Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have sanctity, a day of complete rest to the Eternal.
Shemot 35:2
The institution of Shabbat is one of the greatest inventions God ever came up with. It no doubt qualifies Him to receive the Nobel Prize for innovative thinking, and the venerable judges in Sweden should sincerely consider bestowing this honor on the Lord of the Universe. Now that most of the world has adopted the concept of a weekly day of rest, the time has come to act. The idea is nearly six thousand years old; a Nobel Prize is long overdue.
That we all need a weekly rest is common knowledge. What is much less known is that the Jewish Tradition believes such rest should not only consist of refraining from strenuous labor, but also from any kind of work that presents human beings as having dominion over the world. One day a week we are asked to return the world and all its potential to God and, instead of being creators, acknowledge that we are also creatures in God’s eyes — not much different from a flower, a leaf, or a small bird.
By refraining from cooking, writing, creating electricity, driving cars, flying airplanes, and other such activities, we learn that the world has already been created and will no doubt survive without us. As Abraham Joshua Heschel pointed out: “The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.”[1]
The worship of all the wrong things
Shabbat is a day when we stop worshiping technology, money, and power. Instead, we focus on our internal lives and our families — learning Torah, singing songs, and creating an inner palace of tranquility. Shabbat is holiness in time, when we allow for personal conversations with friends, reading a book, playing games with our children, and ungluing ourselves from the cellphone, tablet, and computer.
Shabbat means living in full liberty, which is paradoxically achieved by heeding prohibitions. We free ourselves from all sorts of activities that often disturb our internal balance. What can be greater than abandoning the cell phone and suddenly discovering that we have a spouse and children? We find an island of stillness in a turbulent sea of worldliness.
Yet there is one law that, while rarely applicable in Israel and large Jewish communities around the world, really sums up the whole message of this remarkable day: the prohibition against carrying any object in the public domain, besides our clothing and jewelry.
Today, many cities are surrounded by an eruv,[2] so as to permit people to carry things they need for Shabbat for reasons of convenience. But it is really this prohibition against carrying that captures the essence of the Shabbat rest, and it is a pity that its message has been nearly forgotten. What is the secret behind this law?
A mountain stroll
The great Zen Buddhist monk Master Daokai of Mt. Furong (12th century, China) really hit the nail on the head when he said:
The green mountains are always walking . . . If you doubt mountains’ walking, you do not know your own walking; it is not that you do not walk, but that you do not know or understand your own walking.[3]
What does this mean?
There are two reasons for walking — one is to reach a destination, and the other is for the sake of strolling (le-tayel in Hebrew; spazieren in German). When someone walks to something, their goal is outside of themselves: they have to be at a business meeting or need to bring a package to a specific place. But when people take a stroll, the walking itself is the goal. It is not a means, but das ding an sich, the thing itself. Every step is its purpose. At such a moment, people are connected with their very being. They are walking with themselves in peace and in complete harmony. They carry only themselves.
Green mountains walk in the sense that they, in an existential way, stroll with themselves. They need not do anything but be mountains. Nothing outside themselves disturbs them in being mountains. They need not go anywhere; they just stroll.
People must know how to carry themselves. They should know that their inner being is the goal of their life. It is their internal life that needs to spiritually and morally grow. Their happiness depends not on outside circumstances, but on their attitude toward those conditions. The rare and simple pleasure of being themselves will compensate for all their misery. If they meet their family or friends, they will not want to own them as objects but rather relate to them in a mode in which they stroll with them, accompanying them while spiritually growing. They realize that being is becoming.
Sub specie aeternitatis
The goal of life is not about obtaining things or being somewhere for the sake of proving oneself, achieving external goals, or making money. When we acknowledge this, we cease to be the slaves of our own inventions, whether it is our cars, our computers, or our cell phones. What one acquires on Shabbat is a way of life that brings the joy of tranquility or, as Spinoza calls it — sub specie aeternitatis — a perspective of eternity.
When we are told not to carry in the public domain on Shabbat, we are essentially being asked not to see our life goals in the public sphere, where life is about getting somewhere. While for livelihood we no doubt need to travel, that activity remains a weekday endeavor; a means to something, but never das ding an sich.
On Shabbat, we turn our outer mode into a being mode, and for one day a week we become people who by just carrying ourselves and nothing else, are able to deal with a world that has little knowledge of the soul’s needs. On Shabbat, we stroll even when we go to synagogue.
In a world where we refuse to take notice of what is beyond our sight, where we turn mysteries into dogmas and facts, ideas into a multitude of words and routine, on Shabbat we are asked to surpass ourselves by simply being ourselves; we are summoned to discover another world.
Refraining from carrying is an act of protest against the shallowness of our world. And while today we are permitted to carry outside our homes if an eruv is in place, we should never forget the great symbolic meaning inherent in the prohibition against carrying on Shabbat, which can advance us — both spiritually and morally — further than anything else.
