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The Sabbath_ Demand for justice and call to freedom
Bernard Dupuy
This article is based on two lectures given n July 1975 during a session, held at Les Avents in France, on the theme of the Sabbath.
The Sabbath ad Justice
Christians tend to look upon the Sabbath as essentially an act of worship, a rite. This point of view is not unfounded since the distinction between the profane and the sacred established by the Sabbath causes it to be regarded as the most fundamental of all rites. However, even from this point of view, there is a difference between Sabbath and Sunday. For the Christian, the heart of Sunday is the celebration of the Eucharist. The day itself is but the necessary aura, the obligatory framework of the rite. The Sabbath is just the opposite; it is a fact in the order of existence, and only after that, a rite. It is a way of life and not primarily an act of worship; an attitude which in the order of ethics is perhaps the simplest, the most fundamental of all attitudes, that is, the standstill, the interruption of action. For those who observe it, it is the cessation of all activity, even the most legitimate.
In the account of the manna, the Jews were warned that it would not fall on the Sabbath, but they did not immediately understand the significance of this fact and went out to collect as usual. When they found nothing, they understood, and it was from that time that they abstained from all work on the seventh day (Ex. 18:3-17).
Jewish tradition designates the Sabbath as Shabbat menukhah or yom menukhah, day of rest, of tranquillity, of peace. It is said in the book of Exodus 23:12: « Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your ass may have rest (tishbot), and the son of your bondmaid, and the alien, may he refreshed (yanuah).
Yam menukhah is generally translated by « day of rest ». The translation is valid if it is not understood solely as a day of relaxation, ease and recuperation, because the biblical distinction between the six days of the week and the seventh is not between a time of hard toil and one of leisure, but between the time when man does his work (melakhah) and that in which he finds peace and rest (menukhah). However, the menukhah, tranquillity, rest, peace, has its raison d'ętre only in its relationship with the melakhah, creative work, task to be accomplished.
The precept of work as « task to be accomplished * (melakhah) is found in the Bible within the Sabbath precept itself: « Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work » (Ex. 20:8-9). It is in the law of the Sabbath that the law of work is given. The finality of real work far outstrips the accomplishment of that work. In the Bible this outstripping has a name: Shabbat. The Sabbath reveals the meaning of human work.
The Mekhilta on Exodus 20:9 teaches that on the arrival of the Sabbath we should consider our work (melakhah) done. Even if our labor (avodah) is not ended, our work, out human task (melakhah) can be considered finished. A finished task is not, in the biblical sense, an achievement in which nothing is missing, a work without flaw or defect, but a work finished as far as is humanly possible, that is to say, from the material point of view, incomplete. This idea has penetrated Jewish spirituality. The Jew who builds a house must leave it without one or two bricks, with a corner of a wall unfinished. The Jew who assembles a library must always accept to have a few books missing, even books that seem essential. This will remind him that nobody can lay claim to infinite knowledge, above all where the Torah is concerned, and for this reason it is good to be deprived of an important work. This does not hinder the accomplishment of one's task. He who wanted to have all and know all would in reality be a slave and his work but avodah.
This danger dogs man at every turn. He can easily leave his preoccupations on Friday evening and yet think of them all the week-end, find no subject of conversation with his family other than his work, become enslaved to his everyday activities and lose his liberty. The master can end by being more of a slave than his slaves because he uses his freedom to build up a slavery that increases to the detriment of this freedom.
In biblical times the contemporary civilizations based on work were in fact characterized by enslavement to the work. The Jews themselves were bowed under that yoke of hard bondage in which days of rest had been established only with a view to productive activity. The Sabbath was instituted in the context of civilizations that were establishing obligatory work, planned distribution of labor, automatic consumption, so to speak, of goods. The Sabbath was to give life to a society built on principles other than that of imposed work (avodah), to foster the evolution of a society that was to transform human effort into creative work (melakhah) and working contacts into just relationships.
Israel's legislation on justice does indeed stem from the Sabbath law. Its aim is to bring everybody in the world into the divine system of economy of labor. The body of workers could benefit from the divine ordinances and from the human growth that these ordinances make possible.
First there is the foreigner, nekhar, who lives in the country. The foreigner in question is one who is still an idolater and who continues to live according to his own customs. There is no question of imposing the Sabbath law on him because he is not bound by it and is not part of the Jewish city, but a relationship with him exists even if only at a business level, and he must be accorded the advantages of the sabbatical year (Dent. 15:3): « Of a foreigner you may exact it; but whatever of yours is with your brother your hand shall release. u In other words, it is lawful to oblige the foreigner to pay his debts, but during the sabbatical year what has been lent to him must be remitted. The text goes on to say: « But there will he no poor among you. » This is a law to assure justice where official organization fails. It is the obligation of sharing and of giving introduced into the economy of free exchange.
