, just as the mystery of God is more adequately conveyed via negationis, in the categories of negative theology which claims that we can never say what He is, we can only say what He is not. …How else express glory in the presence of eternity, if not by the silence of abstaining from noisy acts? These restrictions utter songs to those who know how to stay at a palace with a queen.”

“For where shall the likeness of God be found? There is no quality that space has in common with the essence of God. There is not enough freedom on the top of the mountain; there is not enough glory in the silence of the sea. Yet the likeness of God can be found in time, which is eternity in disguise.”

“The Sabbath is given unto you, not you unto Sabbath.” (Mekhilta 31:13, year 135CE)

• Similar to Christ. Also says it is better to desecrate on Sabbath to preserve all other Sabbaths.

“Time is like a wasteland. It has grandeur but no beauty. Its strange, frightful power is always feared but rarely cheered. Then we arrive at the seventh day, and the Sabbath is endowed with a felicity which enraptures the soul, which glides into our thoughts with a healing sympathy. It is a day on which hours do not oust one another. It is a day that can soothe all sadness away.”

“The primary awareness is one of our being within the Sabbath rather than of the Sabbath being within us. We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice.”

“Just as heaven and earth were created in six days, menuha was created on the Sabbath.

…

Menuha which we usually render with “rest” means here much more than withdrawal from labor and exertion, more than freedom from toil, strain or activity of any kind. Menuha is not a negative concept but somethat i ew or the ancient rabbis if they believed that it took a special act of creation to bring it into being, that the universe would be incomplete without it.

“What was created on the seventh day? Tranquility, serenity, peace and repose.”

To the biblical mind menuha is the same as happiness and stillness, as peace and harmony. …

In later times menuha became a synonym for the life in the world to come, for eternal life.”

“Angels have six wings, one for each day of the week, with which they chant their song; but they remain silent on the Sabbath, for it is the Sabbath which then chants a hymn to God.”

Chapter 2: Beyond Civilization

“But who could feel distressed when gazing at spectral glimpses of eternity, except to feel startled at the vanity of being so distressed? (Beautiful)

The Sabbath is no time for personal anxiety or care, for any activity that might dampen the spirit of joy. The Sabbath is no time to remember sins, to confess, to repent or even to pray for relief or anything we might need. It is a day for praise, not a day for petitions. Fasting, mourning, demonstrations of grief are forbidden.”

• Much different than the Christian day of worship, which embraces the sorrowful and joyful. Though both are centred on praise and glorification.

Chapter 3: The Splendor of Space

Chapter 4: Only Heaven and Nothing Else?

“This, then, is the answer to the problem of civilization: not to flee from the realm of space; to work with things of space but to be in love with eternity.”

Chapter 5: Thou Art One

Chapter 6: The Presence of a Day

Chapter 7: Eternity Utters a Day

“But there is something greater than the marvel of the world: the spirit. In His world we sense His wisdom, in His spirit we see His love.”

Chapter 8: Intuitions of Eternity

“Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath while still in this world, unless one is initiated in the appreciation of eternal life, one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come. Sad is the lot of him who arrives inexperienced and when led to heaven has no power to perceive the beauty of the Sabbath. . .”

• Reminds of Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Eastern methods of atonement. Stillness, rest in the Unity.

“While Jewish tradition offers us no definition of the concept of eternity, it tells us how to experience the taste of eternity or eternal life within time. Eternal life does not grow away from us; it is “planted within us,” growing beyond us. The world to come is therefore not only a posthumous condition, dawning upon the soul on the morrow after its departure from the body. The essence of the world to come is Sabbath eternal, and the seventh day in time is an example of eternity.“

“There is much that philosophy could learn from the Bible. To the philosopher the idea of the good is the most exalted idea. But to the Bible the idea of the good is penultimate; it cannot exist without the holy. The good is the base, the holy is the summit. Things created in six days He considered good, the seventh day He made holy.”

“To Jewish piety the ultimate human dichotomy is not that of mind and matter but that of the sacred and the profane. We have known profanity too long and have become accustomed to think that the soul is an automaton. The law of the Sabbath tries to direct the body and the mind to the dimension of the holy. It tries to teach us that man stands not only in a relation to nature but in a relation also to the creator of nature.”

“What is the Sabbath? Spirit in the form of time. With our bodies we belong to space; our spirit, our souls, soar to eternity, aspire to the holy. …

Spirit in the form of time, eternity, is, indeed, an absurdity to all those who think that the spirit is but an idea in the mind of man or that God is a thing among other things. Yet those who realize that God is at least as great as the known universe, that the spirit is an endless process of which we humbly partake, will understand and experience what it means that the spirit is disclosed at certain moments of time. One must be overawed by the marvel of time to be ready to perceive the presence of eternity in a single moment. One must live and act as if the fate of all of time would depend on a single moment.

We usually think that the earth is our mother, that time is money and profit our mate. The seventh day is a reminder that God is our father, that time is life and the spirit our mate.”

Chapter 9: Holiness in Time

“Symbols are superfluous: the Sabbath is itself the symbol.”

“Every seventh day a miracle comes to pass, the resurrection of the soul, of the soul of man and of the soul of all things. A medieval sage declares: The world which was created in six days was a world without a soul. It was on the seventh day that the world was given a soul. This is why it is said: “and on the seventh day He rested vayinnafash” (Exodus 31:17); nefesh means a soul.”

• Body ensouled on the seventh day.