Our society stands on the precipice, and one false step can plunge us into the abyss. We have, for the most part, become a civilization of notoriously unhappy people — lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, and dependent — people who are glad to kill the time that they are trying so hard to save.
Shabbat is a day of truce in the midst of the human battle with the world. It teaches us that even pulling out a blade of grass is a breach of harmony, as is lighting a match. Shabbat teaches us that the survival of the human race depends on a radical change of the human heart.
The time has come for all of humankind to observe Shabbat — whether on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. The Lord of the Universe has told us to do so, and we Jews owe it to our fellow human beings.
Perhaps the rabbis should suggest that even when there is an eruv, people should once a month abstain from carrying so as not to lose the important message of this prohibition.
Notes
[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 2005), 13.
[2] The Talmud (Shabbat 14b; Eruvin 21b) attributes the institution of the eruv to King Solomon. There are different types of eruvin. The eruv under discussion here is the setting up of a symbolic enclosure which turns a semi-public area into a private domain by surrounding it. The eruv has been adopted in cities all over the world, including parts of London, Amsterdam, New York, and, of course, Jerusalem, as well as most other cities in Israel. It allows people to carry things that they need, as well as alleviating situations when not being able to carry on Shabbat would result in undesirable circumstances — for example, by preventing young couples from attending synagogue because their children are too young to walk.
[3] Eihei Dogen’s Mountains and Waters Sutra. I thank Prof. Yehuda Gellman of Jerusalem for bringing this text to my attention.
Questions to Ponder from the DCA Think Tank
- Rabbi Cardozo indicates that the Sabbath day is designed to give human beings a rest from their regular schedule, and to give the world a rest from human beings. How are these two “rests” related? Why are both necessary?
- Some people find the prohibitions of Shabbat to be chains that do not permit desired activities. Others find those same prohibitions to release them from the bindings of the rest of the week. In what ways do you find the “full liberty” of Shabbat restful (or not)? In what ways do you find that kind of rest challenging (or not)? Explain how cell phones (and other technologies) upend our “internal balance” — and the degree to which taking the break of Shabbat can restore it.
- In Jewish law, one of the main ways of taking possession of a movable object — that is, most possessions — is to lift it up (hagbahah). This kind of acquisition is called, “kinyan.” How does Rabbi Cardozo’s explanation about refraining from carrying in the public domain on Shabbat apply, philosophically speaking, to the Halakhah that one should not make “kinyanim” on Shabbat?
- Rabbi Cardozo suggests that all week long, humanity battles with the world, and that Shabbat is therefore necessary for all humanity — to provide respite from that war. Yet those who prepare to convert to Judaism, and therefore largely observe Shabbat, are often told to be sure to “break Shabbat” in some small way each week until they have actually converted. How is this “Jewish” nature to the day of rest to be surmounted in the creation of some kind of Sabbath day for each and every stream of humanity?
- Rabbi Cardozo argues that paradoxically, Shabbat allows us to live in full liberty by virtue of heeding to prescribed prohibitions. Liberty in this sense implies being who you really are, a creation in God’s created world; and this state seems to be most effectively achieved for the general population through refraining from “creative work” (melachah). Do you agree? What about people who feel they can only truly express themselves in creative endeavours, such as writing, painting or playing music?
- Rabbi Cardozo compares the notion of mountains walking, as per the teachings of the Buddha and master Furong Daokai, to the inner essence and purpose of the prohibition to carry objects within, and into, the public domain on Shabbat (melechet hotza’ah). Does this comparison speak to you? Do you similarly consider walking/movement as an expression of your inner essence, such that the mountains walking really means the mountains just being themselves?3. Rabbi Cardozo presents the notion that part of the inner meaning of Shabbat is physically expressed by observing the prohibition of carrying objects within, and into, the public domain. However he also mentions in footnote 2 that in many communities, an eruv is set up precisely to allow the opposite, for social reasons and to balance out opposing spiritual values. Do you see the inner meaning of Shabbat of which Rabbi Cardozo speaks as having been lost, precisely because many places have eruvim? Or does the awareness of the reason behind the prohibition suffice, in your view, for us to realize this inner meaning – even if this isn’t expressed physically?
- In his conclusion, Rabbi Cardozo suggests that truly the entire world should be observing Shabbat. It is true that Shabbat is a reminder of Creation, a universal moment, as expressed in the kiddush sanctification recital; yet the second part of kiddush, along with the Shabbat liturgy and the halachah itself, also convey a strong message that Shabbat is a particular covenant between God and the Jewish people. (The kiddush mentions “For You have chosen us”; and the halachah does not allow a non‑Jew to observe Shabbat in the way Jews do, for example). How should we resolve this conflict? Are we entering into an era where ideally the whole world should observe Shabbat as Jews do?