It is not demanded that the economy of exchange be disturbed but that it should he interrupted. An opportunity for the gesture of giving should be provided. If someone has borrowed and been unable to return the loan, a moment will come when the lender must agree to transform the loan into a gift. The motive for this legislation is given in Deuteronomy 5:15: « You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt » and You shall not make of your own country another house of bondage. »
There is also the resident visitor, ger veloshay. This means the foreigner who agrees to live in conformity with the law of the land, hence to give up some part of his idolatry by conforming to the laws of Israel. In Deuteronomy 5:14 there is a recommendation to impose no work upon him on the Sabbath day: a You shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your manservant, or your maidservant, or your ox, or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates. » Thus other people besides the sons of Israel are affected by the institution of the Sabbath.
There is finally another class of men: the Jewish slaves. What, from the historical point of view, is the oved ivri? Is he one of those Jews who were not originally of the children of Jacob and who became assimilated with the people of Israel, or a Jew who was taken as a slave by other Jews? This is not the place to debate such a question, but the fact remains that these workers were circumcised, which means that they had accepted the law of Israel. The oved ivri should be able to rest on the seventh day, but he benefits also from another law mentioned in Exodus 21:2: « When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.* His period of service is therefore limited because he is a man called to freedom, but if he says ". ..I will not go out free,' then his master shall bring him . . to the door or the doorpost; and his master shall bore his ear through ... » (Ex. 21:5,6). (This is the origin of the rite of the lintel of doors, of the mezuzah.) Why? Because as an oved ivri he is a man who has heard the Shema Yisrael. He should have understood the call to freedom which has re-echoed since the flight from Egypt, but he has not heard it. Because he prefers to he a slave rather than a free man he must have his ear pierced; he is a weak Jew. However: « Thou shalt not send him away empty-handed. Thou shalt load him with thy gifts. » In other words, this slave must receive for his services not only a just recompense but also a share of the surplus of the profit. He has the right to participate in the gains. « You will even give him clothing,* says the commentary. That is to say, you will give him everything that can remind him that he really is a free man, always for the same reason: « You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. I).
Finally, there are laws of justice regulating the relations of free men among themselves. It is said in Leviticus 25:39-43; c If your brother becomes poor beside you, and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave; he shall be with you as ahired servant and as a sojourner. » In his own country, then, the Jew should never behave as master, possessor, or conqueror. Even in his own home he should look upon himself as en route, in exile. lie is a ger vetoshav (stranger and sojourner) there. Why? because ultimately the land belongs to God, and more than any other land, this land on which — because of the Promise —he has been invited to live.
The Sabbath and Freedom
To see in the Sabbath an institution that guarantees freedom implies a questioning of the meaning commonly attributed to this word. Current ideas of freedom will certainly not allow of a just evaluation of the Sabbath; on the contrary, the Sabbath lived allows of a just evaluation of current ideas. This approach presupposes a reversal of convictions and habits, a teshuvah, and there is no Sabbath without a tesbuvab.
It is difficult for the modern mind to accept the idea of a Sabbath that frees; it is shocked by the Sabbath laws which it considers restrictive, arbitrary and futile. At the level of the universal history of ideas, modern man is dependent on widely prevalent concepts; he holds to philosophies that proclaim liberation from destiny and the progressive advent of liberty. Religions are understood as agents of liberty in the measure in which, by spiritualizing man, they contribute to this liberation.
In the Bible the discourse on human existence not only plunges into the archeology of destiny from which man is freeing himself; it is also open to the eschatological plan of a Creator. The Bible says less about the advent of freedom than about man's cooperation with his Creator. Man is not so much a reasonable « animal » endowed with liberty as a person in process of being made one who is discovering himself in reference to the Creator. He is a creature in process of becoming, becoming progressively what he is called to be, and this process of development is evolving within his activity itself, within the human task that he must complete, the melakhah. This vision of man in a state of becoming gives a very special significance to human action; this action intervenes in the definition of man's identity and in the way in which he understands himself. He fashions his identity by his work (melakhah) when he enters into the project of his Creator, when, in other words, he adopts the way of life proposed to him by the Sabbath.
