Shabbat is the most original contribution of the Jewish people to the world. It is the combination of the social principle of weekly rest with a beautiful religious ritual. The Torah gives Shabbat a central place from the very Creation. In Breishit 2:2-3 it is written: “And on the seventh day God finished the work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it He rested from all the work that He had created and made.” Our sages say in Breishit Rabbah 17:7 that what God created on the seventh day was “menujah,” rest, tranquility, serenity and stillness.

If God has to “rest,” then even more so man. And the mitzvah says: “You shall remember the Sabbath day, to sanctify it. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your livestock, nor the stranger who is with you.” Shmot 20:8-10.

But the rabbis in the Talmudic era asked themselves: What does it mean to do no work? What can be done and what cannot? There are 39 prohibited works listed in the Mishnah in Masechet Shabbat 7:2. They represent the actions that were carried out for the construction and organization of the Mishkan in the Sinai desert. And they are: 11 related to agriculture, 13 to livestock, 7 to hunting, 2 to writing, 2 to construction, 2 to fire, 1 to finishing the making of an object and 1 to transporting things from the house to the outside and vice versa.

The problem arises when the substance of the matter, which is rest, menuchah, is lost and the form is emphasized. For example, planting is one of the 39 jobs that we should not do. Some expand on this by saying that everything that helps the plant is included in planting, such as watering, fertilizing and pruning. But the height of exaggeration is clearly displayed in this rule followed by ultra-Orthodox groups: “It is also forbidden to eat or drink in the garden, when we do so directly on the ground, since it is impossible to take sufficient care so that no liquid falls on the grass (you would be watering the garden!!!) or that some seed or grain of our food falls on the ground and germinates.”

Similar rules like this last one can be found in the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch by Rabbi Solomon Ganzfried, who, in his second volume, has 25 chapters with 435 rules related to what can and cannot be done on Shabbat. The mere thought of having to comply with 435 rules on Shabbat left me feeling tired and tense. A state that is totally opposite to the concept of menuchah.

Rabbi Joel Roth tells us in his book The Halakhic Process: “The widespread acceptance of the Shulchan Aruch is one thing, and the elevation of each of its decisions to the status of inviolable law is another. To do this is to equate a relatively recent code with the Torah itself. Worse still, to do this presupposes that the author of the code is virtually infallible. Furthermore, accepting the Shulchan Aruch as the only law, eliminates the basic principle that gave the sages of each generation the power to make authentic decisions with the corresponding religious authority.” It seems that they forgot that Shabbat was created for rest.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The texts mentioned.