Cathedrals of time
I have given my opinion before on the role that religion takes in Cornell. I have had the immense luck of learning a little bit over this weekend about the Jewish practice of the Sabbath. It was a brilliant culture-shocking experience.
I knew about the Sabbath only from watching American movies with Jews in them. So far I had thought that the motivation behind it was that God rested for one day so you have to rest too; God ordered people to worship him one day a week so it is a sin to do anything else. I have learned this weekend that the motivation I knew was not completely correct, because God didn’t simply work for six days and rested on the seventh. He made things for six days and on the seventh blessed what he had created, giving it life and meaning. The idea is that, contrary to most people’s belief, you don’t rest in order to get energy for work: you stop for the sake of stopping itself. The week leads up to Sabbath, not the other way around. Or even, as Robert Esformes puts it, the week has three days of getting ready for Sabbath and three days of Sabbath afterglow. I can’t help giggling at the thought, since “afterglow” to me is a particularly sensuous word (that would mean that the three pre-Sabbath days are foreplay days).
So. Sabbath is a gift, a day in which you receive the wonderful gift of being outside everyday concerns. In Christian terms it is like being in Heaven a whole day a week! Wow! Or like a cathedral, a temple build with time instead of marble. You could say that “working on the Sabbath is sinful” but it would be more appropriate to say that if you even think about the work that you will do when the Sabbath is over, you are missing the point, you’re wasting a chance of escaping from it! Besides, to keep Catholics, Pagans and feminists happy, God has a female manifestation during the Sabbath, Sechinah. A male God six days a week and a “bride of Sabbath” or “Queen of Sabbath” that comes to visit on the day that really matters.
The way I understood it, the day is divided in three parts. Friday night is for being together with friends and family, celebrate light, love, joy, and food in that order (blessing candles, the people, wine and bread, in that order). This is where restrictions on not working, etc. make more sense: you wouldn’t bring work to a party, would you? Saturday morning is for direct worship of God, meditation, study, church/synagogue, you get the idea. Saturday afternoon is to just stop. Take a walk, do something for pure pleasure, and now if you really have to, you can think peacefully, relaxed, about the week that is over and your plans for the week that is going to start. Just think, not making anything.
We live in a world that consists on getting things done, or just getting more things. We need to rest more. I would recommend the practice of the Sabbath to anyone interested in spirituality, even if they don’t believe in any God or any organised religion. Give yourself a day, starting and finishing at sunset, to three things: inactivity, good company and thinking of whatever you would like to call God. Their order of importance is up to you. It can have a surprisingly liberating effect to take off your watch for a while and tell yourself it is fine not to do anything at all.
I had no idea I would come all the way to Cornell to learn Jewish mysticism…
I knew about the Sabbath only from watching American movies with Jews in them. So far I had thought that the motivation behind it was that God rested for one day so you have to rest too; God ordered people to worship him one day a week so it is a sin to do anything else. I have learned this weekend that the motivation I knew was not completely correct, because God didn’t simply work for six days and rested on the seventh. He made things for six days and on the seventh blessed what he had created, giving it life and meaning. The idea is that, contrary to most people’s belief, you don’t rest in order to get energy for work: you stop for the sake of stopping itself. The week leads up to Sabbath, not the other way around. Or even, as Robert Esformes puts it, the week has three days of getting ready for Sabbath and three days of Sabbath afterglow. I can’t help giggling at the thought, since “afterglow” to me is a particularly sensuous word (that would mean that the three pre-Sabbath days are foreplay days).
So. Sabbath is a gift, a day in which you receive the wonderful gift of being outside everyday concerns. In Christian terms it is like being in Heaven a whole day a week! Wow! Or like a cathedral, a temple build with time instead of marble. You could say that “working on the Sabbath is sinful” but it would be more appropriate to say that if you even think about the work that you will do when the Sabbath is over, you are missing the point, you’re wasting a chance of escaping from it! Besides, to keep Catholics, Pagans and feminists happy, God has a female manifestation during the Sabbath, Sechinah. A male God six days a week and a “bride of Sabbath” or “Queen of Sabbath” that comes to visit on the day that really matters.
The way I understood it, the day is divided in three parts. Friday night is for being together with friends and family, celebrate light, love, joy, and food in that order (blessing candles, the people, wine and bread, in that order). This is where restrictions on not working, etc. make more sense: you wouldn’t bring work to a party, would you? Saturday morning is for direct worship of God, meditation, study, church/synagogue, you get the idea. Saturday afternoon is to just stop. Take a walk, do something for pure pleasure, and now if you really have to, you can think peacefully, relaxed, about the week that is over and your plans for the week that is going to start. Just think, not making anything.
We live in a world that consists on getting things done, or just getting more things. We need to rest more. I would recommend the practice of the Sabbath to anyone interested in spirituality, even if they don’t believe in any God or any organised religion. Give yourself a day, starting and finishing at sunset, to three things: inactivity, good company and thinking of whatever you would like to call God. Their order of importance is up to you. It can have a surprisingly liberating effect to take off your watch for a while and tell yourself it is fine not to do anything at all.
I had no idea I would come all the way to Cornell to learn Jewish mysticism…