Our Sages forbade us to take measurements on Shabbat. In their day, as in ours, measurements were most often associated with commerce. They strove to create a day free from the workaday stresses of acquisition. We see this sensitivity in this prohibition, as in the many prohibitions and commandments we have seen throughout the year. As we began the year, I hoped to convey that Shabbat is first and foremost a spiritual discipline. The God of Israel demands that we rest each week, that we may dedicate the work of our hands throughout the week for the sake of Heaven. We attempt a perfect rest each week, knowing that our anxieties will likely break into our day of calm marring our rest, yet we try again the next week.

In our passage, we find Ula shocked to discover Rabbah b. Rav Huna engaging in an act that Ula perceives as violating the character of the day: Rabbah b. Rav Huna sits with a cup measuring the water that a particular tub will hold. Ula sees this as violating the Sages’ words. Rabbah b. Rav Huna will enter the world of commerce and anxiety by measuring the capacity of the tub. Rabbah b. Rav Huna deflates the situation in one sentence. He is just entertaining himself, not really measuring water or the tub for any real reason. This sort of entertainment is permitted.

I hope you have found my Torah entertaining and enlightening over the course of the year. It has been a privilege to learn with you all. Shabbat shalom and hag sameah!

Some of our Sages felt that objects which could not be used on Shabbat in any permitted way should be utterly outlawed for the entire twenty-five-hour period of Shabbat. This prohibition, termed by the Talmud, Issur Tilltul (the prohibition on moving an object), eventually came to be known as muktzeh(things placed to the side). If an object has no use on Shabbat, it is in this category and, generally, may not be picked up and moved to another location on Shabbat.

However, if one can find a Shabbat use for an object, even though that use may not be the purpose for which the object was made, one may use it on Shabbat. For instance, a hammer is used for building—a Torah-prohibited act on Shabbat. Nonetheless, one may crack open walnuts with a hammer on Shabbat. But we see a caveat to this exception in the text above. Rav Yehuda makes clear that his teacher, Shemuel, allowed the use of weavers’ tools for a variety of permitted purposes on Shabbat. Rav Yehuda’s students then challenge him: what about the delicate parts of the weaver’s apparatus, such as the counterweights? If you used one of these to crack open a nut, for instance, it may become damaged and then fail to initiate the movement of the loom. Would not the weaver refrain from using the weights for any other purpose than weaving? If so, then their use must be proscribed on Shabbat, even for permitted purposes. He is unable to answer their question. In the end, our halakhic tradition sides with Rav Yehuda’s students. If jewelers would only use their hammers to make jewelry, out of fear of damaging their tools, then a jeweler’s hammer’s purpose is only the construction of jewelry—an act prohibited on Shabbat. One may not use it to crack nuts (for instance) on Shabbat, since one would not use it this way during the week.

Questions

1. What are the tools we value in our lives? Would we crack a nut with a laptop computer or cell phone in a pinch?
2. Can we use Shabbat as a barometer of the level of material value in our lives? How?

When does Shabbat begin? When does it end? What separates the mundane time of the week from the transcendent time of Shabbat? The simple answer is that Shabbat is the seventh day of the week. Since Genesis 1 places the night before the morning (“And there was evening, and there was morning . . . “), Shabbat begins at nightfall on Friday. But how do we define nightfall? When the sun sets? When it gets dark? When the stars come out? The first part of our source states that it is only certainly night when three medium-size stars can be seen in the sky. Shabbat, therefore, ends only when the first day of the week has certainly begun, on Saturday night after the appearance of these stars. Twilight, however, is an odd time. It may be day, it may be night, and our Sages were unsure which it was. Thus Rava instructs his beadle to light the lamp inaugurating Shabbat before twilight on Friday, as is our practice today, just prior to sunset. This period of indeterminate time, from just before sunset until just after the appearance of three medium-size stars, varies in the mid-Atlantic region from approximately forty-five to seventy-five minutes over the course of the year. The result is that Shabbat is usually a twenty-five-hour affair, rather than a twenty-four-hour one.

As we move into Tishrei, the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar, the month that begins the liturgical cycle of the year, we should keep in mind that this period of transition is one that is also fraught with doubt. Rosh Hashanah inaugurates this period, just as the indeterminate period of twilight inaugurates the Shabbat. We are uncertain about our fate in the coming year and conscious of our need for forgiveness. As we move into the twilight of the year, we hope to see the stars of our redemption before the end of the High Holidays. May we all be written in the Book of Life for blessing, abundance, and peace.

