Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Yom Kippur, 1997

by Harold M. Schulweis

The Chasidic tale is told of Rabbi Elimelech and Rabbi Zushia who wondered whether the holiness they felt was due objectively to the Sabbath day itself or due to their own subjective attitude. Is it the day which introduces holiness. or is it our own intentions? They decided to test the matter. "Let us make the Sabbath on a week day and we will see whether we will find the same sense of holiness on the weekday as we have found on the Sabbaths." So, on Tuesday they prepared for the Sabbath which would be on Wednesday. They spread the Sabbath tablecloth, put on Sabbath clothes and fur caps, lit the candles, recited the Kiddush and after the meal recited the grace, sang zemirot, and spoke words of Torah. On the Shabbat they prayed as they always did -- the Shacharit, Musaf, Minchah, and Maariv prayers. After Havdalah they looked at each other with trepidation for they had indeed experienced kedushah, the sense of holiness on the weekday and they were frightened. It appeared that it was not the Sabbath day that held the secret of kedushah. Tuesday or Wednesday was equally receptive of holiness.

They set off to consult with the Sage of Mezeritch and told him their experiment. The Sage of Mezeritch responded "Do not fear. The preparation of the heart, your kavanah, has the true power to draw the light of the Sabbath holiness down to earth." Sabbath is more than chronology, it's a matter of sensibility.

When God created the seventh day and called it holy the Bible says God created the Sabbath to be made (in Hebrew "laasoth"). There is a Yiddish expression called "machen Shabbes" which literally means to make the Sabbath. God created "yesh m'ayin" -- something out of nothing, but we create "yesh m'yesh" something out of something. The Sabbath is something to be made.

In a related dispute between the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel over the order of reciting the Kiddush, the house of Shammai said, "The first thing that has to be recited is the blessing of the sanctity of the day and after that the blessing of the wine is recited." But the house of Hillel disagreed. They said you must begin with the blessing over the wine and then you can conclude with a blessing over the day. Shammai believed that the day has already become holy before the wine was brought. It was made holy at the setting of the sun. But Hillel argued that it was the wine which human beings bring and was made with the labor of their hands that produces the occasion for the benediction. It is then not only the setting of the sun or the appearance of the stars in heaven that determines the Sabbath, but it is the hands, hearts and intentions in our bringing the wine that sanctifies the Sabbath.

Sabbath is not simply a matter of astronomy in the heavens, the Sabbath is a philosophy, a way of thinking, behaving and belonging. The Sabbath is a state of mind. How we celebrate the Sabbath tells us how we deal with time.

But I confess that in my growing up the Sabbath was for me a wet blanket, a puritanical litany of prohibited joys, a series of proscriptions and negations that inhibited productivity, creativity and fun. The Sabbath for me was a day in which I couldn't – I couldn't travel, I couldn't play the radio, or tear paper. The Sabbath was a day which I couldn't! The Sabbath was opposed to productivity, to creativity, to work. Over and again the Sabbath in the Bible is associated with the prohibition "You shall not do any manner of work." As I grew older, I wondered about this persistent, insistent, obsessive antagonism to work. Not only was one not to work on the Sabbath but not on any of the festivals: not on Passover or Sukkot, or Shavuoth, or Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. Why is the Torah so insistent on prohibiting work?

Who needs a prohibition against work?

Firstly, who would want to work anyhow? Do I need to be commanded to rest? After all, we read in the Book of Genesis that working is a curse. Wasn't Adam told after he transgressed, "In toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall the earth bring forth to thee and thou shalt eat of it all the days of you life. In the sweat of thy brow, in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it were you taken, for dust you are and unto dust you shall return."

So against what unnatural instinct or drive does the Bible warn? Who would choose to sweat and to toil and who needs to be commanded to rest, to take off one day, not to work?

Still, if there are so many prohibitions against working, must it not mean that people really want to work, and to work without surcease, without cessation, without interruption?

People want to work not six days but all seven.

