The Sabbath

Holiness in Time

Holiness in space, in nature, was known in other religions. New in the teaching of Judaism was that the idea of holiness was gradually shifted from space to time, from the realm of nature to the realm of history, from things to events. The physical world became divested of any inherent sanctity.¹ There were no naturally sacred plants or animals any more. To be sacred, a thing had to be consecrated by a conscious act of man. The quality of holiness is not in the grain of matter. It is a preciousness bestowed upon things by an act of consecration and persisting in relation to God.

The emphasis on time is a predominant feature of prophetic thinking. “The day of the Lord” is more important to the prophets than “the house of the Lord.”

Mankind is split into nations and divided in states. It is a moment in time—the Messianic end of days—that will give back to man what a thing in space, the Tower of Babel, had taken away. It was the vision of the Messianic day in which the hope of restoring the unity of all men was won.²

There is no mention of a sacred place in the Ten Commandments. On the contrary, following the event at Sinai, Moses is told: “In every place where I cause My name to be mentioned I will come unto thee and bless thee” (Exodus 20:24). The awareness that sanctity is not bound to a particular place made possible the rise of the synagogue. The temple was only in Jerusalem, while the synagogue was in every village. There are fixed times, but no fixed place of prayer.

In the Bible, no thing, no place on earth, is holy by itself. Even the site on which the only sanctuary was to be built in the Promised Land is never called holy in the Pentateuch, nor was it determined or specified in the time of Moses. More than twenty times it is referred to as “the place which the Lord your God shall choose.”³

For generations the site remained unknown. But the king David cherished the aspiration to build a temple for the Lord. “And it came to pass, when the king dwelt in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies round about, that the king said unto Nathan the prophet: ‘See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwelleth within curtains.’” ⁴

It is of David’s eagerness that the Psalmist sings:

Lord, remember unto David
All his affliction;
How he swore unto the Lord
And he vowed unto the Mighty
One of Jacob:
Surely I will not come into
the tent of my house,
Nor go up into the bed
That is spread for me;
I will not give sleep to mine eyes,
Nor slumber to mine eyelids;
Until I find out a place for the Lord,
A dwelling-place for the Mighty One of Jacob …⁵

It was in answer to David’s prayer that the site for the temple was made known.

For the Lord hath chosen Zion;
He hath desired it for His habitation:
This is My resting-place for ever.
Here will I dwell; for I have desired it.⁶

The site was chosen not because it was endowed with any supernatural quality, autochthonous, inherent in the soil, but because man prayed for it and God desired it.⁷

The temple became a sacred place, yet its sacredness was not self-begotten. Its sanctity was established, yet the paradox of a sanctity in space was sensed by the prophets.

The pious people of Israel would sing:

Let us go into His dwelling-place;
Let us worship at His footstool;⁸

but the prophet proclaimed:
Thus saith the Lord:
The heaven is My throne,
And the earth is My footstool;
Where is the house that ye may build unto Me?
And where is the place that may be My resting-place?⁹

If God is everywhere, He cannot be just somewhere. If God has made all things, how can man make a thing for Him?¹⁰ In the Sabbath liturgy, we recite till this day:

His glory fills the universe.
His angels ask one another:
Where is the place of His glory?

The ancient rabbis discern three aspects of holiness: the holiness of the Name of God, the holiness of the Sabbath, and the holiness of Israel.¹¹ The holiness of the Sabbath preceded the holiness of Israel.¹² The holiness of the Land of Israel is derived from the holiness of the people of Israel.¹³ The land was not holy at the time of Terah or even at the time of the Patriarchs. It was sanctified by the people when they entered the land under the leadership of Joshua. The land was sanctified by the people, and the Sabbath was sanctified by God. The sanctity of the Sabbath is not like that of the festivals. The sanctity of the festivals depends upon an act of man. It is man who fixes the calendar and thus determines on which day of the week a festival will come. If the people should fail to establish the beginning of the new month, Passover would not be celebrated. It is different in regard to the Sabbath. Even when men forsake the Sabbath, its holiness remains. ¹⁴ And yet all aspects of holiness are mysteriously interrelated.¹⁵

The sense of holiness in time is expressed in the manner in which the Sabbath is celebrated. No ritual object is required for keeping the seventh day, unlike most festivals on which such objects are essential to their observance, as, for example, unleavened bread, Shofar, Lulab and Etrog or the Tabernacle.¹⁶ On that day the symbol of the Covenant, the phylacteries, displayed on all days of the week, is dispensed with. Symbols are superfluous: the Sabbath is itself the symbol.

“The Sabbath is all holiness.”¹⁷ Nothing is essentially required save a soul to receive more soul. For the Sabbath “maintains all souls.”¹⁸ It is the world of souls: spirit in the form of time. All sages agree, we are told in the Talmud, that the first feast of weeks on which the Torah was given fell on the Sabbath.¹⁹ Indeed, it is the only day on which the word of God could have been given to man.

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.²⁰