The Sabbath
by Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Book Summary Information
Author: Abraham Joshua HeschelIntroduction: Susannah Heschel
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-08-17
ISBN: 0374529752
Number of pages: 136
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Book Reviews of The Sabbath
Book Review: To Face Sacred Moments
Summary: 5 Stars
Abraham Heschel is one of the most respected Jewish scholars of the 20th century and of an orthodox view friendly to Christian belief. He was an active participant in the Civil Rights movement and wrote a seminal study called The Prophets and a number of works of reflective and broad scholarship.
In this slender and reknowned volume, Heschel sets forth an explanation of the Sabbath tradition among the Jews. In my faulty way I would like to recall here to mind some of the things that I have learned, the questions that it raised and the contingent reflections I have had in relation to it.
One thing that stands out is the cogency of Heschel's explanation of the Sabbath as a spiritually fitting rhythm of life. He speaks of the rest, the menuha, of the Sabbath not in the negative sense of merely ceasing labor.
"Menuha which we usually render with `rest' means here much more than withdrawal from labor and exertion, more than freedom from toil and strain or activity of any kind. Menuha is not a negative concept but something real and intrinsically positive." p.. 22-23
Like Aristotle and other ancient Greeks' conception of leisure, the conception of the Sabbath rest is positive in nature, and is viewed as the purpose and culmination of labor. Work in the mundane realities is to culminate in rest and contemplation from which we may cease from the hustle and bustle and attend in quietness and rest to the Lord. As it is says in Isaiah, "In quietness and rest is your strength..."
It seems to me that perhaps a great enduring strength in the religious culture of the Jewish people lies centrally in the keeping of the Sabbath. In so doing, they fulfill that of which the verse I quoted above speaks. I counterpoise this in my mind with the ambition to control and conquer space in Descartes' schematic. This brings me to a major point of the book. Heschel finds a distinction between the Jewish religion and other religions in that in others' religions, grand temples and cathedrals are built as sacred space, but that in the Jewish religion a cathedral in time is built to God, the cathedral of the Sabbath. He notes the distinction between this and for instance Spinoza's propensity for supposing the geometrico sufficient for explanation of all, an extension of Descartes, and in some sense the paradigm of the modern, and especially of science.
"The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments", Heschel writes. This reminds me of the experiences related of Jacob in the Bible. There is one in particular, perhaps a more obscure one, but one which struck me by its nature as conveying indeed a real historical experience, a sacred moment, which moved Jacob to purify his household. Judaism, and Christianity after it, are distinct in being irreducibly historical in their accounts which are punctuated by pivotal sacred moments, and which also imply sacred moments in the life of every believer. If these sacred moments in the Bible are mythologized in their entirety, as for instance, it seems to me, the philosopher Eric Voegelin does, then they are completely devalued. They are no longer the Faith.
Part of the cogency of Sabbath-keeping seems to me to lie in the nature of the self and our relation to God. We live a fractured and distracted existence. The fractured paintings of Picasso for instance seem to capture some of the fractured-ness of self in the modern world. Resting and ceasing allows us to remember what it is all for, to renew our bearing and orientation to the ultimate and in so doing helps to fulfill the ultimate of our being or existence. The shalom, the peaceful fullness of living, is attained only in this beholding relationship. But it is not all about self and certainly not about "self-help". I think of the over-extendedness of Descartes who made the leap to supposing mathematics valid for all realms of human inquiry, and the motivated definition of the self that is inherited markedly from him which leaves no place of honor and recognition to the infinite and the to the I and Thou. Contrast this with the Sabbath which recognizes a limitedness to man, but not merely a limitedness but a purpose and a directedness of man's aspirations, which establishes an end to man's grasping control and allows for a beholding and a composition of the self to the whole.
This reminds me of Martin Buber in that the Sabbath is such that it is to help us to rise beyond the I-and-It to the wholeness of our being in the I and Thou. When this is learnt through living wisely, then even in the "chrysalis state of the It," the I and Thou is still intact. In the same way the Sabbath principle of orientating toward the eternity in our hearts, when kept wisely, becomes something that persists through the days of labor.
It seems to me too that the Sabbath is very much related to the Jewish tradition of universality in the doctrine of the Imago Dei which became in modern times the basis of human rights thought. The humaneness seems to me related to the anthropology/ view of the self and of relation to God and man manifested in the practice. Through the quietness and rest and contemplation, the human soul is equipped to help others, the helpless, the homeless, the outcast and the needy. There needs to be sought and grown a wholeness out of which kindness and ministry is deepened.
An image that I found particularly poignant was in a rabbinic tale that Heschel related and drew morales from. Honestly, the tale was largely outlandish and comic-bookish to my ears, but at the end there was the beautiful story of an old man who ran by holding bundles of myrtles to honor the Sabbath. Myrtles are fragrant flowers that are ubiquitous in the traditional Jewish wedding ceremonies. The old man running at twilight to welcome the Sabbath represented Israel. The Sabbath is seen as a bride based on the injunction in the Old Testament to keep the Sabbath, which uses a word which has the association of a wedding in it:
"When the people of Israel stood before the mountain of Sinai, the Lord said to them: `Remember that I said to the Sabbath: The Community of Israel is your mate.' Hence: "Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it" (Exodus 20:8 ) The Hebrew word le-kadesh, to sanctify, means in the language of the Talmud, to consecrate a woman, to betroth. Thus the meaning of the word on Sinai was to impress upon Israel the fact that their destiny is to be the groom of the sacred day, the commandment to espouse the seventh day." Pp. 51-52.
The image strikes me as beautiful and conveys the positive nature of the Sabbath in the Jewish thought and imagination. Traditionally averse to personification, in this case they personify the Sabbath as a bride. Heschel elaborates on this wonderfully.
In closing, although I still have questions about the relation of Christianity to the Sabbath and the keeping of special days, I am convinced of the cogency of the principle (and of the value of exploring the relation further), so that it is incumbent upon me to give careful thought about how I might order my life in such a way that conforms to this knowledge wholly, and that I might encourage the community of Christ to do likewise, not legalistically but in order to live.
Summary of The Sabbath
Elegant, passionate, and filled with the love of God's creation, Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication-and has been read by thousands of people seeking meaning in modern life. In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel introduced the idea of an "architecture of holiness" that appears not in space but in time Judaism, he argues, is a religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the material things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that "the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals."
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