Parshat Bereshit

Shabbat at the Center

Rabbi Susan Laemmle, Ph.D., October 9, 2004, 24 Tishri 5765

Even after the religious and communal intensity of the past month, I always feel a certain expectation, even awe on Shabbat Bereshit.  We have entered a new Jewish year and are beginning the cycle of Torah readings over again—from the beginning, and at the beginning.  Of course, the Torah begins not with our People’s particular story, but rather with the very origins of creation.  It will not be until Parshat Lech Lecha that we enter specifically Jewish territory.  And yet a crucial and distinctive aspect of Jewish observance is encoded here in the prehistory of all humanity—built into the structure of the created universe.

READ FROM CHAPTER 2: 1-3. These are the very words many of us chanted, read or heard last night during Kiddush at the Shabbat table or in synagogue.  Surely there is no practice or observance that has had a greater, more continuous influence on Jewish life than Shabbat, except perhaps Pesach.  And yet, the origins of Shabbat predate our existence as a People.  There is a certain irony or mystery here—a way in which Shabbat turns Jews both outward and inward, connecting us tightly to our own community while also lifting our eyes to the heavens, from which we look back down upon the world as a whole.  In a sense, the universality of Shabbat is apparent in the Christian observance of Sunday as a holy day, the Muslim fixing of Friday as the day on which the communal Jumah prayers take place, and the more diffused Sabbath ideal amongst spiritual searchers and new age religionists.  Still, our Jewish way of developing and celebrating a particular 25-hour period—on Friday evening and Saturday, once a week, every week— as the Sabbath, is distinctive and very important.

On Saturday morning, the liturgical presence of Shabbat broadens to include Revelation as well as Creation, the Book of Exodus along with Genesis; specifically, the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.  Let me ask you to pull out your Sim Shalom prayerbooks and turn to page 117.   We are now at the middle of the Shabbat Amidah, at Kiddushat-Ha Yom—the sanctification of the holy day, which replaces the thirteen petitionary blessings of ordinary days.  This prayer, especially its opening section, has attracted me for some time and was the stimulus to my deciding to offer a Dvar Torah on Shabbat Bereshit.  Let me explain why.

As in Friday night’s introduction to the Kiddush, which I read a minute ago, here too a Torah passage comes to root our Sabbath observance.  This time, it’s from the Book of Exodus—interestingly enough, not from the Ten Commandments, but rather from Chapter 31, Parshat Ki Tissa.  This passage provides the refrain that introduces our Shabbat morning Kiddush: V’shamru Bnai Yisrael et ha Shabbat. The prayer on page 117 continues after that with a discussion of the exclusivity of the Sabbath as a sign between God and Israel, a sign of Jewish chosenness, if you will. This and the final section of Kiddushat Ha-Yom ask God to accept our Sabbath rest as a kind of offering, and bless us with the peace and joy that Shabbat can instill.  At the end of the third section occurs one of my favorite lines of liturgy:  Chemdat Yamim Oto karatah:  which I translate as “ the sweetest, most darling of days, you called it.”

But my deepest favorite is the first section of the Shabbat morning Kiddushat-Ha-Yom, which is unusual in the way it highlights Moses’ role in the revelation at Sinai.  What we have here is a beautiful poem whose construction and imagery describe—and also enact—the centrality of Shabbat.  The order of words and items in the description makes a difference here, so allow me to focus on it.   The very first word is Yismach— “Rejoiced”— creating a jubilant feeling of celebration.  And why does Moses rejoice?  Because Adonai acknowledges him as a faithful servant by placing the equivalent of an Olympian laurel wreath or kingly crown on his head, expressed as a Clil Teferet:  a crown (or perfection) of splendor or beauty.  This expression recalls one of the wonderful early morning blessings in Birchot Ha-Shachar—in which Adonai “crowns Israel with splendor”: Oter Yisrael b’Tefarah.  It also recalls, or looks forward to, the keren ohr panav—the glowing, radiant face with which Moses brings down the second set of tablets after the Golden Calf event.

Encircled, then, with splendor, radiant with glory, Moses faces the Holy One directly.  And from this encounter, he emerges holding the two stone tablets.  In this highly visual account, we picture him holding them at the center of his body as he descends from the mountain (much as our Torah Service leader hugs the scroll when leading the Shma and the processional).  And then the camera, as it were, zooms in to focus on one element upon the two tablets —just one among the Ten Words or Commandments:  Sh’mirat-Shabbat—the keeping or observance of the Sabbath.  That focus is clear—and yet  the final element— Chen katoov b’Torahtechah—reemphasizes it by creating a platform for the verses beginning with V’Shamru.