The secret is out. People want to work and are afraid not to work. People fear the Sabbath. Slaves fear freedom, they fear free time. If I have free time with what shall I fill it? If I have free time with whom shall I spend it? Nothing frightens us more than to live without schedule, without instruction, without deadlines, without orders. Of course, people will complain that they don't have enough time for their family and their friends. But left with twenty-four hours of unstructured time they are strangely uneasy. For many people the Sabbath is no joy, no release, no freedom.

Psychological and sociological literature if filled with evidence of such an odd phobia: the fear of weekends, of relaxation, of vacations, of retirement, of leisure. The dread of having one day away from the office produces in many people what the psychologists Ferenzi and Karl Abraham called "Sunday neuroses.” Not a few psychologists have written of the mounting tension experienced by quite successful people who grow depressed and at times even ill when the market is closed, when the ticker tape on Wall Street is silenced.

Listen to the etymology of leisure. Webster's dictionary defines leisure as "freedom provided by cessation of activities, engagement or responsibility.” But that's negation. What I want is activity, engagement, responsibility. There is no active verb derived from leisure. Leisure is a static noun.

In Webster's unabridged the root of vacation is "vacate,”  to cause to be empty or unoccupied. But it's precisely that vacuum I fear.

And the definition of relaxation is "an absence or reduction of muscle retention.” But flaccidity is no virtue.

"Retirement" comes from the French "retirer" which means to withdraw, a term filled with negation.

Leisure, vacation, retirement, relaxation are anxiety provoking. To have time on your hands is to be frightened of the dread of boredom. And boredom, Soren Kierkegaard wrote, "is the root of all evil.” We know how children go crazy when they are bored. It goes double for adults.

Sigmund Freud called work and love, "the parents of human civilization." But in our time it is work, not love, that is our chiefest joy. Social psychologists have noted that we are working more. Economist Judith Schor, author of The Overworked American, informs us that in the last two decades the average worker has added on an extra one hundred sixty four hours -- a month of work to the work year. Vacations have shortened by fourteen percent and parental time available to children per week has fallen ten hours in the white household. But that may not be surprising. What is significant is not that we are working more but that new studies indicate that men and women prefer work to home, prefer business to home. In the study of The Time Bind, a best seller by Arlie Russell Hochschild, argues that there is a profound reversal in our social psyche. Men and women both prefer the work place to the home and not because the new economy demands increased work, not because they need to, but because they want to work. There is a competition for time between home and the work-place and the work-place is winning.

Because the work place is more interesting than the home, more rewarding emotionally. In the work place one feels more appreciated, greater self-esteem, more camaraderie than at home.

The work place is an escape from home. For men and for women, the work-place is an escape from unwashed dishes, unresolved quarrels, crying tots and testy adolescents, and unresponsive mates. Women report that preparing the gourmet meal, that washing and feeding the family in no way compares to the satisfaction, recognition, bolstering self esteem and respect received at the office. Kay Hamod, the historian, writes, "I love scholarly work because you force a manuscript into shape. It's not like sitting alone for nine months waiting for something to happen to you." I understood. The mother doesn't get applause for nothing. Mothering does not yield a raise, a bonus, or a gold watch. Mothering means to be yelled at, to be abruptly awakened at night, urinated on, repeatedly cleaning up spilled cereal and more.

An important revolutionary reversal is taking place in our culture. Yesterday books were written with such titles as Haven from a Heartless World.  Today it would be entitled The Office as the Haven from A Heartless Home. Yesterday we spoofed the office, the factory, efficiency, speed, scheduling. In my youth, one of the great films was Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times," which offered a satiric but sharp insight into the technological, industrial world of the late nineteen thirties. Remember that in order to save time and to compete more efficiently the "J. Willicomb Billows Feeding Machine" was introduced in Charlie's factory. The intention meant that workers wouldn't have to stop their work for lunch and waste time. They were fed with such technological devices such as a revolving plate with an automatic food pusher, an automatic soup plate with a compressed air blower so the workers wouldn't have to stop to cool the soup by blowing in it with their own lips. There was a corn feeder with buttered corn on the cob moving back and forth across Charlie, who all the while kept on tightening bolts, who could eat the corn without having to bite or chew it. And following that a hydro-compressed sterilized mouth wiper would keep him clean. All of this for the sake of efficiency. It drives Charlie crazy. Charlie has become a cog in the wheel of mad efficiency.

A different scenario suggests itself for our modern times. If the Billows Feeding Machine hurried the worker, the modern mother hurries the child. The official culture of the work place has taken over that of the home. In a recent advertisement for Quaker oatmeal, a working mother feeds her child in just under ninety seconds. The smiling mother, whose name is given as "Sherri Greenberg,” holds her four and a half year old Nicky in her arms. In the ad she declares, "Nicky is a very picky eater. With instant Quaker oatmeal, I can give him a terrific hot breakfast in just ninety seconds and I don't have to spend any time coaxing him to eat it." The ad concludes "Instant Quaker oatmeal for Moms who have a lot of love but not a lot of time." Time has been drained out of the home for the sake of the work-place and modern technology has given us "two minute rice,”  "five minute chicken casserole,”  and "seven minute Chinese feasts.”

Hallmark cards are written by shrewd observers of the contemporary scene. There are a number of Hallmark cards available for busy parents. One of them is to be placed on the bed for the child "Sorry, I can't be there to tuck you in.” Another card is put on the breakfast table "Sorry, I can't say good morning.”

This is the Sabbath which falls on Yom Kippur. The Sabbath takes on renewed meaning in our times, and I now begin to newly understand the centrality of the Sabbath in our tradition. Why indeed in the midst of the various laws that the Ten Commandments express – not stealing or coveting, bearing false witness, not worshipping other Gods – there is a commandment explicitly for the keeping of the Sabbath.

Notice how the Haftorah from the prophet Isaiah 58, deals with the spiritual understanding of the Yom Kippur fast that says that it's not for fasting or bringing animal sacrifices. It concludes with the Sabbath as the great promise and salvation. "If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your business on My holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and call the Holy day honorable; if you honor it and go not to your own ways nor look to your own affairs nor pursue your business nor speak thereof, then shalt thou delight yourself in the Lord and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob."

Why is the Sabbath so important to the prophetic tradition? The Sabbath is a cry for sanity. It is a cry for freedom from the omnivorous monster that eats at our soul, that robs us of our family and of our friends and of the gentleness in us.

Surely business is not the culprit. Judaism does not oppose work. The six days do not stand in opposition to the seventh day. It is all within the same commandment, "Six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto the Lord."

Isaiah is no enemy of business. Judaism does not renounce civilization for the culture of work. But it pleads that we attain some degree of independence from the store, from the factory, from the office, from the culture of commerce and the adulation of commodity.

Judaism asks for equilibrium, balance. The Sabbath is a declaration of a truce, an armistice for the sake of your liberation.

How interesting that the first act the Hebrew slaves in Egypt were to do was to declare their own calendar, their own allocation of time. Slaves have no calendars of their own. Only free men can liberate time. And we emancipated slaves.

There are chains which have surreptitiously embraced us, a culture of efficiency and of toughness and of impersonalism that is omnivorous and insatiable. The Sabbath is a cry for the preservation of our spiritual life.

The seduction of work has drained us of our poetry, romance, softness and our intimacy. And if one follows the psychological literature it has for tens of thousands of people produced an anhedonia, an inability to rejoice with the joys of intimacy. The obsessiveness of work, of career, of success in a material sense is outrageous. It has been bought at the expense of the family. The Sabbath is a cry for family. The modern table is filled with food and drink but it is bare of laughter, of song, and conversation. The contemporary family eats together around the same table less and less, sings together, prays together, talks together less and less.

Do not be misled. This is not simply a Rabbi's plea for more ritual. The Sabbath of Isaiah is not a pleading that candles be lit or that kiddush be recited or that the challah be blessed. Far more is asked of us than those gestures of ritual or the obedience to proscriptions. More is required by the Sabbath than candles, sweet wine and soft challah. For when the table talk is business, the making of "deals" or of a "killing" in the market, the challah turns hard and dry. Recall that these two loaves of challah remind us of the manna which fell twice as much on Friday than on the Sabbath, so that the people would not have to go out into the field to pick it up, so that they did not have to hoard it and multiply it with greed. Those who gathered more than they needed, the manna would rot. The manna bred worms. (Exodus 16:20) So the two loaves of challah are for family joy, for the intimacy and fun with mishpochah. But when the table talk is acerbic, sarcastic, putting down people, a virtual imitation of what you see daily in family situation comedies on television; or when the table talk speaks to the children only about grades and marks and tests and registers disappointment and criticism, but nothing about dreams or hopes or plans, then the kiddush wine turns sour and bitter.

"Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitation.” The tradition tells us this refers to another fire -– to anger, to rage, to resentment. When there is anger and shouting on the Sabbath the candles which were blessed are extinguished.

The Sabbath is a call for balance in our lives. We are lopsided, we are out of kilter. One day out of seven.  

One day out of seven create a fence, a wall, a barrier to keep out the culture of business, its toughness, its hardness, its obsessiveness, its competition.

The word Shabbat means stop. One day out of seven shut your pocketbook.

One day out of seven liberate "In God we trust" from the dollar bill and put it into your life.

One day in seven put aside your wallet.

One day in seven halt the motor.

One day in seven leave commerce outside of your life. Do not shop.

One day out of seven disconnect your fax, your E-mail, your computers, your Internet. Communicate, connect with those whom you love – your family and friends.

One night out of seven turn off the television set so that you can learn to look at each other. Look at your wife, look at your husband, look at your children. Listen to their sounds. One day out of seven don't act so tired that you have no patience to talk, to listen, to love body and soul physically and emotionally.

Are we so trapped that only others can entertain us? Can only professionals make us laugh? Can only celebrities make us sing? Are we so empty that we cannot entertain ourselves?

Of course, the work-place has replaced the home.

Sabbath challenges our deepest addiction. An addict is someone who cannot say "no,”  who cannot break the compulsion. The world of business calls for different talents than the culture of the home – the culture of softness and empathy and cooperation. However refined, the culture of commerce is full of aggression. I hear it in the small confessionals that are revealed in the warring metaphors we use for work: "I made a killing,”  "He worked him over,”  "He gave him the business,”  "I love sinking my teeth in it.”

The Bible says, "You shall not pursue business on the Sabbath nor speak of it." The rabbis in the Talmud Shabbat ask what can you talk about. "One may determine charity grants to the poor on the Sabbath. One may supervise matters of life and death and matters of communal urgency on the Sabbath. One may go to the synagogues to attend to communal affairs on the Sabbath. One may make arrangements on the Sabbath for the betrothal of young girls and one may provide elementary education of a child and teach him a trade on the Sabbath. For when Isaiah said "Nor finding your own affairs nor speaking your own words," this means "Heftzecha asurim. Heftzay shamayim mutarim." The affairs of heaven are permitted. Your business affairs are forbidden.

The Sabbath and Yom Kippur are both for tshuvah -- what have they to do with tshuvah? Tshuvah has the same letters as the word "ha-shabbat.” We can create a world, we can form our own world, we can transform our lives. On the Sabbath we can create the balance indispensable for our sanity and health and the solidity of our family lives. Let me ask, is it beyond the realm of our doing to join with others to have, for example, a havurah meet once a month to celebrate a Shabbat with our children and our grandchildren, in food, in song, in prayer, in friendship?

Where are you looking, dear soul, for meaning and joy? Where are you traveling further away from home? Rabbi Eizik, son of Yechiel of Krakow, after years of poverty dreamed that there was a treasure if Prague under the bridge which leads to the king's palace. When the dream repeated itself he prepared to go. He took his shovel and began to dig. The Captain of the Guard asked him what he was doing there. And Eizik told him his dream. The Captain laughed.   "I too had a dream to go to Krakow to dig up a treasure under the stove of a man called Rabbi Eizik." Eizik heard the Captain and understood. He went home to Krakow and dug up the treasure from under the stove."

We look for treasures in far off places in someone else's territory, in other faiths, in other traditions. But it is here where we live and where we stand. When you leave the Synagogue it is in our homes that there is treasure. Take back control of your life and of your home. For you, we have prepared a Sabbath tape. The Sabbath is your time. The home is your place. The treasure awaits discovery.

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