March 13th: Vayakhel-Pikuday and HaChodesh
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
Our weekly portion(s) and a seasonal portion present us with an interesting dovetail.
Parshat Vayakhel begins with one of several versions of the Sabbath commandment:
“On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire through your settlements on the sabbath day.” (Exodus 35.1)
It is pretty standard except for two differences:
(1) The intensity of the punishment for breaking the sabbath. Sometimes, no punishment is mentioned. Other times, it is being cut off from the people. Here it is death.
(2) The specific focus on “kindling fire.” The Mishna eventually identifies thirty-nine categories of work (M’lachah) prohibited on Shabbat, but this iteration focuses on one in particular: kindling fire. Other Biblical statements focus on other kinds of work—like plowing or reaping—or are more concerned with who/what gets the day off.
Hold this Shabbat passage in your mind for a moment while we take a look at the extra pre-Passover portion from Exodus 12. It is called HaChodesh/This Month because it starts with, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months…of the year.” The month is Nisan, and Moses is given the instructions for the original Passover. The Israelites are to choose a lamb on the tenth day of the month and then slaughter it on the eve of the fourteenth day at sundown. The lamb’s blood is to be used to paint the doorposts of their houses, and the meat is to be roasted and eaten along with matzah and maror.
The procedure is pretty straightforward, but God or Moses anticipates an interruption. What if a household is too small to eat a whole lamb? Note how the thought process is broken:
“On the tenth day of this month, each of them shall take a lamb to a family, a lamb to a household. But if the household is too small for a lamb, let him share it with a neighbor who dwells nearby, in proportion to the number of persons: you shall contribute for the lamb according to what each household will eat…”
Here they are, preparing for the biggest and most holy night of their lives, and all of a sudden, we are dealing with the size of portions and divvying up lambs among households!
On the one hand, we can chuckle at our ability to lose focus of the big picture—the holy big picture—and allow ourselves to get mired in details. On the one hand, we can take pride in the way that our Judaism always combines the practical with the spiritual. And, on the third hand, we can notice how even the holiest of mitzvot comes up against the realities of the lives of those performing the mitzvot. As significant as the slaughter of the Passover lamb is, determining the right amount of blood and meat and not wasting any food are also important considerations. The practice of religion often involves balancing different priorities.
Now back to the Shabbat commandment—and an ancient argument. Though kindling fire is considered one of the thirty-nine prohibited forms of M’lachah/Work on Shabbat, a fire-less Shabbat is problematic on several levels. If it is cold outside, Shabbat can be a chilly and unpleasant experience. The same goes for eating cold food; it is less pleasant and celebratory. And there is the matter of light. Without candles, Shabbat observers have no recourse but to go straight to bed. This may seem to us overly strict, but it was the approach of the ancient Sadducees—and a later movement called the Karaites. They read the Torah literally, and no fire means no fire. The unpleasantness was just considered the cost of following God’s orders.
Another group, however, disagreed. They believed that, in addition to not working on the sabbath, the sabbath should be enjoyed: Oneg Shabbat. As Isaiah explains (58.13), enjoying the sabbath honors God. Shivering in the dark and eating cold food is hardly the Oneg Shabbat God seems to have in mind. In other words, we Jews were faced with two conflicting religious principles: not working on Shabbat and enjoying Shabbat.
This other group was originally known as Scribes, later as Pharisees (Pietists and Separatists), and still later as Rabbis, and they found their resolution in an even closer reading of the text. The Exodus 35.1 passage does not ban fire, but only the kindling of fire. So, if fire could be kindled before Shabbat and allowed to burn into Shabbat, then no prohibited work would be performed. Furnaces could be packed with fuel and lit before Shabbat. Food could be put in long-lasting ovens before Shabbat and allowed to stay warm. And candles kindled before Shabbat could burn on into the evening and give celebrating families illumination. Thus could the holiness of Shabbat be enhanced with heat and warm food and light—all kindled before Shabbat.
While this seemed the perfect fix to the Rabbis, the Sadducees and later the Karaites objected strongly. They did not agree with the Rabbinic “enhancement” of the Torah—in which an Oral Torah (Torah She’b’al Peh) was used to interpret the Written Five Books of Moses, and they were fierce opponents. Eventually the Rabbis gained the ascendency, and they decreed that, not only is it allowed to let pre-kindled fires burn into Shabbat, but also it is required. And they created a new ritual to express this principle: they lit candles before sundown and let them burn into the sabbath. They even decreed that God has ordained such a practice and crafted a blessing which refers to the mitzvah (commandment from God) of lighting Shabbat candles. Though just ornamental fires, these candles symbolize the triumph of Oneg Shabbat over holy asceticism.
So, every time someone says, “Asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu l’had’lik ner shel Shabbat/Who sanctified us with Your Commandments and commanded us to kindle the Sabbath lights,” we are joining in a human adaptation of God’s commands in the Torah. When the holy mitzvah of Shabbat met reality, a resolution became necessary, and the Rabbis used a balancing religious principle to craft one of our institutions of holiness. They realized that God has given Torah to us (Deuteronomy 30.12 and Baba Metziah 59b)—and that we are empowered and encouraged to make it work in our earthly lives.
P.S. A discussion for another time is the way the mitzvah of Lighting of Shabbat Candles has morphed into a different kind of spiritual observance—one less tied to labor and sundown and more reflective of our desires to bring God into our lives.