Questions

1. What sort of spiritual succor can we derive from the Shabbat connections to sunset and stellar ascension? Why do you think such natural measures of time give so many people a sense of spiritual rhythm?
2. How is our daily rhythm disrupted by the advent of the High Holidays? How can we use this disruption as an opportunity for personal and spiritual growth?

Certain things must be done before Shabbat begins. Our mishnah gives a checklist of three things about which the head of a family must inquire as Shabbat begins. Have the necessary tithes been taken from the produce? Has the boundary delineating the extent of private space, the eruv, been properly established? Have the Shabbat lights been lit? Here the concerns are, in order: 1. food; 2. housing; and 3. peace and comfort. In the land of Israel, if the proper tithes have not been taken from the produce, one may not eat of it. One may not remove the tithes on Shabbat. One may only carry within a “private domain” on Shabbat, so the eruv is crucial to determining where one may make use of one’s possessions on Shabbat. Finally, the Shabbat lights are the only source of artificial illumination on Shabbat, providing both comfort and peace in the home.

One can imagine the level of stress the head of the household must have felt in this period as the light of the day began to fade. Was everything ready? The temptation to give in to stress and anger must have been great. Rabba bar Rav Huna reminds us that as we prepare for Shabbat, we must remember to preserve an air of calm and respect for one another. Shabbat is a time of wholeness and peace. We must remember this even as we go about our preparations for our day of rest.

Questions

1. What are the things we do to prepare for Shabbat in our time? Why might they be stressful for us?
2. How do we make sure that Shabbat is a time of wholeness and peace in our lives?

We do not make personal petitions on Shabbat, leaving them for our weekday prayers. What then do we do when visiting the sick on Shabbat? During the week, prayer for healing is an element of our visit, but during Shabbat we should transcend our human needs so that we may gain a taste of the world to come. Nonetheless, we still remain in possession of our bodies on Shabbat and may still fall ill. Illness may sometimes inspire us to spiritual growth, but on the whole, most of us would say that we do not desire suffering or its rewards. So how do we approach the tension between the desire to overcome the physical on Shabbat and remain cognizant of the need for physical healing?

The first position above winks at the prohibition on praying for the sick, while then going on to explicitly pray for healing. This is the approach that the entire Jewish world has adopted in the Mi-Sheberach prayer for the sick on Shabbat. Indeed these very words, “Shabbat is not for petition, but may healing come swiftly,” are included in that weekly prayer. I find Rabbi Meir’s approach the more interesting one, however. His point is that we need not pray for the sick, because Shabbat itself is a time of mercy and favor before Heaven. Shabbat is its own prayer for all the needs of the people Israel.

Questions

1. How should we regard sickness and suffering? Is suffering an opportunity for spiritual growth, or a blight on our lives?
2. How should Shabbat fit into our conception of suffering and illness?

How do we transcend the physical on Shabbat? Our physical existence is temporary, and our bodies are eventually subject to the most horrendous filth, decrepitude, and rot. Shabbat promises a vision of the world to come, in which we imagine our physical decline halted and even reversed. We light Shabbat lamps to inaugurate this period, and light illumines our spirits as well as our homes. But what about our bodies? How do we prepare our all too imperfect flesh for the holy Sabbath?

In the above passage, we see Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai embracing the physical in order to transcend it. Rather than ignore his bodily needs and desires, he fullfils them in advance of Shabbat, so that the physical reality of his aging body does not impinge on his Shabbat rest. He bathes in hot water, dresses himself in a fine white toga, and takes on the aspect of a totally spiritual being, an angel of the Lord of Hosts. Though this behavior is not strictly obligatory, Rav Nachman bar Rava gives it the approbation of “mitzvah.” Here “mitzvah” does not mean a commandment, but has a looser sense, a behavior that is religiously superlative, the best possible way of keeping the commandments. It is a mitzvah to embrace our physical needs prior to Shabbat, that we may transcend them once Shabbat has arrived.

Questions:

1. How should we prepare our bodies for the onset of Shabbat?
2. What role do our bodies play in our spiritual lives?