The Jewish Epicentre

Shabbat has shaped Jewish community across the generations above and beyond any other single aspect of religious life. Shabbat, the Sabbath, is the Jewish day of rest on the seventh day of the week (the week starting on Sunday), during which Jewish people do not engage in regular work, alongside veering away from cooking, cleaning, gardening, shopping and driving, among other prohibitions. In 2024, it is a spiritual innovation which sounds absolutely bonkers, for the maddest of the mad, deciding in the ultra-technologically advanced, modern world to revert back to the stone age for the sake of ‘rest’. Who are these loons?

This week I sat in the Beit Din, our rabbinic council, bringing new Jewish people through the final stages of conversion to Judaism and one of the candidates, accompanied by her young children said: “these are some of the only children growing up in this generation who will know how to switch off!” It struck me as a scary prospect for kids growing up with screens, and our adults, that in reality, today we never have options to wind down from electronic interference and distraction. The original innovation of shabbat was not related to anything electronic but shabbat was always a hibernation, respite from the outside world. It seems that more than ever we need this safe time, this time of mental rest and rehabilitation.

When I went to rabbi school one of my teachers said I needed to learn the first Rashi of every single Parsha (weekly Bible reading), this remains a learning aspiration to study the Torah portion each week with the comment of our most prolific rabbinic commentator on the bible, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi) from 11th Century Troyes in France.

This week he gives the most simple clarifier on the words of Parsha which describe Shabbat: ‘אך את שבתתי תשמרו’, ‘Nevertheless, you must keep My sabbaths’ [Exodus 31:13]. The word ‘Ach’, here, meaning ‘but’ or ‘rather’ seems totally out of place, without context. As is often the case when a word or even one single letter seems to present a blip or discrepancy, our rabbis jump in to offer a drash, an explanation to how it all fits together.

‘אַעַ"פִּ שֶׁתִּהְיוּ רְדוּפִין וּזְרִיזִין בִּזְרִיזוּת הַמְּלָאכָה, שַׁבָּת אַל תִּדָּחֶה מִפָּנֶיהָ’, ‘Even though you might be anxious to get your work done promptly, you must not forfeit the Shabbat’. In the crazy structures of our lives we might be inclined to prioritise everything before our emotional spiritual rest. Rashi calls on us to be reminded that the priority of our core religious text is the granting of this spiritual rest and at the very same moment, this text is not speaking to our own individual work but calling on us to think expansively about what the ‘work of the week’ is. Jewish law calls on us to consider everything that is not related to our most basic maintenance - food, heat, light - to be categorised as ‘work’. Shabbat is the twenty-five hour suspension of everything of creative advancement, on Shabbat, for one day only, we do not advance any of our ambitions or creative hopes. We should believe our life work and the work of our families to be crucially important but our Torah and our rabbis are calling on us, you and me, to suspend that keen survival and advancement instinct for the sake of a spiritual rejuvenation, a mental rest, that is not possible without the suspension of that creative work.

A few verses later, we read ‘לַעֲשׂוֹת אֶת־הַשַּׁבָּת לְדֹרֹתָם בְּרִית עוֹלָם’, ‘[we] will observe the Shabbat throughout the ages as a covenant for all time’ [Exodus 31:16]. Rabbi Nachman Of Breslov from 19th Century Ukraine takes this verse and flips its meaning, ‘le’dorotam’, ‘throughout the generations’ becomes ‘le’diratam’, ‘throughout the dwelling places’; a common rabbinic flourish to turn the meaning of a word on its head in favour of a word of similar letters, to change the meaning of the verse entirely. The attempt is plain to see, Rabbi Nachman wants to share with us, Shabbat is central to the Jewish home, to the epicentre of Jewish family life and to spiritual journey and survival. Nothing should get in the way of the observance and celebration of Shabbat, it is the nuts and bolts of Jewish life, our spiritual epicentre.

Give it a go, let me know.

Shabbat shalom

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