This is taught by the Midrash on Abraham. Abraham recognized the Savior who had been lost sight of by the civilization of the tower of Babel. Because he ceaselessly referred his conduct to his Creator he was able to preserve the meaning of his own identity. After offering hospitality to three young men, his guests, he invites them to thank him to whom they owe their refreshment, their ability to continue in being. Their true host is not he, Abraham, but the Creator. In these circumstances recognition is not a fortuitous act. Eating, working to feed oneself, recall the precariousness of existence. Man's highest values are always linked to these fundamental acts. There is here a real philosophical commonplace (pont aux ages). Idealistic philosophy has little concern for the body and for food; but the Bible attaches great importance to them. The surest test of faith could perhaps be found in the way in which we take food with others. The meal is the true liturgy, or if you prefer, it is the act by which the creature recognizes his creaturehood. To recognize the Creator is to start behaving as a f tee person. This is why it is said of Abraham that he was the first to observe the Sabbath. To respect the Sabbath is to witness to the principle of the creation of the world. The Jewish people, by observing the Sabbath, preserve the meaning of creation more surely than the philosophers who demonstrate and affirm it.
Christians are ill-prepared to understand the meaning of the Sabbath. To enter into the spirit of this day is to face up to a certain Christian mentality which rejects the Sabbath precepts in the name of the pauline dialectic of law and grace. For most Christians the Sabbath is the day on which Jews are subjected to legal observances, while Sunday is that on which the children of God recognize that they are called together to freedom. The discussion is not new. For the Jews and for the Judeo-Christians, faithful to the biblical meaning of law, liberty results from the gift of the law, which is grace. For the pagano-Christians whom St. Paul had in mind and who were forbidden by imperial legislation to follow the Jewish rules, liberty was an effect not of law imposed as an obligation, hut of grace, and grace is offered to the pagans by Jesus Christ. St. Paul makes two allusions to the Sabbath which have this meaning (Gal. 4:10; Col. 2:16).
The Sabbath precept seems negative because it consists essentially in the interruption of action. In reality it is positive, founded on the behavior of God himself. Man must accomplish the Sabbath (laasot; Gen. 2:2).
According to the morning prayer Veshamru, the Sabbath is a covenant (berith) and a sign (otb). It is a precept with a meaning, and both precept and meaning are given in the Bible. In general the meaning becomes clear only after the accomplishment of the precept, and the precept is imposed before the finality of its gesture is understood, before its results are experienced. The whole existence of man is constituted thus: man lives without really knowing what his end is, and he must live his life in order to know its meaning. This idea is expressed in the hymn Lekita dodi: « sol maaseb bamahashaval tehillah » (« the end of our work was already in the thought of its beginning »). When we act we enter into a thought which is at the origin of our action. The precepts are first put into practice and afterwards their meaning is understood: this is the law of life. As the different moments of existence are authentically lived, the meaning of life is revealed. It is only after certain encounters that its deep signification, perhaps also its finality, is understood. At the time of the event its full significance is not generally apprehended.
What is true at the level of human relations is even more true at the level of relations with God. Man's existence is an existence in process of genesis, lived before it is interpreted. This is why it is said in the Torah: « You shall do and then you shall listen » (in order to understand).
The ways of God arc founded upon the precepts, which are norms of conduct aimed at giving man access to his identity, and finally to his freedom. This is the essential structure: the precept is at the beginning and the identity is at the end, not the other way round. Freedom is not given first so that the precept may he fulfilled; the precept, the call, the ethical demand is given at the beginning so that freedom may be attained. This law is exemplified by the Sabbath which begins by the mitzvah, austerity, and ends with the oneg, joy and freedom.
Israel's religion is a knowledge of means, not an initiation into rites, cults and mysteries. It is before all else an initiation into rules of conduct, precepts. Everything occurs as if man, by applying the precepts, recognized that he was being worked upon by the presentiment of the divine plan which he is called to discover, and by the meaning of his own existence, even if he does not immediately understand its full signification.
It is for this reason that man merits. The first man to « merit » in this way was Abraham. Abraham received an order, «Lekb lekba n, without knowingeither its meaning or its consequences. He was to pass through the trial of sacrificing Isaac. His merit (zekhut, dignity, grace, rather than « accountancy » merit) lay in his submitting to the precept without knowing where it was going to lead.