Chapter 10: Thou Shalt Covet

“In ancient literature, emphasis is expressed through direct repetition (epizeuxis), by repeating a word with. out any intervening words.” The Bible, for example, says: “Justice, Justice shalt thou follow” (Deuteron-omy 16:20); “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people” (Isaiah 40:1). Of all the Ten Commandments, only one is proclaimed twice, the last one: “Thou shalt not covet . . . Thou shalt not covet.” Clearly it was reiterated in order to stress its extraordinary importance.

Man is told not to covet “thy neighbor’s house,” “thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man-servant nor his maid. servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing belonging to thy neighbor.””

• Emphasizing the danger of attaching oneself to worldly things, to spatial things. Again, much consensus with the Eastern religious canon.

“Judaism tries to foster the vision of life as a pilgrimage to the seventh day; the longing for the Sabbath all days of the week which is a form of longing for the eternal Sabbath all the days of our lives. It seeks to displace the coveting of things in space for coveting the things in time, teaching man to covet the seventh day all days of the week. God himself coveted that day, He called it Hemdat Yamim, a day to be coveted. It is as if the command: Do not covet things of space, were correlated with the unspoken word: Do covet things of time.”

Epilogue: To Sanctify Time

“To the spiritual eye space is frozen time, and all things petrified events.”

“There are two points of view from which time can be sensed: from the point of view of space and from the point of view of spirit. Looking out of the window of a swiftly moving railroad car, we have the impression that the landscape is moving while we ourselves are sitting still. Similarly, when gazing at reality while our souls are carried away by spatial things, time appears to be in constant motion. However, when we learn to understand that it is the spatial things that are constantly running out, we realize that time is that which never expires, that it is the world of space which is rolling through the infinite expanse of time. Thus temporality may be defined as the relation of space to time.”

“The boundless continuous but vacuous entity which realistically is called space is not the ultimate form of reality. Our world is a world of space moving through time-from the Beginning to the End of Days.”

“To the common mind the essence of time is evanescence, temporality. The truth, however, is that the fact of evanescence flashes upon our minds when poring over things of space. It is the world of space that communicates to us the sense for temporality. Time, that which is beyond and independent of space, is ever-lasting; it is the world of space which is perishing. Things perish within time; time itself does not change. We should not speak of the flow or passage of time but of the flow or passage of space through time. It is not time that dies; it is the human body which dies in time. Temporality is an attribute of the world of space, of things of space. Time which is beyond space is beyond the division in past, present and future.”

• For time within division (past, present, future) is a time within space, it is spatialized, bounded.

“Technical civilization, we have said, is man’s triumph over space. Yet time remains impervious. We can overcome distance but can neither recapture the past nor dig out the future. Man transcends space, and time transcends man.”

“Time is man’s greatest challenge. We all take part in a procession through its realm which never comes to an end but are unable to gain a foothold in it. Its reality is apart and away from us. Space is exposed to our will; we may shape and change the things in space as we please. Time, however, is beyond our reach, beyond our power. It is both near and far, intrinsic to all experience and transcending all experience. It belongs exclusively to God.”

“Time, then, is otherness, a mystery that hovers above all categories. It is as if time and the mind were a world apart. Yet, it is only within time that there is fellowship and togetherness of all beings.”

“Every one of us occupies a portion of space. He takes it up exclusively. The portion of space which my body occupies is taken up by myself in exclusion of anyone else. Yet, no one possesses time. There is no moment which I possess exclusively. This very moment belongs to all living men as it belongs to me. We share time, we own space. Through my ownership of space, I am a rival of all other beings; through my living in time, I am a contemporary of all other beings.

We pass through time, we occupy space. We easily succumb to the illusion that the world of space is for our sake, for man’s sake. In regard to time, we are immune to such an illusion.”

“Immense is the distance that lies between God and a thing. For a thing is that which has separate or individual existence as distinct from the totality of beings. To see a thing is to see something which is detached and isolated. A thing is, furthermore, something which is and can become the possession of man. Time does not permit an instant to be in and for itself. Time is either all or nothing. It cannot be divided except in our minds. It remains beyond our grasp. It is almost holy.”

“Time is like an eternal burning bush. Though each instant must vanish to open the way to the next one, time itself is not consumed.”

“Time is the process of creation, and things of space are results of creation. When looking at space we see the products of creation; when intuiting time we hear the process of creation. Things of space exhibit a deceptive independence. They show off a veneer of limited permanence. Things created conceal the Creator. It is the dimension of time wherein man meets God, wherein man becomes aware that every instant is an act of creation, a Beginning, opening up new roads for ultimate realizations. Time is the presence of God in the world of space, and it is within time that we are able to sense the unity of all beings.”

“Creation, we are taught, is not an act that happened once upon a time, once and for ever. The act of bringing the world into existence is a continuous process. God called the world into being, and that call goes on. There is this present moment because God is present. Every instant is an act of creation. A moment is not a terminal but a flash, a signal of Beginning. Time is perpetual innovation, a synonym for continuous creation. Time is God’s gift to the world of space.”

“To witness the perpetual marvel of the world’s coming into being is to sense the presence of the Giver in the given, to realize that the source of time is eternity, that the secret of being is the eternal within time.”

“We cannot solve the problem of time through the conquest of space, through either pyramids or fame. We can only solve the problem of time through sanctification of time. To men alone time is elusive; to men with God time is eternity in disguise.”

“Creation is the language of God, Time is His song, and things of space the consonants in the song. To sanctify time is to sing the vowels in unison with Him.”