Shabbat
8 Adar
2/8/14
Today I abstained from Facebook and attempted to sanctify the Sabbath, to keep it holy. "Be ye holy, for I am holy," saith the LORD, in today's Bible reading (Leviticus 19:2) and also in 1 Peter 1:16. I felt like I should take the "no commerce on Sabbath" prohibition to its logical extension -- no commercial advertising, thus viewing no web page that contains this distraction, including Facebook.
Facebook is an electronic "town square" where dialogue and news of the day takes place, but it is also a venue for commerce, increasingly so to my dismay. It is also a place of profound grief sometimes, a place to become aware that friends and loved ones are trampling the Sabbath underfoot as they shop and go about their worldly pursuits, disregarding the holiness of the day. This is the LORD's Day! -- a day to rejoice and be glad, the day He refers to repeatedly throughout Scripture as "My holy day"!!!
By 9 am, after reading my chapters and the Torah portion (Tetzaveh) in my beloved KJV (where I encounter the LORD in a manner that just does not happen when I read other versions of the Bible) I began to experience the sanctity of Sabbath, especially while reading and underlining portions of the wise words of Abraham Joshua Heschel. I finished reading his wonderful book, The Sabbath, about 11 am and then went for a 20 minute snowshoe walk in the woods to meditate on what I had read. Soft snowflakes descended from "a grey snow sky, the gift of Adonai." Winter is truly a wonder this year. Did I ever blog the lyrics to this song I wrote to Yanni's music years ago?
Snowshoeing, by the way, is a great cardiovascular activity and a great way to experience the winter scenery. There must be two feet of snow in our woods, so this is the best way to traverse the trails. Next year maybe I'll try cross country skiing once I master maneuvering in these. It is quite easy actually. It is just walking, with poles for additional support and balance. I thoroughly enjoy this activity. The energy expended and metabolism boost prevents me from feeling cold. I do need gaiters though to keep the snow out of my boots. I tried snowshoeing at Culver yesterday along the lake shore, breaking trail from the motel to the Library in spectacular sunshine, blue sky, 13 below zero wind chill weather. Other than one ear getting wind blasted, I stayed warm. I should have double-hatted it, or put up my hood. My Buff was transformed from face mask to emergency ear warmer. My left ear turned red and hot as my blood supply came to my rescue and saved me from frostbite. Lessons are being learned before I venture out on a longer trek on Trail 4 at Potato Creek State Park, hopefully tomorrow afternoon.
Today's Sabbath journaling will consist of passages I marked, underlined, and especially liked in this little book by Heschel:
"The duty to work for six days is just as much a part of God's covenant with man as the duty to abstain from work on the seventh day." (p. 28)
"The seventh day is the armistice in man's cruel struggle for existence, a truce in all conflicts, personal and social, peace between man and man; a day on which handling money is considered a desecration, on which man avows his independence of that which is the world's chief idol. The seventh day is the exodus from tension, the liberation of man from his own muddiness, the installation of man as a sovereign in the world of time. In the tempestuous ocean of time and toil there are islands of stillness where man may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity. The island is the seventh day, the Sabbath....." (p. 29) [my thought: I wonder if the prohibition against kindling a fire on the Sabbath day refers to staying out of arguments and eschewing discord! Maybe it is a word picture, a metaphor for conflict.]
"The Sabbath is no time for personal anxiety or care, for any activity that might dampen the spirit of joy." (p. 30)
"The idea that a seventh part of our lives may be experienced as paradise is a scandal to the pagans and a revelation to the Jews....the Sabbath is the fountainhead (ma'yan) of eternity......Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath while still in this world, unless one is initiated in the appreciation of eternal life, one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come....Eternal life does not grow away from us; it is "planted within us" growing beyond us....The essence of the world to come is Sabbath eternal, and the seventh day in time is an example of eternity. (p.74)
"There is much that philosophy could learn from the Bible. To the philosopher the idea of the good is the most exalted idea. But to the Bible the idea of the good is penultimate; it cannot exist without the holy. The good is the base, the holy is the summit. Things created in six days He considered good, the seventh day He made holy.....The law of the Sabbath tries to direct the body and the mind to the dimension of the holy. It tries to teach us that man stands not only in a relation to nature but in a relation also to the creator of nature. What is the Sabbath? Spirit in the form of time. With our bodies we belong to space; our spirit, our souls, soar to eternity, aspire to the holy. The Sabbath is an ascent to the summit. It gives us the opportunity to sactify time, to raise the good to the level of the holy, to behold the holy by abstaining from profanity." (p. 75)
"We usually think that the earth is our mother, that time is money and profit our mate. The seventh day is a reminder that God is our father, that time is life and the spirit our mate." (p. 76)
"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. Indeed, it is the only day on which the word of God could have been given to man." (p. 82)
"According to an ancient legend, the light created at the very beginning of creation was not the same as the light emitted by the sun, the moon, and the stars. The light of the first day was of a sort that would have enabled man to see the world at a glance from one end to the other. Since man was unworthy to enjoy the blessing of such light, God concealed it; but in the world to come it will appear to the pious in all its pristine glory. Something of that light rests upon saints and men of righteous deeds on the seventh day, and that light is called the additional soul." (p. 88) [my thought: YESHUA is that Light!]
"All our life should be a pilgrimage to the seventh day; the thought and appreciation of what this day may bring to us should be ever present in our minds. For the Sabbath is the counterpoint of living; the melody sustained throughout all agitations and vicissitudes which menace our conscience; our awareness of God's presence in the world." (p. 89)
"Nothing is as hard to suppress as the will to be a slave to one's own pettiness. Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man must fight for inner liberty. Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people." (p. 89)
"In a moment of eternity, while the taste of redemption was still fresh to the former slaves, the people of Israel were given the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments. In its beginning and end, the Decalogue deals with the liberty of man. The first Word--I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage--reminds him that his outer liberty was given to him by God, and the tenth Word--Thou shalt not covet! reminds him that he himself must achieve his inner liberty." (p. 90)
"In ancient literature, emphasis is expressed through direct repetition (epizeuxis), by repeating a word without any intervening words." (p. 90)
"The Torah, whenever we study it, must be to us "as if it were given us today." The same applies to the day of the exodus from Egypt: "In every age man must see himself as if he himself went out of Egypt." (p. 98)
"An instant of returning to God may restore what has been lost in years of escaping from Him" (p. 98)
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