שבת (Shabbos) — In Its Incarnations
The linguistic fate that befell the prescription for sacred restings interests me. This week, Jews read the portion of the week that contains the Kiddush over wine recited on Shabbos afternoon.
ושמרו בני ישראל את השבת
לעשות את השבת לדרתם ברית עולם
And the Children of Israel cherished the restfulness
to facilitate this resting in all their generations, an eternal covenant. (Ex 31:17)
At the end of this v’Shamru Kiddush reading, the specific day of the week upon which we are prescribed to rest is listed, as if to answer a question: And when do we rest and why:
וביום השביעי שבת וינפש
And it was on the Seventh Day that He rested and restored himself.
The orginal meaning of שבת (shabbos) relates to ceasing and desisting, as we see in the first usage by scripture of the root verb of שבת (Shabbos) (Genesis 2:2):
וישבת ביום השביעי מכל מלאכתו אשר עשה
And He rested/desisted on the seventh day from all the work which He had done.
Allow me redundancy in presenting a selection of the forty-odd Torah citations that mention שבת (Shabbos) or its related forms in order to impart some flavor to its central positioning in Scripture. I shall render שבת (Shabbos) as restfulness or with the present participle forms resting or restings — perhaps, the word ataraxia will come to mind for those of you who find the Greek more comfortable. In those cases where שבת (Shabbos) is typically translated as the proper noun Sabbath, I shall parenthetically list that translation, as well as my own. It should be noted that it is not until Exodus that the root word for שבת (Shabbos) is used even as a present participle that may be mistranslated as the proper noun Sabbath; the Seventh Day, throughout the Creation saga, is referred to generically as יום השביעי (yom ha’shvi’i), the Seventh Day. In Exodus, as just noted, we do begin to see the mentioned participle form, as in:
ושמרו בני ישראל את השבת
לעשות את השבת לדרתם ברית עולם
And the Children of Israel cherished the restfulness
to facilitate this resting in all their generations, an eternal covenant. (Ex 31:17)
[And the Children of Israel guarded the Sabbath,
to do the Sabbath in all their generations, an eternal covenant]
Here, and in the subsequent examples, while translators have chosen to render שבת (Shabbos) as the proper noun, Sabbath, שבת (Shabbos), as claimed above, carried the form and meaning of the present participle — still, linguistically connected, that is, to the predicate forms.
This is the case in the following instances:
אך את שבתתי תשמרו כי אות הוא ביני וביניכם לדרתיכם
לדעת כי אני יהוה מקדשכם
Aye! My restings shall you cherish, for they are a symbol between you and Me for your progeny to know that I am the God who sanctifies you. (Ex 31:13)
[Aye! My Sabbaths shall you guard, for they are a symbol between you and Me for your progeny to know that I am God who sanctifies you.]
ששת ימים יעשה מלאכה וביום השביעי
שבת שבתון קדש ליהוה
Six days shall all labor be done. And on the seventh day?
A resting of restfulness sacred for God. (Ex 31:15)
[Six days shall all labor be done. And on the seventh day?
A Sabbath of Sabbaths sacred for God.]
Similarly, in the following verses:
ששת ימים תעשה מלאכה וביום השביעי
שבת שבתון מקרא קדש כל מלאכה לא תעשו
שבת הוא ליהוה בכל מושבתכם
Six days shall work be done and on the Seventh Day?
a Restfulness of Restings, a designated sanctified moment, all work shall you not do,
a restfullness in honor of God in all of your dwelling-(resting-)places. (Lev 23:3)
[Six days shall work be done and on the Seventh Day
a Sabbath of Sabbaths, a designated sanctified moment, all work shall you not do,
a Sabbath it is in honor of God in all of your dwelling-places.]
את שבתתי תשמרו ומקדשי תיראו אני יהוה
My restings shall you cherish and my places of sanctity shall you fear, I am God. (Lev 19:30)
[My Sabbaths shall you guard and my places of sanctity shall you fear, I am God.]
Often, in fact, we see the predicate form of שבת (Shabbos) side by side with the day listed as יום השביעי (yom ha’shvi’i), the Seventh Day, rendering unlikely the alternative translation:
ששת ימים תעשה מעשיך וביום השביעי
תשבת למען ינוח שורך וחמרך וינפש בן אמתך והגר
Six days shall you do deeds and on the seventh day
you shall rest so that your ox and your donkey may feel comfort and the child of your
she-servant and the visitor may be refreshed. (Ex 23:12)
or:
ששת ימים תעבד וביום השביעי
תשבת בחריש ובקציר תשבת
Six days shall you labor and on the seventh day
shall you rest; from plowing and harvesting shall you rest! Exodus 34:21
But what, we might query, underlies this notion of restfulness so as to generate the multiplicity of refrains about guarding and cherishing שבת (Shabbos)? Why should this cherishing of a sacred resting echo three-score times and more in Holy Writ?
Allow me to continue with the following brief thoughts — borrowed, at least in spirit, from the homiletics of the XIXth Century German exegetist Sampson Raphael Hirsch and a previous work (Covitz, 1997, Chapter 5) where I have suggested that the Ethos of Genesis rests on a central proscription against Narcissism. Scripture (Exodus) chooses to counterpoise שבת (Shabbos) against the עגל (egel), the molten calf that moved a generation of worshippers to adore only that which might come under their own scrutiny and control. שבת (Shabbos) was to be different. שבת (Shabbos), restfulness, was to still the works of our mortal hands, to make them irrelevant; during these Restings, our very inactivity would fail to separate the braggart from the beggar, the sculptor from the grave-digger, and the philosopher from the fish-monger. In desisting from activity, all would present with their residual status as creations; on the seventh day all would cease aping the Creator — all would desist from activity and mock-creation. This seventh day would encompass זכר למעשה בראשית (zecher l’ma’aseh breishis), a rememberance that we are all creations. שבת (Shabbos) could then be taken to represent an open disclosure and confession: we are, all of us, creations and not creators ... like the crow and the dog, like the roo and the snail. שבת (Shabbos) would, then, be about what we share with each other; in this sense, it may be said that שבת (Shabbos), that ceasing our imitation of the Creator, is an ultimate form of humility. שבת (Shabbos) is more about similarities and less about differences (ideas purloined from Shimshon R’fael Hirsch).
By reifying this concept, however, and by refusing to accept this universal day of kinship-in-rest and offering-up, in its stead, a code and ritual of practice, we have neutered the restfulness of the seventh day and made it vacuous as we further weakened its message and replaced it with our attempts at — for yet another day of the week — pretending to the powers of the Creator. I would suggest that even in the Talmudic attempt to replace restfulness by a lengthy listing of proscriptions, there is implicit a purloining of Divine rights of creation! In any case, life, as we all know, now goes on during the Friday Sabbaths of the world of Islam and the Saturday and Sunday Sabbaths of the Judæo-Christian world. And like passing through some one-horse town, in most of our dwelling places, one passes through both Sabbath and Charity, nowadays, without noticing either.
I won’t go on much further that wondering about how a particularization of shabbos = restings … to …. Shabbos with its Hallachic proscriptions … may have led to a loss of meaning that occurs when something is particularized … when a Common Noun becomes a Proper Noun, so to speak.
And I will end with a query: As this week’s reading from Torah includes the story of the Egel ha’Zahav ,,, עגל הזהב … The Calf of Gold, is the particularization of a notion of God to a fixed space and time also a depreciation of something splendid … into The Splendid?
