Keeping the Shabbos together
Op-ed: There is a deep and loving friendship between the Jewish people and Shabbos. For millennia, Shabbos has held families together, creating the space we need in our lives to connect with one another, and nurturing our connection to the enduring Torah values that make Jews Jewish.
For thousands of years, Shabbat has held Jewish families together in love and loyalty. Strong and loving families have been the source of strength of the Jewish people. The oxygen of healthy families is uninterrupted time together to talk, share and bond. Shabbos creates the shared time and space for parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, siblings, cousins, family and friends to connect with one another in a real and loving way.
Shabbos also nurtures the Jewish family’s connection to our enduring Torah values. In today’s world, where alienation and dissociation are evident on every level—be it personal or societal—Shabbos serves as a constant source of bonding and connection.
Two commandments which are next to each other in the Ten Commandments and other places in the Torah are Shabbos and honouring parents. The Kli Yakar explains that both give respect to the creators of life.
The Gemara says that a child is the product of three partners: father, mother and G-d. Shabbos is about acknowledging and paying tribute to G-d as the Creator of everything.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch writes that honouring parents and Shabbos are the two mitzvot that give birth to us; they are the spiritual foundations of the Jewish people. These two mitzvot strengthen and reinforce one another. Parents hand over the heritage of Shabbos to the next generation, and Shabbos holds families together.
In the modern world there is a pervasive sense of alienation and fragmentation; or, as one thinker put it, “the atomisation” of the world. When atoms come apart, everything disintegrates. In today’s society, as families have fractured, so too have the bonds connecting us to G-d, to community, and to ourselves.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch says the word "zar," which means foreign or estranged, is related to the Hebrew word "achzar," which means cruel. Cruelty occurs when there is estrangement between people. Achzar, cruel, and zar, alien, are two aspects of the same phenomenon.
To combat this we have the Torah, which creates what Rav Shlomo Wolbe terms "olam hayedidut"—the “world of loving friendship.”
When G-d gives us commandments He is not instructing us as a legislator imposing laws upon his submissive and fearful subjects. R
ather, He is like a loving parent who instructs and guides out of care and concern, to give us, His children, the best opportunity to live the best life possible. When we keep His mitzvot, it is within the context of this world of loving friendship. Just as we do things for people we love - a husband for a wife and a wife for a husband, parents for children and children for parents - so too, says Rav Wolbe, we keep the mitzvot in the context of our relationship with G-d, in the world of loving friendship.
Rav Wolbe says that Shabbos in particular is a pillar of this world of loving friendship, when we have the space and time to reconnect with our loved ones. Shabbos nurtures our sense of connectedness, creating a wonderful, warm, loving atmosphere at the centre of our lives, giving us the blessing of family.
Chief Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein has been the Chief Rabbi of South Africa since 2005. He was among the initiators of The Shabbos Project, that was marked on October 24, 2015.
