Class 1: The Idea of the Sabbath: A Lens for Understanding Jewish Mysticism

The Sabbath as a Pillar of Judaism

In a much-quoted essay by the late-nineteenth-century thinker Aḥad ha-Am entitled “Shabbat and Zionism” (1898), the author proclaimed: “More than Israel kept [or guarded] the Sabbath, the Sabbath kept [or guarded] them. . . . She [the Sabbath] returned their ‘soul’ to them [the Jewish people] and renewed their spiritual life [each and] every week.” The Sabbath, in practice and in theory, was, and continues to be, one of the most fundamental pillars of Jewish tradition.

The Origin of the Sabbath in the Hebrew Bible

The Sabbath would come to be the paradigmatic weekly sacred time in Jewish practice, but it was first grounded in the great foundational myth of the divine creation of the world, narrated in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. 

In other books of the Torah, it is presented as one of the religious practices enjoined upon the people of Israel. It is both a reminder of the work of creation and an eternal sign of the covenant between God and the Israelites (later the Jews): “It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever” (Exodus 31:17). 

The Sabbath—its legal intricacies, ritual practices, and associated beliefs—was a flourishing topic of theology, myth, religious law (halakhah), and symbolism from the rabbis of late antiquity (Mishnah, Talmud, midrash) through Jewish thinkers of the medieval, early modern, and modern periods of Jewish history.

An appreciation of Jewish mystical thought and practice is integral to any accurate and complete understanding of Judaism. Our focus here is the Jewish mystical conception of the Sabbath and how Jewish mystics (kabbalists) understood the significance of sacred time and especially the Sabbath. We will examine how they integrated this pillar of Jewish religious life and thought into their theology, their symbolic readings of scripture, and the tradition of rabbinic Judaism. We will also look at their innovative ritual practices and their distinctly soulful view of divine and human purpose.

Medieval Kabbalistic Interpretations

First, we will probe the textual and conceptual grounding of the Jewish Sabbath in the Hebrew Bible through several excerpts from prominent medieval “Spanish” kabbalists (The term “Spain” is used here for simplicity, though these regions were not yet unified into a single country), including Moses Naḥmanides and Joseph of Hamadan. 

As a pathway into the kabbalistic understanding of God, our sources also include a passage (“Chain of Being”) from Moses de León, a contemporary of Joseph of Hamadan and fellow author of the Zohar—as well as a very intriguing text on core teachings of kabbalah by Moses Cordovero from sixteenth-century Safed.

We will read these medieval and early modern kabbalistic sources alongside two contemporary theological texts—one of them my own meditations shaped by Jewish mystical sources, ideas, and practices—on the nature of the Sabbath and sacred time. 

The texts allow us to view Jewish mysticism through the focused prism of the authors’ reflections upon the Sabbath. They describe how the transcendent divine and the earthly human meet and become intertwined in the sparkling wonder and mystery of sacred time, turning and returning, cyclical and eternal.

The excerpt from Joseph of Hamadan’s writing, in particular, takes us into the striking and bold idea advanced by the kabbalists that, just as in the week, a cycle of six days of work is followed by the holy seventh day, the Sabbath, this cycle of “days” and a “Sabbath” exists as dimensions of the inner life and being of God’s very Self! What does this mean?

The mystics argued that everything that exists in the world below is a reflection or refraction of the reality of the divine world above. This is true for time itself and for the sacred day of the Sabbath. Each day of the week, including the Sabbath itself, thus corresponds to a different part of God, generally to the lower seven of the ten sefirot. The sefirot, in kabbalah, are ten dimensions or emanations within the absolutely One God. (The kabbalists go to great lengths to emphasize that, although they are speaking of multiple dimensions and aspects, God is One and only One!)

Modern Interpretations

Some of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s most memorable insights are found in his slim but impactful book, The Sabbath, first published in 1951. Heschel’s deeply poetic work was heavily influenced by the Jewish mystical tradition, and in many ways forms a part of it, as it draws from his Polish Hasidic family lineage. 

The Sabbath includes many now-well-known formulations and ideas: 1) the Sabbath is a “palace in time,” a phrase that conflates space and time; 2) experiencing the Sabbath takes a person into the mystery and wonder of eternity; 3) mundane time is merely “a pilgrimage to the seventh day”; 4) Jewish religious experience is grounded in a sense of the sublime, or “radical amazement”; and 5) the encounter with the holy is fundamentally ineffable. These last few characteristics in particular are also developed in Heschel’s other highly influential books, Man Is Not Alone and God in Search of Man.