A Sign For the Ages

Shabbat as a Taste of the World to Come

Exactly three years ago I began writing and sending out the weekly Etz Hasadeh D’var Torah. My first missive was on this week’s parasha, Ki Tissa. Some of you have been reading from the beginning and some of you are new. We have grown from about 500 readers to 2,500. Thank you for your generous engagement and enthusiasm! May we go from strength to strength in our study of Torah and quest to live meaningful lives.

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Speak to the Israelite people and say: You must keep My sabbaths, for this is a sign between Me and you throughout the generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, have sanctified you. (Exodus 31:13)

“More than the Jewish People have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” (Achad Ha’Am)

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

The commandment to keep Shabbat appears throughout the Torah. In this week’s parasha, Ki Tissa (Exodus 30:11-34:35), the commandment to keep Shabbat follows the instructions for consecrating the priests and the instructions for using incense in the sanctuary. The Torah uses the same word “l’doroteichem” (“throughout the generations” or “throughout the ages”) to describe Shabbat, incense, and oil. Today, the incense and oil are gone, but Shabbat remains. Commenting on what it means that the oil is to be preserved throughout the generations, Rashi says it is to be preserved for “The World to Come.” The sages call Shabbat a “taste of the World to Come.” What are we to make of these parallels?

Before highlighting some commonalities, let’s observe the differences. The oil is to be used only in the sanctuary, and nowhere else. Only priests can use it. Nobody else can touch it. The incense is not to be replicated, nor is it to be used for any other purpose than Temple service. A person who tries to replicate the smell of the incense for personal use is liable for one of the most severe punishments, karet, being cut off, suggesting doing so is an action of great consequence. Meanwhile, Shabbat is something that can and must be observed by all Israelites everywhere. One does not need to be pure to keep Shabbat. Instead, as it were, Shabbat itself is that which purifies.

Just as the priests are to be sanctified by oil, and the Tabernacle sanctuary is to be sanctified by the presence of incense, the people are to be sanctified by Shabbat. What does this mean? The Torah commands us to keep Shabbat and make it holy, but here, we read about Shabbat with a different inflection—Shabbat is given to make us holy. In the Book of Mark, Jesus issues his famous polemic that Sabbath was made for human beings, not vice versa. Yet Jesus’s theological target is a kind of straw man, for the Torah acknowledges this “humanistic” teaching. Of course, it can be both—humans made for Shabbat and Shabbat for humans, yet in our parasha, Shabbat is a sign. It is a consolation, even. Observance of Shabbat reminds the people that they have been sanctified.

Consider the long arc of Jewish history—not always a pleasant or easy one, to say the least. Shabbat has been one of the most continuous and distinctive features of Jewish life and identity. The cultural Zionist Achad Ha’Am found in Shabbat the key to Jewish survival. His sentiment echoes the language of Ki Tissa, which calls Shabbat a sign (ot). While we can think of Shabbat as something that we do—and despite being a day of rest, Shabbat requires activity both in terms of preparation and in terms of the day itself—but we can also think of Shabbat as something that is done to us. It is the latter, stranger inflection that dominates this week.

In a modern age where we are used to pitching everything in terms of “value add,” one might be tempted to make an argument for Shabbat as instrumentally good. Shabbat is a time of relaxation, a handbrake on burnout, a premonition of progressive labor laws, a time for family. Shabbat is good for you in the way that unplugging and meditation are. But is Shabbat merely an IRL version of the“Headspace” app? Ki Tissa does not frame Shabbat in this way. Rather, it uses the language of holiness, which carries a different cadence than utilitarian terms like benefit or pleasure. Shabbat is a sign; it is a gift; it is a marker of selfhood and mission. Even if Shabbat is ethical or practical in a commonsensical way , these categories do not exist what Shabbat is. Nor is Shabbat simply metaphysical—“God rests on the seventh day, therefore we should.” Shabbat is, radically, the means by which God enters human affairs.

Last week, I wrote about the Mishkan (Tabernacle) as a near-form of idolatry. If the Mishkan is the home we build for God and which God concessively enters, Shabbat is the home God builds for Godself that we concessively enter. Just as God says “Build me a sanctuary and I will dwell amongst you,” we say to God “Build us a Sanctuary and we will dwell with you.” God accedes and, ironically, builds the seventh day.

In a culture that emphasizes efficiency and productivity, hustle and grit, accomplishment and growth, scale and power, Shabbat can seem antiquated, vestigial. When Shabbat is celebrated in mainstream culture it is often still in terms that bolster the norm that the point and glory of life is work. But while work can be good and glorious (even as Marx thought it was too often alienated and exploitative), it is not a sign of sanctification. If it is a sign, is a sign of necessity.

Stoic philosophers argue that the task of philosophy is to accept necessity. Negative emotions are the result of not accepting that which is simply fateful. A sublime sense comes to those who give necessity its due. But Shabbat is not a feeling of acquiescence to necessity. Holiness is the sense that there can be more than the necessary. To be sanctified is to be a witness to those phenomena that do not occur within the paradigm of necessity. For the Stoics, freedom just means accepting necessity. But for those sanctified by Shabbat, freedom means lifting up one’s eyes to a realm not governed by necessity; such a realm is elusive. Thus, it is called the “The World to Come.” Shabbat is likened to incense because both are present absences, conjuring both immediacy and distance. We cannot point to a scent, but nor can we cannot dispute it. Holiness, likewise, is not something we can easily locate, and yet we know it when we experience it. It is a sign.

Signs are contestable. One person sees a pattern and finds meaning in it, another finds a different meaning in it or no meaning at all. But in Ki Tissa Shabbat is not mean to be a sign like a green light that is universally recognized. It is more like a kind of locket whose significance is shared only by lovers. Shabbat has external benefits, but these benefits make it a day like any other day of wellness. The secret of Shabbat, as offered in the image of a sign for the ages, is that it is a day by which the Jewish people can know themselves anointed.

While the relationship between Shabbat and the Jewish people is particular, some universal points can be extrapolated. One is the power of intimating a reality beyond the instrumental and the practical. Another is the power of signs to guide a sense of purpose in a world where those signs seem illegible or foolish or counterproductive to others. A third is that not all good things are things which we make. Some things are good because they are gifts not of our making. Shabbat’s contrast with the Mishkan suggests that we must work to enable holy spaces, but that we must rest to receive them.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins @ Etz Hasadeh

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