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...God says to Israel “Keep Shabbat, and if you don't, you'll die. Okay, make me a sanctuary; here's how.”
We notice a certain lack of detail, here, rather as if one might say “Make sure to nigglebot the burrahobbit, or I'll kill you. Okay, about my library books...” If this Shabbat is so important, surely some instructions would be appropriate about now?
Rather than paint God as a vicious and arbitrary deity with a staggeringly short attention span, rabbinic tradition interprets the text about the sanctuary as doing dual duty, being at one and the same time a marvellously concise yet deep and complex set of instructions about this all-important Shabbat, yet also serving as an involved and evocative description of the sanctuary-buildng process.
Essentially, if some creative procedure is involved in the latter, it is prohibited in some way in the former, but through the lenses and filters of rabbinic tradition, which makes it much more complicated and, crucially, highly adaptable. Thus, when electricity came on the scene, the argument “They didn't use electricity when they were building the sanctuary, therefore it is okay to use on Shabbat” is not employed. Rather, the lenses and filters, when applied to the question of whether electricity may be used on Shabbat, give two possible answers: Yes and No; orthodox Judaism came down on the side of No, for better or worse.
The twentieth century saw incredible changes, and when asked what the one most significant change had been, a certain octogenerian replied “Electricity.” Electricity is involved in practically everything we do. Ceding control of electricity for a day is surprisingly difficult.
Wednesday night (at the Riverdale Open Beit Midrash, every other Wednesday, plug plug) I was engaged in a discussion about how for us (me and chums, that is) refraining from sanctuary-building activities isn't too awfully difficult, but refraining from using electricity jolly well is.
My contribution today is that not-using-electricity, like nothing else, has given me the ability to sit back and let something go by. Often enough I'll be in an annoying situation where if only I had electricity - Google, or phone, or lights - I could fix it, and since I'm choosing not to use electricity, there's nothing at all I can do, so I have no choice but to sit back and let events take their course, and accordingly I might as well stop fretting about it.
I observe that this carries over into the rest of the week also. Sometimes I'll be in an annoying situation where I couldn't do anything about it even if I was using electricity, and being able to sit back and let it go by is an awful lot more comfortable than getting uselessly worked up. I wouldn't have said this, on account of not wanting to sound horribly preachy, but more than once a companion has said “How do you do that? How do you not let it get to you?” and I suppose this is part of how. Being able to take one aspect of Shabbat and apply it to the general sanctuary-building seems to increase my ability to cope with the whole. This I like, since it is more or less why I engage in religion in the first place.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go and nigglebot the burrahobbit. Shabbat shalom.
We notice a certain lack of detail, here, rather as if one might say “Make sure to nigglebot the burrahobbit, or I'll kill you. Okay, about my library books...” If this Shabbat is so important, surely some instructions would be appropriate about now?
Rather than paint God as a vicious and arbitrary deity with a staggeringly short attention span, rabbinic tradition interprets the text about the sanctuary as doing dual duty, being at one and the same time a marvellously concise yet deep and complex set of instructions about this all-important Shabbat, yet also serving as an involved and evocative description of the sanctuary-buildng process.
Essentially, if some creative procedure is involved in the latter, it is prohibited in some way in the former, but through the lenses and filters of rabbinic tradition, which makes it much more complicated and, crucially, highly adaptable. Thus, when electricity came on the scene, the argument “They didn't use electricity when they were building the sanctuary, therefore it is okay to use on Shabbat” is not employed. Rather, the lenses and filters, when applied to the question of whether electricity may be used on Shabbat, give two possible answers: Yes and No; orthodox Judaism came down on the side of No, for better or worse.
The twentieth century saw incredible changes, and when asked what the one most significant change had been, a certain octogenerian replied “Electricity.” Electricity is involved in practically everything we do. Ceding control of electricity for a day is surprisingly difficult.
Wednesday night (at the Riverdale Open Beit Midrash, every other Wednesday, plug plug) I was engaged in a discussion about how for us (me and chums, that is) refraining from sanctuary-building activities isn't too awfully difficult, but refraining from using electricity jolly well is.
My contribution today is that not-using-electricity, like nothing else, has given me the ability to sit back and let something go by. Often enough I'll be in an annoying situation where if only I had electricity - Google, or phone, or lights - I could fix it, and since I'm choosing not to use electricity, there's nothing at all I can do, so I have no choice but to sit back and let events take their course, and accordingly I might as well stop fretting about it.
I observe that this carries over into the rest of the week also. Sometimes I'll be in an annoying situation where I couldn't do anything about it even if I was using electricity, and being able to sit back and let it go by is an awful lot more comfortable than getting uselessly worked up. I wouldn't have said this, on account of not wanting to sound horribly preachy, but more than once a companion has said “How do you do that? How do you not let it get to you?” and I suppose this is part of how. Being able to take one aspect of Shabbat and apply it to the general sanctuary-building seems to increase my ability to cope with the whole. This I like, since it is more or less why I engage in religion in the first place.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go and nigglebot the burrahobbit. Shabbat shalom.