Why Rabbis Avoid the Real Answers

Exploring the one aspect of Judaism more unpopular than Kitniyot

Welcome to the alliteratively and delightfully entitled Qontroversial Questions on the Parashah (it’s still pronounced “Controversial” – I just think I’m being qlever). Subscribe to continue to receive these and please share with those you think would be interested.

This is part two of a two-parter that is something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently – and in some ways might be the most “Qontroversial” Qontroversial Question I’ve tackled.

I. How to Enrage Your Community

Last week, I focused on what I called the Ignorance/Knowledge Paradox. Using a thought experiment where you are a rabbi tasked with telling your shul that they can’t swim on Shabbat, I suggested that the less information your congregants have – the less they are encouraged to understand the sources – the more willing they will be to accept what you say.

And even though this runs completely counter to how Judaism is supposed to function, it’s descriptive of many people’s halakhic observance.

But I ended last week by stressing that it is hard to compellingly point to a specific Shabbat-prohibited activity as the reason you can’t swim on Shabbat – and that if you, the rabbi, wanted to be honest with your community, you’d have to offer a very different kind of argument behind the prohibition. And while this argument that emerges from some key sources should be compelling, the challenge is that few people will buy it.

If anything, not only will it be unlikely to succeed – it’ll only enrage your community.

II. “It Just Is” – Redux

The best argument for the prohibition of swimming on Shabbat recognizes that it’s an issue despite a lack of sources validating the claim – though, here, there are two different versions of this argument.

The first version risks sounding a lot like the same argument I mentioned last week, where you simply tell people it’s prohibited without any explanation. But the key difference here is that, rather than obscuring the sources, you admit that there are no clear sources.

And one significant source that seems to prove that there aren’t really many sources is what is perhaps the gold-standard work on the laws of Shabbat in the modern era, Rabbi Yehoshua Neuwirth’s Shemirat Shabbat Ke-Hilkheta. After codifying that it’s prohibited to swim on Shabbat and Yom Tov, he states, “I am not going to bring all of the details, since the Aḥaronim declared it prohibited” (Shemirat Shabbat Ke-Hilkheta [Hebrew Old Edition] Vol. I, 14:12, n. 38; invoking Ḥayyei Adam 44:20).

And this seems a tacit acknowledgement that, while swimming on Shabbat is prohibited by basically every rabbi to have ever lived, R. Neuwirth knows that his understanding of many other laws of Shabbat described in Shemirat Shabbat Ke-Hilkheta might call into question the cogency of many of the classic arguments against swimming on Shabbat. Nonetheless, he is insistent that it is prohibited.

And the Ignorance/Knowledge Paradox captures, for me, the irony here. Many people’s willingness to blindly accept a selective quote from the Shulḥan Arukh prohibiting swimming on Shabbat (as seen last week) is inversely proportional to their willingness to accept that something is prohibited because rabbis all agree it’s prohibited, despite their lack of consensus as to why. Because that is much harder for people to accept.

But I don’t think that this version of the “true” argument against swimming on Shabbat is the most compelling rationale. But the better one is something many would react with frustration to hearing.

Despite, as will be clear, just how obviously true and compelling it is – and always has been – in Judaism.

III. The Other Aspect of Shabbat

Finally, we get to the parshiyot of Emor and Behar-Beḥukotai.

Because what’s clear from the opening of Parashat Behar, which details the laws of Shemiṭṭa, the Sabbatical year – in which once every seven years the land of Israel must lie fallow – is that the Torah describes two, related ideas underpinning it.

The first is that there are a series of prohibited activities during Shemiṭṭa, akin to the laundry list of prohibited activities on Shabbat: “you shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest nor gather the grapes of your untrimmed vines” (Lev. 25:4–5).

But crucially, there is an added dimension also mentioned by the Torah. Because while it states, vĕ-shavta ha-aretz, “the land shall rest,” it also stresses that the purpose of that rest is to create a year which is a shabbat la-shem, “a Shabbat to God” (Lev. 25:2). That is, while the first clause, vĕ-shavta ha-aretz, captures the specificities, the second clause speaks to a wider idea, of a shabbat la-shem: the Torah expresses some broader concept behind the observance of Shabbat that is encapsulated by more than just its prohibitions and obligations.

In other words, the “Shabbat” that is Shemiṭṭa has two dimensions. There is an action-oriented one, which ensures that the person’s daily life is regulated by the need to observe Shemiṭṭa – by making so much of their typical day reshaped by the obligations of Shemiṭṭa, it guarantees its constant presence in their mind.

But there is also an attitudinally-oriented dimension to Shemiṭṭa. Because, as much as the laws of Shemiṭṭa ensure a person’s constant awareness, those laws are supposed to instill a wider mentality within the person: they live their days infused with a broader sense that the land must rest.

And this means that certain activities, even if they aren’t explicitly prohibited by the letter of the law, might violate the ethic or spirit of the law, nonetheless.

But here there is a problem. Because if the whole point of having explicit laws is to define what is and isn’t a prohibition, it can be tricky to then claim that something is still prohibited despite not violating any explicit law. And, while I want to recognize this issue now, it’s something I’ll come back to later.

But this distinction, between the law itself and its spirit, brings us back to Parashat Emor and one of the most important rabbinic comments in the history of Judaism.

IV. Shabbaton Isn’t Just a Word for an NCSY/Bnei Akiva Weekend

On the Torah’s list of the festivals, Ramban devotes several hundred words to exploring the Torah’s use of the term shabbaton (Lev. 23:24). He begins by quoting a midrash halakhah,¹ in which Ḥazal question why, when it comes to the commandment of Pesaḥ, the Torah stipulates both that kol mĕlakhah lo yē‘aseh vahem, “no work at all shall be done on [the days]” but also the seemingly redundant ushmartem et ha-yom hazeh, “you shall observe this day” (Ex. 12:16–17)?

After quoting the answer – and analyzing and questioning Ḥazal’s argument – Ramban arrives at his upshot: “It appears to me that this interpretation intends to state that we are commanded by the law of the Torah to have rest on a festival day even from activities which are not in the category of melakhah.”

To explain, Ramban then gives a long list of activities that are clearly permissible on Shabbat and Yom Tov from a purely technical, halakhic perspective – such as filling barrels with wine, moving stones from house to house, and carrying heavy burdens in a place with an eruv.

But their technical permissibility here, he notes, is the problem. Because being allowed to do these permitted activities on Shabbat would result in a Shabbat and Yom Tov where people could go about their daily lives much in the same manner as their regular week – only needing to adjust the slightest of things to ensure their compliance with Shabbat’s laws.

Or, as Ramban himself puts it:

The marketplace would be full for all business transactions, the shops standing open and the shopkeepers giving credit … just as on weekdays, and so on! And since all these matters do not entail melakhah, they would be permissible on a festival day and even on the Sabbath itself!

Thus, Ramban suggests an additional dimension to Shabbat, describing his theory as an inyan hagun ve-ṭov me’od, “a good and beautiful interpretation.” Beyond the technical prohibitions of Shabbat lies the need to preserve the spirit of Shabbat, its status as Shabbaton: to ensure it is a day observed and lived differently from the others.

V. The Essence of Shabbat

While Ramban suggests this idea as part of his commentary on a verse, Rambam codifies as halakhah a very similar idea: The need for what he terms shevita ha-nikkeret, “discernable rest” on Shabbat (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Shabbat 24:13) – though Rambam arrives at this concept from another angle entirely to Ramban.

Noting that not everyone is a craftsman – and thus engaged on weekdays in work that is explicitly prohibited by Shabbat – it is very likely that non-craftsmen could thus experience their Shabbat as no different from their weekday. Halakhah thus enforces a range of additional non-explicit but ostensibly intuitive prohibited activities to ensure that everyone experiences Shabbat as a uniquely different day than the rest of the week: the shevita ha-nikkeret, or the spirit of Shabbat.

And not only do I think that this is a particularly powerful argument nowadays, but it’s particularly relevant to something like swimming. Because we don’t just get one day off but two: Sunday means we (almost) all meet Rambam’s definition of people who have one day on which we don’t have to work. And we thus need a clear contradistinction between these two days of the weekend.

And this means that certain activities, while technically permissible – or, at the very least, can be argued to not be explicitly prohibited – are termed “not shabbosdik” because doing them has a clear detrimental impact on the spirit of the day.

A Jew who spends their afternoon in a pool may not violate the various prohibitions of Shabbat as clearly as some might think, but it’s clearly no longer Shabbat for them. It’s just a regular weekend activity.

Yet, despite both Rambam and Ramban’s recognition of this principle – along with the general acceptance of it by every rabbi – the spirit of Shabbat is often dismissed as unserious.

And I think that the reason goes back to the issue I mentioned earlier, that if the whole point of having explicit laws is to define what is and isn’t a problem, it can be tricky to then claim that something is still prohibited despite not violating any explicit law. Or to put it simpler, the notion of the spirit of Shabbat often seems to be invoked in a woolly, slapdash, or haphazard way.²

When I can’t point to an explicit ruling of the Shulḥan Arukh to claim something is prohibited, it risks me becoming the arbiter of what is within the spirit of Shabbat and what is not. And that can look deeply subjective in a religion where (the attempt at) objectivity is often key.

But here I’d explain why I think swimming on Shabbat is the best illustration of all of this – but it’s partly because it might not actually be a good one.

Because what’s clear – just in case this hasn’t been clear throughout the past couple of Qontroversial Questions on the Parshah, Srulie – is that basically everyone agrees that swimming on Shabbat is prohibited. There’s really no wiggle room on that.

But all their arguments seem to exist in order to justify a known prohibition. In other words, rabbis are trying to compellingly argue something is prohibited that they know is prohibited – they just can’t confidently declare why. And if you take each of their arguments, there are flaws, some deeper than others. Hence, the thought experiment of a rabbi grappling with this.

And this realization may lead to a useful definition of when the spirit of Shabbat is legitimately invoked vs. when it is not.

When there is (A) a large consensus that agrees that an activity is prohibited on Shabbat but (B) they can’t agree on why, it seems clear that what lies behind the difference between (A) and (B) is that they are all intuiting that there is an inherent problem with the activity – they’re just struggling to claim a specific violation.

This seems a textbook case where it is legitimate to invoke the spirit of Shabbat.

But when (A) is lacking, that’s when the spirit of Shabbat cannot be invoked – or, if it is, it can be criticized for its subjectivity.

All of which is to say that the spirit of Shabbat is an outgrowth of the system itself – but part of it at the same time. The halakhic system justifies the times to invoke it and when not to.

Ultimately, it’s clear that the spirit of Shabbat is real – but unfortunately, so is the Ignorance/Knowledge Paradox. But it is only when we embrace learning the texts themselves can we come to appreciate the broader values they are trying to create.

1. We are most familiar with midrashim as stories that elaborate on the Biblical narrative – and this is not the place to discuss how seriously we take them. But as well as these sorts of midrashim, known as midrash aggadah, there is also midrash halakhah. To explain it as simply as possible, midrash halakhah is a different way in which Ḥazal derived practical halakhah from the Torah’s verses. While the gemara always trumps these sorts of midrashim, it’s important to see them as a more “serious” expression of Jewish law than midrash aggadah.

2. I didn’t need all three of those words, but I wanted to use all of them because they’re fun words.