As a general rule, the transmitted precept must be obeyed in spite of the fact that it is not possible to discern its full meaning. The Sabbath, however, is a precept whose meaning (taam) is unveiled. He who lives the Sabbath imitates the behavior of God. The Bible reveals God, not directly, but by the institution of the Sabbath, and makes known from the beginning the identity of the Creator. The liturgy of Saturday morning is one of yotser, the liturgy of the Creator who re-orders the relationship between God and his creature. According to the Bible, the Creator wishes for his creature not so much submission as liberation. The Sabbath was established to initiate liberty.
To understand this interpretation we must turn to the Kabbalah. It says: In the beginning God's world was infinitely higher than that of man. It was a world in which man had as yet no place; to reach it presupposed his death because he could see God only if he died. For man, therefore, there is a starting-point: not the world of the Creator, of him who calls beings into existence, but the world of bittul hayesh, the annihilation of being. The thought of a Creator is too strong for man; he cannot bear that thought for long because it is not natural to believe in the Creator.
At the beginning, there was no room for man in God's world. Conversely, there is no place for God in man's world. At the beginning, God was hidden. In the Bible, the gods of natural religion are not El (God), they are elibm. When God intervened he appeared as El-Shaddai, the devastating God. It was only with the cooperation of man that he manifested himself as God the Creator.
If man, continues the Kabbalah, had come into being during the first six days of creation, that is to say, during the period when the Creator intervened every day, he would have been obliged to acknowledge the Creator. But at the moment of man's appearance God had ceased to act. It was as if the world solidified on itself. The world of nature was being established and man, at his birth, was natural man. The world of six days is the world of miracles, of daily interventions by God; the world of the seventh day is the world of nature, the world in which God is no longer faced with plastic, malleable matter but with a new being: man. To say that nature exists is to say that God has in a way set his seal on the world as it had then become. Nature, it has been said, is a « habit ». In Hebrew teva means « nature » but it also means « impression », « seal ». Nature is the seal of a genesis, the point of arrival of a preceding history.
Man is born into the world of nature. Nature is that structure of security that allows man to be himself. Thanks to the seventh day, thanks to this halt in the initiatives of God, man can be himself before God in a future perspective. He can also be himself with regard to what he leaves behind him, the world of magic and of the powers of darkness against which he is armed. A return to astrology and to idolatry would be a return of the sixth day into the world of the seventh.
As he emerges from the world of nature biblical man is the first modern man. He is freed from the magic mentality, open to history, becoming aware of himself and acting as a free being in a world that will be his achievement.
That God has willed the Sabbath means, then, according to the Kabbalah, that God has set man free to accomplish his work in nature. Ever since that time God's work has been finished. A new stage is beginning, that of relationship between God and man, and that of God in history. The advent of man inaugurates history, and man introduces the dimension of God into the world. If there is a place for God there, it is that prepared for him and consecrated to him by man, who brings about this preparation and this consecration essentially by observing the Sabbath.
God's interventions in history are ruptures of the Sabbath, not abandonment or rejection but momentary provisional ruptures, because he has been obliged to intervene in order to save man when man has failed in the plan of becoming what he ought to be: just and conformed to the moral design of the Creator. There was then pikuah nelesh: man was in mortaldanger and God saved him. God intervened among men after Adam's sin, at the time of Noe, and at the time of Abraham.
The Sabbath will not be entirely fulfilled until Israel is able to give to the world the meaning of that day, the freedom that is at the heart of this celebration. Then the covenant with creation will be sealed. The Sabbath still remains to be done (laasot). It is not concerned with prohibitions alone, because there is a task to be accomplished, a meaning to be made comprehensible.
To attain this, nothing less than the entire history of humanity is necessary. This task is confided to Israel. Israel's identity bears within itself the secret of man's identity. As long as the unity of man has not been achieved, as long as man has no access to the values of the Sabbath, to the menukhab as well as to the melakhah, we cannot speak of his identity. The forging of the identity of the whole human race starts with the identity of Israel. As long as Israel has not built the misbkan (tabernacle), that is, the •(( Sabbath space » for the Lord, the unity of the human race is not yet in view.
If Israel observes the Sabbath so faithfully it is not only for herself; it is because she believes that Sabbath observance keeps the world alive. a If there were one man who observed the Sabbath perfectly, » says Jewish tradition, # the next world could begin. » Abraham engendered the people of the Sabbath; he is the just man who made it possible for the Sabbath to be observed; but the just man is the foundation of the world ». Thus the world subsists through the Sabbath, and the Sabbath guarantees freedom to man.
Fr. Bernard Dupuy o.p. is director of the Centre d'etudes ISTINA in Paris, for ecumenical and Jewish-Christian relations, and secretary of the French bishops' commission for Catholic-Jewish relations.
