SABBATH AND THE WOMAN

When the heavens and the earth and everything upon it were created through the divine word, all of creation set out to worship the Creator. The human being, crown of creation, was also called by the Creator to live and serve, but this service would have to emerge from deep conviction, of his own free will, unforced.

In order for human beings not to forget that the Creator is the true owner who bestowed the world on people to populate; so that human beings not consider themselves the creators of the universe and act according to their own laws; in order that they not stumble in conquering such a wide world, or—in brief—to remind human beings that their task is to be the servants of God, the entire creation was given God's gift of the seventh day, the holy sabbath. This day is dedicated, for human beings, to holiness and blessing. Holiness: the day would remind us that God created us for divine service. And blessing: the day would fashion our bodies and souls in preparation for fulfilling our sacred mission.

The sabbath is the day on which the Creator ceased his work and withdrew back into his invisible sovereignty, giving over the world to its stewards. The sabbath is a monument to God's sovereignty and to the human mission.

‘Six days you shall labour, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God, you shall not do any work’ [Exod. 35: 2].

The human conquest of the world expresses itself as work that humans impose on other creatures that are used to fulfil the need for food, clothing, and so on. For that reason you must spend only six days working to master the world, and must rest on the seventh. In that way you show that the day is not yours, and those creatures you make such free use of all week long are also not yours. On that day, you return the world to its Creator and show that you have only borrowed it from him. It is for that reason that the smallest work you do on the sabbath is a deviation from all this, a denial—God forbid—of the mission of the ‘Mensch Yisroel’.