Far Away, So Close

By Yosef Yitzhak Lifshitz

How the commandments bridge the unbridgeable gap between God and man.

But there is more to the emulation of God than the adoption of his moral attitudes.⁴⁶Equally important is the fact that man, like his Maker, is a creative force. Thus, when he alters his environment to suit his needs, his actions reflect the primordial act of creation. This idea is echoed in the words of R.Yehuda Ben Rabbi Simon cited above: “But in truth the Holy One, from the very beginning of his creation of the world was before all else occupied with plantation, as is proved in the text (Genesis 2:8), ‘And the Lord God planted a garden in the first instance in Eden,’ and so do you also, when you enter into the land of Israel, occupy yourselves first with naught else but plantation.”⁴⁷Of course, there is a crucial difference between the creative acts of man and God: Man does not make anything ex nihilo, “from nothing,” but rather uses existing materials.⁴⁸Nonetheless, the very fact that he is able to deviate from existing molds and renew the world by virtue of his own free will sets him apart from all other creations, and brings him closer to his Maker. Rabbi Haim of Volozhin (the Baal Nefesh Hahaim), the founder of the Lithuanian order of yeshivot, considers this creative ability the greatest attribute of humanity. “Man is called the soul and the life-spirit of a hundred million worlds… and to him alone is given the rule of choice, to turn himself and the worlds in whatever direction he chooses.”⁴⁹

In creative work, then, and more precisely in what the sages call melechet mahshevet, or “workmanship,” we find a distinct similarity between man and God.⁵⁰At the same time, however, Judaism attaches profound religious significance to the act of resting from work: Just as God rested on the seventh day of creation, so are the children of Israel commanded to keep the Sabbath by refraining from those activities that demonstrate cognizance and intention. These actions, all of which come under the category of “workmanship,” include plowing, sowing, harvesting, weaving, sewing, building, cooking, and writing, among others.⁵¹Philo of Alexandria, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, elaborates on this analogy:

The nation of the Jews keeps every seventh day regularly, after each interval of six days; and there is an account of events recorded in the history of the creation of the world, comprising a sufficient relation of the cause of this ordinance; for the sacred historian says, that the world was created in six days, and that on the seventh day God desisted from his works, and began to contemplate what he had so beautifully created; therefore, he commanded the beings also who were destined to live in this state, to imitate God in this particular also, as well as in all others, applying themselves to their works for six days, but desisting from them and philosophizing on the seventh day, and devoting their leisure to the contemplation of the things of nature, and considering whether in the preceding six days they have done anything which has not been holy, bringing their conduct before the judgement-seat of the soul, and subjecting it to a scrutiny, and making themselves give an account of all the things which they have said or done.⁵²

For Philo, the purpose of the Sabbath is to make time for engaging in spiritual matters, such as philosophical reflection and moral accounting. Another, more prevalent approach perceives the commandment to rest on the Sabbath as social legislation, designed to ease the burden of toil on all mankind. While there is undoubtedly some truth to each of these explanations, neither provides us with the key to understanding the overall picture. This is because they both fail to take into account the mimetic aspect of the mitzva—namely, the perception of the Sabbath as a human reenactment of the seventh day of Creation. This error is understandable. Surely the Holy One does not need to “recover” from his labors or to contemplate their greatness afterward. What possible example, then, could God’s act of rest provide for human beings?

As I have written elsewhere in these pages, I believe the solution to this puzzle lies in the fact that the act of resting—both divine and human—is not, as commonly assumed, extraneous to the creative process.⁵³Quite the opposite: God’s desisting from work on the seventh day provides the necessary closure to creation. The Midrash describes this idea by drawing a parallel between the divine and the human artisan:

R. [Yehuda Hanasi] asked R. Ishmael the son of R. Jose: Have you heard from your father the actual meaning of (Genesis 2:2) “On the seventh day God finished the work which he had been doing”?… It is like a man striking the hammer on the anvil, raising it by day and bringing it down after nightfall. So, too, did the Holy One lift the hammer on the sixth day, while it was still light, and then lower it on the Sabbath, once night had fallen.⁵⁴

This Midrash begins with a question about a seeming contradiction: Did God finish his work on the seventh day or did he rest? Why, according to the Tora, did God desist from his work “on the seventh day,” and not at the end of the sixth? The answer compares the act of creation to the work of a blacksmith who raises up his hammer and slams it down on the anvil. Just as his effort is exerted in lifting the hammer, but the results are achieved only when it is lowered, the six days of divine effort achieve their necessary climax only on the seventh day. Not for nothing, then, does the prayer book refer to the Sabbath as “the conclusion of the creation of heaven and earth.”⁵⁵

The Sabbath is not to be perceived, therefore, as simply the absence of work. On the contrary, it, too, has a positive function: The principle of inactivity that defines the Sabbath both completes and concludes the process that preceded it. As Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague (the Maharal) indicates, “The Sabbath is the completion of creation, and everything is directed to its completion, which is the core of the matter. Accordingly, the entire six days of creation are directed to the Sabbath…. For this reason, the Sabbath is to be kept in mind all week long, so that everything will be directed toward the completion of creation.”⁵⁶

According to this interpretation, the commandment to observe the Sabbath teaches man how to wield his own creative potential. The divine example of creation reveals to man a primordial rhythm of action, one that combines motion with pause, activity with passivity, and being with nothingness. Indeed, the balance between these opposites is the secret of creativity in its highest form. The Sabbath offers us the key to this secret, and allows us, to the extent that we are prepared to adopt the ideal it represents, to achieve our purpose not only as emulators of God, but as his actual partners in the act of creation.

The commandments we have examined so far belong to one or the other of the two categories introduced at the beginning of this essay: Those that seek to bring God’s presence closer to man, and those that seek to bring man closer to God. The mitzva of Tora study, however, is unique in that it serves both these purposes simultaneously. It should come as no surprise, then, that the study of Tora is described by the sages as the essence of devotion to God, and is depicted in religious literature as the crowning glory of Jewish existence.

More than any other religious fiat, the commandment of Tora study is an intellectual activity. At its core, according to Maimonides, is the obligation “to teach and to study the Tora, which is called talmud Tora. This injunction is contained in his words (Deuteronomy 6:7), ‘And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children’; the Sifre says: ‘To thy children,’ means to thy students.”⁵⁷The obligation is not only to teach others, but also to study on one’s own: “Just as it is incumbent on him to have his son taught, so is he under an obligation to obtain instruction for himself.”⁵⁸On the most basic level, then, God’s commandment of Tora study has guaranteed that the divine gift he gave to the people of Israel on Mount Sinai—both the Written and the Oral Tora—will be preserved and passed on throughout the generations. Furthermore, Tora study enables the Jew to deepen his understanding of the mitzvot he observes, thus revitalizing and supporting him in the process. As Maimonides notes elsewhere, “Study leads to practice, but practice does not lead to study.”⁵⁹Although the study of Tora is both intellectually and physically demanding, Jewish tradition considers it a general duty from which no one is excused: “Every Israelite is under an obligation to study Tora, whether he is poor or rich, in sound health or ailing, in the vigor of youth or very old and feeble. Even a man so poor that he is maintained by charity or goes begging from door to door, as also a man with a wife and children to support, are under the obligation to set aside a definite period during the day and at night for the study of the Tora, as it is said (Joshua 1:8), ‘But thou shalt meditate therein day and night.’”⁶⁰

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