I am hoping that this introductory section and the Shabbat Kiddushat Ha-Yom as a whole make you feel as I do—or that it will the next time you recite or hear them.  As someone who is observing Shabbat at the very moment when I pray the words about observing it, I feel myself at the center of all creation, surrounded by concentric circles of Jewish meaning.  I stand in an eternal, timeless sacred circle where the “children of Israel” link arms from one generation to the next, so that we ourselves, as it were, create the Clil Teferet that crowns Moses.  Observing Shabbat, I—all of us—take part in a Brit Olam—a covenant that transcends or encompasses all time and space.  And yet—once again, ironically or mysteriously—this eternal covenant, this sign of relationship that will endure forever, has its basis in concrete time and place, in the six days of Creation followed by the seventh day of cessation and rest.

What shall we think about a text that places the Shabbat commandment at the center of creation and our Jewish lives?   Does this, in effect, distort the original Genesis creation account as well as the Exodus account of revelation?  In both, Shabbat is one element among others.  Also and importantly, does such emphasis on Shabbat distort Jewish observance by making one mitzvah more important that the others—something the rabbis try hard to keep us and themselves from doing, even while they continually do it.  (Mention rabbinic thesis.) 

Probably, most of us would say “no” regarding distortion.  Our being here on Shabbat morning says that we take Shabbat seriously.  My own experience is that there is no distinctly Jewish observance that has Shabbat’s potential for continually blossoming, for expanding in meaning and significance, for enriching our lives and communities and world. As an indication of this, let me point to the wonderful new book that our friend Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer participated in writing:  A Day Apart:  Shabbat at Home.   Other commandments, for example kashrut, provide the occasion for many books and essays; but these are mostly manuals of practical instruction that couldn’t possibly bring in the wide range of commentary and suggestiveness, midrash and reflection that this book offers.

So then, Shabbat does seem to be central to Jewish communal life—and to an extent not apparent in the Creation account itself or the Decalogue, which are both texts that have been widely influential beyond the Jewish setting.  We Jews pull Shabbat out of its primary textual home to develop and glorify it with a Clil Teferet; we hold it to us as Moses did the tablets; we make it ours and a sign of our relationship with God. Synagogues and Hillels, Jewish retirement homes and camps, community centers and increasingly even nominally secular Jewish organizations find that coming together on, or in anticipation of, Shabbat strengthens Jewish identity and commitment.   Can there be any downside of this?

In his contribution to the book of essays entitled I am Jewish:  Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, Rabbi David Hartman writes about “The Creation Narrative and Jewish Identity” in a way that, in effect, responds to my question.  Allow me to quote at some length: “the festivals indicate the importance of the historical narrative in organizing Jewish identity” but “the narrative of creation. . . informs Jewish consciousness every week through the observance of Shabbat. [Thus] the Jew’s perspective on life is nurtured not only by the collective memories of the Jewish People but also by awareness of the shared condition of all human beings.  The creation story is about the common source and condition of all humankind [who are] . . created in the image of God. . . . Every seventh day we interrupt the flow of our tasks and ambitions and stand quietly before God the creator.  The dialectic between our particular and universal identities, between the God of Israel and the God of creation, is the fate and challenge of being a Jew.”

Shabbat is indeed our “sanctuary in time,” as Heschel put it.  It is also beyond time—the placeless institution that has maintained Jewish life in so many places.  It is an oasis, a magic circle that keeps cares and pressures at a distance. And yet, there is no fully safe harbor, no absolute time out of time, in this world and in our human lives.  We envision the world to come as a kind of return to Gan Eden, and we speak of Shabbat as m’ayn olam ha-bah—a taste of the world to come.  A taste, not a full meal, and certainly not a continuing diet for us human beings who are struggling to be better and do better, who need to build a more just and peaceful world in an active way; who are meant to develop ourselves and help others in a more open, enterprising and creative manner than Shabbat restrictions will allow.  And so, as long as we are alive on this earth, we do best to claim Shabbat as our own while also channeling the at least some of the strength it gives us towards elevating the other six days of the week. 

Shabbat Shalom, and after that Shavoah Tov.