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DiggAnd on the Seventh Day, God Created Leisure
Work and Sabbath are integral to each other, writes Joshua Halberstam. This article appears in the Sabbath edition of Trinity News. To receive a free subscription to the print edition of Trinity News, send your mailing address to news@trinitywallstreet.org. Homepage photo courtesy of Kali Sanchez.
What's our problem with the Sabbath? “Yes, of course,” we readily agree. “We really ought to incorporate this oasis into our hectic schedules.” But then we doggedly continue to pile on the chores. Why the pervasive inability to make this time a regular part of our lives? I suspect the answer reflects a widespread misreading of what the Sabbath is really about.
To begin with, Sabbath is not about rest. If you think of the Sabbath in this negative sense, as merely time set apart for inactivity and relaxation, you’re sure to find yourself as exhausted at the day’s end as on any other work day. Something always demands our attention, perhaps a leftover assignment from the office or a shopping expedition sitting impatiently atop our to-do list. To be sure, we relish the few unproductive hours we spend spacing-out in front of a television set, mindlessly perusing a magazine, or — how wonderful — grabbing a snooze in the hammock. But don’t confuse this repose with the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not the absence of activity; it is meant to be as productive and creative as the rest of the week. But unlike our other labors, the activity is directed inward. The Sabbath is about self-creation.
There’s an interesting bit of biblical history that turns on this distinction. If you look at Genesis 2:2 you’ll read about how God finished His work on the seventh day. Seventh? Shouldn’t that be the sixth day? Indeed, the Greek translators thought the Hebrew version must be a mistake and so the Septuagint renders the phrase “And God finished on the sixth day his works which he made.” But in fact, as the early commentators point out, God did create something on the seventh day. He created the Sabbath. He created leisure.
The notion of leisure is not easy to categorize. It doesn’t, for example, depend on the activity itself — the same hour of vigorous gardening can be toil for the professional gardener yet entertainment for the hobbyist. My dictionary defines the word as “freedom from responsibilities, idle hours,” but the leisure of the Sabbath is closer to the ancient Greek understanding of the term. In classical Greek the word for leisure is scole, or school and the word for work is ascholia, or not-leisure. So, too, in Latin: leisure is otium, schooling, and work is negotium or not-leisure. For the ancient Greeks, leisure meant the satisfactions of self-reflection and learning, of contemplation, conversation, and civic participation. The leisure of the Sabbath, too, is a day for selfenhancement.
What constitutes self-enhancement? I wouldn’t presume to tell another, for indeed, that very question is at the core of what each of us explores during the Sabbath. This is a time for self-indulgence of the best kind, that is, for nourishing the parts of the self you most care about. This might involve long walks by yourself or with someone you love, hanging out with friends and family, as well as cultivating your spiritual yearnings in service with others. And let us not forget Jesus’ comment, recorded in Matthew: “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” If in our work we re-create the world, in our Sabbath recreation we re-create ourselves. We fail, therefore, to reap the full rewards of the Sabbath if we see it in isolation, as divorced from our work life. In his enchanting book The Sabbath, the theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel observes, “The Sabbath cannot survive in exile, a lonely stranger among days of profanity.” The Sabbath is a complement of our work, and illuminates it. This feature of the Sabbath deserves closer attention.
For the ancient Greeks, labor was a degradation, a necessary evil: “We work in order to achieve leisure,” says Aristotle. But our biblical heritage posits a more nuanced and positive perspective on occupation. Work brackets human history. From the get-go, we are instructed to industry: “The Lord took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to guard it.” (Some scholars trace the name Adam to the Assyrian Adamu, meaning maker, craftsman.) Fast forward to Isaiah and the “end of days.” What are human beings doing with their swords and spears? Beating them into plowshares and pruning hooks.
The import of work is underscored in the commandment to keep the Sabbath: “Six days shall you labor and do all your work, and the seventh shall be a Sabbath for the Lord, your God.” But the Sabbath is only possible when the work is freely chosen. According to the second version of the Decalogue (Deut. 5:15), we are to observe the Sabbath in commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt. Because slaves do not choose when to begin or end their work, they are capable of rest, but not a genuine Sabbath. Work and Sabbath are integral to each other. The Sabbath sanctifies not only itself but also the work that precedes it.
Workaholics, therefore, aren’t people who work exceptionally long hours; one person’s long day is part-time for another — and we’ve all experienced times in our lives when, in fact, we welcome being possessed by a demanding challenge. Workaholics, rather, are those who won’t allow their projects to reach closure. They are unable to step back and say of their work: done — the sale is completed, the document written, the construction finished. It is good. I bless it and send it into the world. And now for some Sabbath in my life.
And finally, we need to remind ourselves that the Sabbath is a time for joy. Over the past centuries, not a few religious traditions have forgotten this essential feature, and turned the day into a dour and oppressive affair. But even more problematic is the degree to which our own, supposedly hedonistic, culture has lost sight of genuine pleasure. We’ve become enthralled to what the philosopher Charles Taylor calls “instrumental reasoning,” the attraction to means over ends. And so we pay more attention to the capacities of our loudspeakers than the music they play, we live to eat well rather than eat well to live, and engage in sports only as a form of exercise rather than for its own satisfaction. The delights of the Sabbath are intrinsic, the play self-sustaining. (For this reason, Orthodox Jews are encouraged to have sexual intercourse with their spouses on the Sabbath.) Studies in cognitive psychology attest to the significant control people have over their emotions and the Sabbath always works best when we are in our best moods. The Bible prescribes: “Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the Sabbath day.” In other words, this is a day to chill.
But you can’t do this alone. While the Sabbath is a day for celebratory selfcreation, the flourishing “self” is never a purely individual affair. Genuine self-interest expands to include all that truly matters to “your-self”: your entire household — the Bible commands that even one’s animals may not work — your friends and, perhaps most important, your community. For at its core, the Sabbath is a shared experience, a day for praying and playing with one’s fellows, for talking, exploring, and listening to one another’s dreams. But we need to recognize that no complex behavior is maintained without routines. To enjoy shared Sabbaths, we need to schedule time with our Sabbath companions, at service, in study, or at the lunch or dinner table. Sabbath alone withers; Sabbath with others prospers.
The Sabbath of our religious tradition is a full day underscored with rules and regulations. This is not possible for many, and not all can, or wish to, share the same practices. But however we manage our lives, we ought to include some Sabbath. We all need to bracket some period in our week and devote it to healthy joy, to spiritual growth, to self-creativity while taking pride in the creative work we do the rest of the time. The Sabbath is, after all, both a richly communal and deeply personal gift. Enjoy.
Dr. Joshua Halberstam has been writing and teaching philosophy to college and general audiences for two decades, and is the editor of a popular textbook on ethics, Virtues and Values (Prentice Hall, 1986). His most recent book is Work: Making a Living and Making a Life (Perigee/Putnam, April 2000).
Feature photo courtesy of Kali Sanchez via Flickr.
