Around the time that we receive this newsletter--the 18th of Tevet, which this year falls on January first and second--we remember the twenty-ninth yartzheit of a great Jewish scholar and activist. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who found shelter from the Nazi storm at the Reform seminary, spent most of his American career at the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary.
For nearly two decades, Heschel taught alongside Mordecai Kaplan at JTS. Kaplan’s philosophy broke vital ground by rejecting a more literal, supernatural theology; Heschel reinterpreted that theology, and embraced it as mystical "neo-Hasidism". Today’s Reconstructionism, though born entirely of Kaplan’s approach, has since evolved to include elements of Heschel’s thought, as well.
Fifty years ago, this year, Heschel published his much beloved and eminently readable book, "The Sabbath." One of my all-time favorite works, "The Sabbath" is timeless, timely, poetic, and powerful; for some of us, it’s been truly transformative. At this season we remember Heschel’s many contributions--from marching with Abernathy and King in Selma, to inspiring generations of Jews with his many important writings, to being among the earliest protestors against the Vietnam War. The rest of this column offers a few pearls of his wisdom, cultured for a half-century now, from "The Sabbath."
"The love of the Sabbath is the love of [humanity] for what [it] and God have in common. Our keeping the Sabbath day is a paraphrase of God’s sanctification of the seventh day."
What, in fact, do humanity and God have in common? One answer is the ability to rest and reflect--i.e., to make Shabbos. Heschel’s contemporary, Martin Buber, said something similar: "love of the Creator and love of that which [God] has created are finally one and the same." You say you love God? Prove it, through loving-kindness for those whom, and that which, God has created. This may be one way of understanding the difference between us saying "God Bless America", and Al-Qaeda saying "Allahu Akhbar".
"The seventh day … is a truce in all conflicts, personal and social; peace between man and man, man and nature, peace within man" [sic].
OK, maybe the reality at our oneg, as we jostle to get the choicest cut of kugel, doesn’t quite match this aspiration. But Heschel not only tells us what Shabbat is; he tells us what it can be. We can choose to do things differently on Shabbat, though our choices will not be identical. Some of us may not drive; others might drive only to shul; still others drive to a friend’s house, or to a trailhead for a shabbos hike. Any informed choice about Shabbat observance that we make will be authentic, so long as it emphasizes peace with the world, humanity, and ourselves.
"The faith of the Jew is not a way out of this world, but a way of being within and above this world; not to reject but to surpass civilization. The Sabbath is the day on which we learn the art of surpassing civilization."
Even in despairing times, when pundits and parishioners alike ponder the future of civilization, Shabbat stands as a beacon calling us to something holier than the status quo. Something greater than the rat race of producing and consuming; something beyond "us" and "them", or "mine" and "yours"; something as timely and timeless as the last of Heschel’s quotations, with which we conclude:
"To set apart one day a week for freedom, a day on which we would not use the instruments which have been so easily turned into weapons of destruction, a day for being with ourselves, a day of detachment from the vulgar, of independence of external obligations, a day on which we stop worshipping the idols of technical civilization, a day on which we use no money, a day of armistice in the economic struggle with [other people] and the forces of nature--is there any institution that holds out a greater hope for [humanity]’s progress than the Sabbath?"
May our next Shabbat, and every Shabbat, be a "time of truce in all conflicts."
Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb